Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi has shipped 26.1 million smartphones during the initial six months of 2014, reporting a quadruple rise from 7 million devices sold during the same period last year.
Further, the 26.1 million shipment mark was also 30% more than its Taiwanese rival, HTC, shipped during the whole of 2013.
The rise in sales boosted Xiami’s revenue by 150% to $5.14bn, outselling Samsung in China for the second time in April, with its RedMI device being the top selling device in the country.
New research from Kantar revealed that nearly a quarter of new users had previously owned a Samsung device.
Xiaomi, which aims to ship 60 million handsets this year and 100 million by 2015, is rapidly becoming one of the key players in China’s highly competitive smartphone market.
The company also recruited senior Google executive Hugo Barra last September to operate its international sales, which is in line with its expansion plans into more than a dozen rapidly growing markets, including Malaysia, Indonesia, India Thailand, Russia, Turkey, Brazil and Mexico.
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Valued at $10bn in a fundraising event conducted in August 2013, the privately held Xiaomi sells RedMI and Mi3 devices, which were among the world’s top 10 bestselling smartphones in April 2014.
