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May.4 (NBD) -- China's smartphone maker Xiaomi filed for Hong Kong IPO on Thursday, being the first to take advantage of the new rule that allows companies with dual-class share structure to get listed in Hong Kong market..

According to its prospectus, the company posted a revenue of 66.8 billion yuan (10.5 billion U.S. dollars), 68.4 billion yuan (10.8 billion U.S. dollars) and 114.6 billion yuan (18.0 billion U.S. dollars) in 2015, 2016 and 2017 respectively.

Being Xiaomi's core business, smartphone businesses accounted for 80.4 percent, 71.3 percent and 70.3 percent of the company’s total revenue in the past three years.

It is noted that Xiaomi missed its sales target in 2016 as smartphone sales dropped by 9.2 percent compared with the previous year and the shipment declined to 41.5 million units. However, it managed to turned around in 2017, with smartphone shipment ranking fourth in the market.

The successful turnaround is largely due to growth of the overseas market, especially India. Shipment of Xiaomi smart phones in this region started to outnumber Samsung's in the fourth quarter of 2017.

Fang Ge, assistant analyst at E-Commerce Research Center, told NBD that smartphone sales of Xioami in the domestic market did not change too much last year. The company narrowly kept its sales same as before even after the exit of Leshi Smartphone and sliding of Meizu. As the smartphone market in China continues to saturate, Xiaomi eyes Southeast Asia and Europe for expansion.

Affordable smart phones are the effective weapon for Xiaomi to grab a sound market share overseas. The company said in its prospectus that Redmi Note 5Pro will be priced a lot lower than similar products in India.

According to statistics released by Counterpoint Research, average profit of each iPhone is 151 U.S. dollars in the third quarter of 2017, while that of Xiaomi smartphone is 13 yuan (2.04 U.S. dollars), which is way lower than OPPO’s 91 yuan (14.3 U.S. dollars) and Huawei’s 98 yuan (15.4 U.S. dollars).

Sun Yanbiao, head of Mobile NO.1 Research Institute, told NBD in an interview that the best seller Redmi- series are lower-end products, and it would take some time for Xiaomi to gain a stronger presence in the high-end domain.

Email: tanyuhan@nbd.com.cn