Lei Jun, founder and chief executive officer of China's mobile company Xiaomi Inc, introduces the new features of Xiaomi Phone 4 at its launching ceremony, in Beijing, July 22, 2014.Jason Lee/Reuters
Xiaomi Corp., whose investors include billionaire Yuri Milner, more than doubled its revenue in 2014, according to a blog posting by chief executive officer Lei Jun.
The Beijing-based company's sales before tax rose to 74.3 billion yuan ($12-billion U.S.) last year, Mr. Lei said on his microblog on the weekend. It sold 61.1 million mobile phones, 227 per cent more than in the previous year. Xiaomi plans to release its Redmi smartphone and will hold a news conference on Jan. 15 to discuss an "important flagship" product, according to the post.
China's largest smartphone vendor said on Dec. 29 that its valuation has risen to $45-billion following a $1.1-billion funding round that included investors such as Mr. Milner's DST, Singapore's GIC Pte and All-Stars Investment Ltd. The company is now the highest-valued IT firm yet to go public, Mr. Lei said.
Xiaomi, which means "millet" in Chinese, was founded in 2010 to make software for mobile devices running Google Inc.'s Android system. The company subsequently released products including a tablet computer, a television set-top box and TVs that connect to the Web.
In the quarter ended Sept. 30, Xiaomi was the world's third-largest vendor behind Samsung Electronics Corp. and Apple Inc. It aims to sell 100 million phones this year.
Xiaomi has the same potential as Facebook Inc. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. to reach a valuation of $100-billion, Mr. Milner, an early investor in all three, said last month.