Xiaomi, often dubbed the ‘Apple of China’, has overtaken Samsung in terms of smartphone units sold for the first time in the country, according to new research.
Research from Canalys indicates that Xiaomi recorded a 14% market share in China on top of 240 percent year-on-year growth. This sees the mobile maker overtake Samsung in terms of volume of smartphones making this the first time Samsung has actually fallen into second place.
Shanghai-based Canalys research analyst Jingwen Wang sung Xiaomi’s success in a statement saying that it’s a “phenomenal achievement” for Xiaomi, though it was in-part helped by a “temporarily under-strength Samsung performance” during the quarter.
Xiaomi shipped just under 15 million units in the three months ended June, while Samsung’s 13.2 million unit shipments just beat China’s Lenovo Group by around 200,000 units to take second place, said Canalys.
The three-year old Xiaomi also nabbed fifth place by global market share for smartphone makers in the second quarter, research firm Strategy Analytics showed last week.
But Canalys’s data also shows that Xiaomi is still almost entirely dependent on its home market in China. Only about 100,000 smartphone units were shipped outside of China.
The company is already setting up shop elsewhere in Asia in Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines. In India, where Xiaomi launched the Mi 3 model last month, the company saw more than 100,000 people pre-register for a supply of 10,000 units.
Xiaomi is also looking to expand into other markets, including Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia and Thailand with the help of Hugo Barra, the former vice president of the Android mobile operating system for Google who is now Xiaomi’s international vice president.
Watch this video covering Xiaomi’s latest smartphone launch here:
