Xiaomi overtakes Samsung in China

Baku. 6 January. REPORT.AZ/Xiaomi, the world's third largest smartphone maker (behind Samsung and Apple), announced on Sunday that it sold 61 million smartphones in 2014, raking in more than 74 billion yuan (12 billion USD) in sales, Report informs citing CNN Money.

Those aren't yet Apple numbers.Apple sold 118 million iPhones in the first nine months of 2014 alone -- it will provide details on the last quarter of 2014 later this month. But Xiaomi's come-out-of-nowhere feat was accomplished almost exclusively in China, without the benefit of selling its "Mi" phones to the rest of the world.

Late last year, Xiaomi expanded to India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, Thailand and Turkey, and it will be in additional countries later this year. The world's fastest-growing smartphone maker forecast that it will sell 100 million devices in 2015.

Last week, Xiaomi announced that it had raised $1.1 billion in funding from some of tech industry's most powerful players. That values the company at $45 billion -- bigger than LG, Motorola and Sony put together.