Xiaomi valued at $45b in new round of funding

Xiaomi Corp raised $1.1 billion in a new round of funding that now values China's largest smartphone vendor at $45 billion.

Investors in the financing include All-Stars Investment, Yuri Milner's DST, Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC, Hopu Investment and Yunfeng Capital, a private equity firm co-founded by Jack Ma Yun, according to a statement posted on Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun's verified weibo microblog.

Xiaomi is expanding its smart-home drive, as the company unveiled its partnership with domestic appliance maker Midea earlier this month.

With its new air purifier hitting the market, the smartphone vendor uses a combination of high-end features and low prices to lure customers, and is now expanding into content and services.

Xiaomi became the world's third largest vendor behind Samsung and Apple in the third quarter, with 5.6 percent market share, reported Bloomberg citing data compiled by Strategy Analytics. In China, Xiaomi had 15 percent market share in the third quarter.

Xiaomi targets to sell 100 million phones next year, said Lei Jun in a conference earlier.

Xiaomi founder and Chief Executive Officer Lei Jun is expanding overseas and unveiling new products including an air purifier to build on growth in China, where Xiaomi overtook Samsung Electronics Co in smartphone sales. The company used a combination of high-end features and low prices to lure customers from Samsung and Apple Inc, and now is expanding into content and services.

In the third quarter, Xiaomi was the world's third-largest vendor behind Samsung and Apple Inc. Lei plans to sell 100 million phones next year.

Esther Woo, chief operating officer for All-Stars Investment, declined to comment. Leonid Solovyev, a spokesman for DST, could not immediately be reached for comment. GIC declined to comment in a text message.

Xiaomi's revenue is set to more than double this year to exceed $12 billion, according to estimates from Neil Shah, Mumbai-based research director for devices at Counterpoint Research.

At $45 billion, Xiaomi would be valued at 3.75 times sales of Shah's estimate for this year. That is higher than any publicly traded personal-computer or mobile-phone maker, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Apple trades at 3.73 times sales.

Xiaomi does not make its own devices and relies on contract manufacturers, including FIH Mobile Ltd and Inventec Corp, to build them. The company also sells to consumers from its website to keep costs down.

Xiaomi more than tripled global smartphone shipments to 17.3 million units in the third quarter, from 5.6 million a year earlier, International Data Corp reported on Oct 29. Its market share more than doubled to 5.3 percent from 2.1 percent.

The $1 billion fundraising was reported earlier by the Wall Street Journal.

Analysys International, a Chinese research company, said Xiaomi is set to overtake Samsung Electronics Co in China by the end of 2014. The company is to unveil its next-generation flagship device in January.