If you’re wondering if this is a normal day for Xiaomi, it’s not. November 11 is Singles Day in China, and traditionally the world’s largest, annual online shopping day. A final breakdown of Xiaomi’s sales hasn’t been provided, but by midday, Xiaomi had sold 720,000 phones, 250,000 of which being the flagship Mi4 smartphone, retailing for around $300. Barra did share some other figures, stating it eventually racked up $254 million in total sales.
To put this into some perspective, during the 90-day summer period this year, Xiaomi sold 15 million phones. It may not sound like many now, but it’s enough to snatch the number one spot in China from Samsung and Apple. Between then and now, analysts show Xiaomi’s shipments rising to 18 million, with which it secured fifth position in the global market, despite its hardware only being sold in selected countries.
Xiaomi had a good day, but it was nothing compared to Alibaba. The sprawling Chinese online merchant reported total November 11 sales of $9.3 billion through both its Tmall and Taobao websites. The smashed the previous record of $5.8 billion in sales, set last year. According to local reports, Xiaomi was the number one brand on Tmall for the day, with Huawei coming in second. Mobile not only dominated the sales, but also the way in which people shopped. Smartphones and tablets were used for 42 percent of the transactions, a dramatic rise over the 21 percent in 2013.
