Xiaomi Ships Over 10 Million Smartphones in October

Surpassing its own record, Xiaomi has announced that it has shipped more than 10 million smartphone units worldwide in October. CEO Lei Jun announced the new achievement through a social media post. The Beijing-based company had originally hit the benchmark of 10 million smartphone shipments in September.

Jun posted the shipments record on Monday evening through Chinese microblogging site Weibo. The post accompanied a teaser image suggesting the forthcoming sale of the Mi 5X in China.

Xiaomi VP and Xiaomi India MD Manu Kumar Jain, in a separate tweet, highlighted that the company shipped over 10 million units for two consecutive months. "@Xiaomi shipped 10M+ units globally in the month of October [sic]," Jain tweeted.

The new record emerges days after Jain revealed that Xiaomi shipped over four million smartphones in India within a month - during the Diwali festive season. The company even sold over a million devices through its native Mi.com site and was touted to become the leading mobile brand on e-commerce sites Amazon and Flipkart.

Since its debut in India back in July 2014, Xiaomi has been competing against its home-grown competitors like OnePlus, Oppo, and Vivo as well as matured players such as Apple, Samsung, and Sony. The company is already considered among the top five smartphone vendors globally and most recently became a Google partner for launching the next phase of Android One.

The growing demand for affordable smartphones is widely helping Xiaomi expand its market presence. Earlier this month, the company reportedly stated that it is set to ship 90 million smartphone units by the end of 2017, overtaking all its existing records. The Mi brand owner is also set to take on Huawei to become the market leader in China in 2020.

According to a recent report by Counterpoint Research, Xiaomi's market share in India reached 22 percent in the third quarter this year, up from six percent reported in the same quarter last year. A Canalys report echoed the growth story by underlining that the Chinese company shipped 9.2 million smartphones in the Indian market in the third quarter. That mark enabled the company to become the second largest smartphone vendor in the country after Samsung.

In addition to its prominence in China and India, Xiaomi is reaching worldwide markets with inexpensive offerings. The company started testing its handsets on US carriers back in November 2016, and the Redmi Note 5A Prime was spotted on the US FCC site last month.

Earlier this week, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella visited Xiaomi's headquarters and met with CEO Jun and other executives. Jun revealed the meeting and mentioned a "very close cooperation" with the Redmond giant over phones, laptops, and cloud services. This hints at some large-scale developments by the company.