Xiaomi Sells Over 1 Million Smartphones in Just 24 Hours During Singles Day

Xiaomi, the up-and-coming Chinese manufacturer, has announced it sold 1.16 million Mi smartphones in just 24 hours, generating £160 million.

Having already given an update at the halfway point of Singles' Day, Xiaomi's head of global expansion, Hugo Barra, revealed that the speed of sales slowed significantly in the second 12 hours of the Chinese holiday, which is a version of Black Friday/Cyber Monday.

Having sold 720,000 smartphones in the opening 12 hours, Xiaomi added 440,000 Mi smartphones in the second half of the huge online sales day. Xiaomi said that the company's flagship Mi4 and budget RedMi smartphones were the phones which were selling in huge numbers.

While Xiaomi's figures are impressive, they are dwarfed by Alibaba, the e-commerce giant, which announced it had raked in over £5.65 billion in what has become the biggest single online shopping day anywhere in the world.

Xiaomi, which was the world's third biggest smartphone maker for the three months to the end of September, is looking to expand globally from its core market of China.

It has already launched in a few other Asian markets - notably India - but it is now in the process of securing extra funding to supercharge its international expansion.

Xiaomi has built its business by offering premium hardware at a budget price using a proprietary version of Google's Android through which is sells content such as app, music, film and books.

Xiaomi operates with very little marketing budget, preferring to use word-of-mouth and flash sales like the one seen during Singles' Day to boost sales.