Text/Yang Jianyong
Despite the impact of the epidemic, Xiaomi still handed over a beautiful report card. Revenue in 2021 was RMB328.3 billion, an increase of 33.5% year-on-year, and adjusted net profit was RMB22 billion, an increase of 69.5% year-on-year. Unfortunately, the annual profit decreased by 5.1% year-on-year to RMB19.283 billion. In the major business segments, smart phones, as the basic disk, continue to maintain a strong growth trend. At the same time, smart home has the most potential, and revenue is expected to exceed the 100 billion mark.
Xiaomi's mobile phone ambitions, three-year goal of the world's first
In 2021, smartphones contributed 208.9 billion yuan in revenue to Xiaomi, an increase of 37.2% year-on-year; annual smartphone shipments were 190 million units, an increase of 30% year-on-year. According to Canalys data, Xiaomi's smartphone shipments rank third in the world, in front of Samsung and Apple. In 2021, Samsung ranked first in the world with nearly 275 million smartphone shipments, maintaining a market share of 20%. Driven by the new iPhone series, Apple shipped 230 million units in the whole year, an increase of 11% year-on-year, ranking second in the world.
According to the report, among the top five smartphone manufacturers in the world, Xiaomi shipments have the fastest year-on-year growth rate. In terms of mobile phone shipments, Xiaomi and Apple are not separated, showing a pattern of you chasing after me, but the ability to make money is hanging apart, and the strength of the two is still huge. In fiscal 2021, Apple's revenue from iPhones was $191.973 billion, an increase of $54.192 billion compared to fiscal year 2020, an increase of 39% year-on-year. It can be seen that Apple is the largest reaper of the global mobile phone market.
Driven by strong demand for iPhones, it has driven rapid growth in overall revenue and net profit. In fiscal 2021, Apple's total revenue was $365.8 billion, up 33% year-on-year; net profit increased by 65% year-on-year to $94.7 billion; in addition, Greater China revenue was $68.366 billion, up 70% year-on-year, making it Apple's most beautiful region in the world. In the latest quarter (as of December 25, 2021, the first quarter of fiscal 2022), the iPhone revenue was $71.628 billion, the total revenue reached $123.9 billion, and the net profit in the quarter was as high as $34.63 billion, which is the world's most profitable technology company.
Behind this shows the competitiveness of the iPhone in the global market. As the world's best-selling high-end smartphone, it has long occupied the global high-end mobile phone market. For Xiaomi, although benchmarking Apple, learn from Apple. Previously, Lei Jun also claimed that mobile phone sales have reached the first place in the world for three years. Perhaps mobile phone shipments can surpass Apple, but the ability to make money is separated.
Smart home competition has intensified, and Xiaomi AIoT growth has slowed down
It should be pointed out that the era of smartphone market dividends has disappeared and has long bid farewell to the period of high growth. Canalys' data shows that full-year shipments of 1.35 billion smartphones in 2021, up 7% year-on-year and close to 1.37 billion units in 2019. And the competition between mobile phone manufacturers also tends to be stable, the remaining players are mainly Samsung, Apple, Xiaomi, OPPO and vivo, these five manufacturers occupy 70% of the global mobile phone market share.
In order to seek new growth points in performance, mobile phone manufacturers have been targeting the smart home and wearable devices for many years. According to data given by Omdia, the global smart home market size is expected to exceed $178.5 billion by 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of 24.1% during the period 2020-2025. Of course, as an important smart home market in the world, the mainland is expected to ship 230 million smart home devices in 2021. This data comes from IDC and predicts that the next five years will grow at a compound growth rate of 21.4%, and the mainland smart home device market will ship close to 540 million units by 2025.
Among domestic mobile phone manufacturers, Xiaomi is the first manufacturer to harvest smart home dividends. Due to the earlier layout, many years ago, through the cultivation of a huge ecological chain enterprise, and the construction of intelligent voice + AIoT platform ecology, so that it ranked among the first camp in the industry. After years of exploration, in the past few years, Xiaomi's IoT and life consumer products have shown a rapid growth trend, and it is undoubtedly one of the biggest winners in the smart home market.
