Xiaomi’s quick growth spurt is forcing them to slow down
In business, growth is always a good thing no matter how much of it you can get. But it can be too fast in some scenarios, believe it or not.
Take Xiaomi, who went from 7.2 million smartphone shipments to 61 million in just 2 quick years. When you start moving the needle like that in the beginning, it can be natural to expect that momentum to keep up for the long haul.
Realistically, though, there comes a point in time where growth flattens out for any number of reasons. Well, Xiaomi has reached that point, and they don’t like it. The company is said to be ending their trend of reporting annual sales shipments to avoid commentary that they’re on a downfall. That won’t stop independent reports from other firms coming out, of course, but at least they won’t be shooting themselves in the foot.
Xiaomi isn’t alone, with another up and coming player in their own neighborhood suffering similar situations. Le Eco seemingly made its way westward overnight with big dreams of becoming the next major electronics player to hit North America, only to find out that they burned through so much cash that they would have faltered without a bailout.
So if you can’t grow, where can you go? Diversification. Find new businesses to invest in, look to work on your global strategy (which we hoped would begin with an announcement at CES, but that didn’t come to fruition just yet), and keep selling a crap ton of phones to earn enough cash to make all of it happen.
[via TechCrunch]