YotaPhone 3 is unprofitable: a Chinese shareholder company has lost millions of US dollars
YotaPhone 3 brings its owners only losses, their volume has already exceeded $ 15 million. According to experts, one can hardly hope for a profit. At the moment, revenues from sales of the smartphone is $ 5 million, as reported by Kommersant. Experts believe that the smartphone is not too attractive for buyers, because it is inferior to its Chinese "relatives" in price and quality.
The exclusive rights to the YotaPhone 3 brand and phone sales in China are owned by China Baoli. This year, for the first time, she presented to the public a report on the financial results of sales of a two-screen phone.
Manufacturers do not lose optimism, believing that the smartphone just needs time to conquer the consumer market in China. You can purchase the gadget through the online channel JD.com and the offline distributor Aisidi. At these sites, the phone is sold with the name Yota 3. OS - Android, models with 64 GB and 128 GB of memory are available for the price of $ 300 $ 556, respectively. The phone went on sale in October last year.
Speaking at the presentation of the smartphone in August last year (it was held at the Russian embassy in China), the CEO of China Baoli said that in the very first year of sales it is planned to ship about 1 million devices. The reality was much more severe. The China Baoli report states that in the first five months since the start of sales, only 17.3 thousand phones were sold.
An anonymous source told the press that sales of the new device are going very slowly. According to another source, the problem must be raised at a meeting of shareholders and solved in the shortest possible time. Nevertheless, at Rostec we are sure that the situation may change at the end of the year, since the volume of orders is generally quite good, and the cooperation between Yota Devices and China Baoli is quite successful. “On the whole, the volume of orders confirms that the synergies of Yota Devices and China Baoli partnership are being successfully implemented and the foundation has been laid for the further development of Russian technologies and the release of new products in highly competitive international markets,” said Rostec’s press service.
Senior analyst at Freedom Finance Vadim Merkulov believes that the issue of profit is no longer relevant. “According to our estimates, the company sold a little more than 20 thousand devices. To reach the break-even point, 97 thousand will have to be sold. Given the market structure and the technical gap between the flagships, it is impossible to make a profit, ”he said.
One of the problems Yota 3 - a huge competition in the market of mobile devices in China. In this country it is extremely difficult to create a new niche in the smartphone market. To date, the sales leader in the lower price segment is still Xiaomi. By the way, one of the phone models of this company, Mi 8SE, costs the same as the YotaPhone 3, but it is better than it in almost all technical indicators.