However, there are also growth dilemmas. According to the financial report, in the whole year of 2021, xiaomi IoT and life consumer product revenue reached 85 billion yuan, an increase of 26% year-on-year. Not only is Xiaomi's growth sluggish, But Apple's smart home track is also slowing down. In the first fiscal quarter of 2022 (ending December 25, 2021), other business segments, with smart homes and wearable devices as the core, contributed $14.7 billion in revenue to Apple, an increase of 13% year-on-year. As far as the author is concerned, although the smart home market cake is huge, the accompanying competitive pressure has increased. Especially in the domestic smart home market, there are not only mobile phone manufacturers such as Xiaomi and Huawei, but also Internet giants such as Baidu and Ali, as well as home appliance giants such as Haier and Midea. At the same time, many competitive smart home innovation enterprises such as Oribo and Fluorite have emerged.
In the case of Huawei, in the consumer business sector, after the mobile phone was restricted, it began to target the wearable device and smart home markets, and fully exerted its whole house intelligence. Including the recent upgrade of the whole house intelligent "1+2+N" strategy. Specifically, 1 refers to the smart host, combined with 2 networks, plus N subsystems, to drive the transformation of a single scene to a whole-house scene, and further enhance the smart home experience. Huawei's ambitions in the smart home track come from many advantages such as strong brands, user scale, technology, and the smart home ecosystem it has built.
As of December 2021, Xiaomi has invested in a total of 390 enterprises, and Huami, Yunmi, No. 9 Company, and Stone Technology are the most representative ecological chain enterprises. However, among the ecological chain enterprises, including Yunmi, Huami, stone technology, etc., have increased their cultivation of their own brands to reduce their dependence on millet brands. Then, based on the ecological chain enterprise, Xiaomi builds an intelligent voice + AIoT platform ecology facing a test.
On the whole, the mutual achievements between ecological chain enterprises and millet are mutually beneficial and two injuries. Ecological chain enterprises with the help of millet to get rapid development, but to "de-millet", its own brand cultivation is more difficult, if there is no millet blessing, private brand competitiveness in the market obviously needs to be improved. For Xiaomi, its smart home strategy relies on a huge ecological chain to cover people's daily food, clothing, housing and smart hardware and home products. If the ecological chain enterprises increase the promotion of "de-milletization", it will directly impact the performance.
In the third quarter of 2021, Yunmi's revenue was 1.06 billion yuan, down 28.9% year-on-year, with a net loss of 29.3 million yuan, compared with a profit of 34.9 million yuan in the same period last year. Revenue declined, fell into a loss dilemma, and turned from profit to loss. Once upon a time, As a Xiaomi ecological chain enterprise, Yunmi Technology attracted much attention, and it also attracted the attention of investors in the capital market, and its market value also exceeded 1 billion US dollars, which is a veritable smart home unicorn enterprise. However, this year's long downturn, the current market value of $131 million, its stock price compared with the historical high of 18.99 yuan, has fallen 90%, the market value shrunk by 90%.
Yunmi revenue declined, from profit to loss, which was mainly due to the sharp decline in sales of Xiaomi brand sweeping robots, and the expansion of profit margins in other categories and the adjustment of product portfolios. In addition, Stone Technology and Huami Technology are also facing the dilemma of weak growth, and they also face the risk of xiaomi's opt-out. Among some of the ecological chain enterprises that have been listed, Xiaomi has chosen the opportunity to withdraw at a reasonable price.
During the period from March 16, 2021 to June 10, 2021, Xiaomi's Jinmi reduced its holdings in 1.3333 million shares of Stone Technology, with a reduction price in the range of 1000 yuan to 1344 yuan, cashing out 1.65 billion yuan. It is expected that from March 18, 2022 to September 16, 2022, no more than 1.336 million shares will be reduced, and the amount of the reduction will exceed 800 million yuan according to the price on the day of the announcement of the reduction. There are also companies that have significantly reduced their holdings in the intelligent electric balance car No. 9.
At last
After smartphones, the consumer technology market with smart homes, wearables and virtual reality (VR/AR) as the core has broad prospects. Despite the competitive situation of hundreds of companies in the mainland smart home market, the market continues to maintain strong growth. Overall, in the smart home on this track, all kinds of players combine their own advantages to promote people's smart family life to achieve, but also expected to harvest the smart home industry development dividend.
Jianyong Yang, a contributor to Forbes China, is committed to in-depth interpretation of cutting-edge technologies such as the Internet of Things, cloud services and artificial intelligence.