Hugo Barra: “Xiaomi could sell 10 billion smartphones and not make a profit”

Xiaomi’s plummeting smartphone sales are of little concern to the company’s bottom line because, according to Xiaomi global vp Hugo Barra: “We could sell 10 billion smartphones and we wouldn’t make a single dime in profits. Basically we’re giving them to you without making any money… we care about the recurring revenue streams over many years”.

There’s not many smartphone makers that couldn’t care less about declining smartphone sales, but Xiaomi makes its money from connected home devices and its software ecosystem. Smartphone sales are, of course, important to the company, but they are not a financial imperative as with most companies.

Despite recent poor performance in the smartphone division, Xiaomi’s vp Liu De said in April that the company expected sales of smart home devices to double to 10 billion yuan (~$1.5 billion) this year.

With multiple new phones rumored to launch in the very near future, including a possible device targeted at the U.S. market to be announced at CES 2017, Xiaomi’s phone sales may well recover from their current slump. As we reported recently though, Xiaomi’s foray into India has produced a lot of fans, but alienated a lot of folks at the same time.

Would you buy a U.S. Xiaomi phone? What about other Xiaomi products?