Xiaomi fined for exaggerating sales volume

The Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi has been fined in Taiwan of around 15,000 euros, because the manufacturer said in three cases that it had more devices available than there really were. In other batches, the numbers that Xiaomi gave turned out to be too low.

Because Xiaomi said it has more devices available to consumers than they actually had, the Taiwanese FTC believes that the manufacturer has misled consumers and therefore has to pay a relatively small fine. It involved batch sales of the Redmi, Xiaomi’s budget model, in December last year. In total, the manufacturer claimed to be able to sell 28,000 devices, but in reality it was 26,220 copies, more than 6 percent less than it claimed.

It is the first time that Xiaomi has been caught exaggerating the numbers it puts on sale; it is unclear whether the manufacturer has done so on other occasions. Xiaomi only sells its devices in this type of “batch sales”, selling thousands to hundreds of thousands at once through the site. Many of those copies most likely end up at middlemen, who sell them for a profit. That also explains why Xiaomi can sell all devices within often tens of seconds to a few minutes: it is most likely an important source of income for many traders.

Xiaomi is the world’s fifth largest smartphone maker, after Samsung, Apple, Huawei and Lenovo. It saw its deliveries almost quadruple last year and wants to continue that growth in the coming period. Xiaomi now also sells other products, such as a router, TV and a tablet, the Mi Pad. The producer recently presented its latest model, the Mi 4.