Xiaomi Denies Laying off 90% of Employees over the Age of 35 at Wuhan Headquarters

On May 14th, reports surfaced that Xiaomi’s Wuhan headquarters had laid off 90% of employees over the age of 35. However, Wang Hua, General Manager of Xiaomi‘s Public Relations Department denied these reports.

Xiaomi‘s Wuhan headquarters has several job openings available on the recruitment software, including positions for visual algorithm engineers, web front-end engineers, and operator channel managers.

Xiaomi, a leading global smartphone manufacturer, has headquarters in Beijing and Wuhan. The Wuhan location was inaugurated on June 29, 2017 and generated a production value of 10.5 billion yuan ($1.5 billion) in 2018.

Liu Guojun, the General Manager of Xiaomi‘s Wuhan headquarters, announced that the new facility will house employees from Xiaomi, Kingsoft and Shunwei Capital who are involved in core businesses such as AIoT, big data, cloud services, e-commerce, new retail, office software, overseas research and development and financial investment. The Chairman of Xiaomi, Lei Jun, has expressed his desire to transform Wuhan into a super large R&D headquarters for Xiaomi and a technology hub for artificial intelligence in the next decade. He aims to accommodate 10,000 employees at the headquarters in the future.

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Xiaomi‘s latest financial report reveals that in 2022, the company’s total revenue was 280 billion yuan, which is a year-on-year decrease of 14.7%. Additionally, the adjusted net profit for the same period was 8.5 billion yuan, representing a year-on-year decline of 61.4%. The decline in Xiaomi‘s performance can be attributed to various factors such as the turbulent macro environment and a slump in the smartphone industry during that year.

During a conference call held in March, William Lu, Partner and President of Xiaomi, candidly stated that global smartphone shipments had dropped by 11.7% YoY in 2022, being their lowest point since 2014. Although it is expected that there will be some recovery within the consumer electronics market by 2023, risks and challenges still exist and full recovery may take some time.

According to the financial report, as of December 31, 2022, Xiaomi had a total of 32,543 employees. This represents a decrease of 2,798 employees compared to the end of the third quarter of 2021. Notably, there was a reduction of 2,642 employees specifically within China.