Xiaomi China’s market leader in 2014

SHANGHAI: Upstart Xiaomi Corp was the top smartphone company in China last year with a 12.5% market share, narrowly outpacing South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, market intelligence firm International Data Corporation (IDC) said on Tuesday.

Samsung was just behind with 12.1% market share based on shipments by vendor in 2014, slipping from 18.7% in 2013, IDC said in a statement.

Lenovo Group Ltd dropped to third spot with 11.2%. Huawei Technologies Co and and Coolpad Group Ltd rounded out the top five.

Xiaomi, founded in 2010, has excelled in China’s cut-throat smartphone market by delivering high-performance products at cheap prices — and more than doubling its market share from just 5.3% in 2013, according to IDC.

“Xiaomi’s focus on selling low-cost phones with decent specifications, as well as the hype that it created through its flash sales, helped it to obtain the top position,” IDC said.

But critics say the firm has simply copied the look of Apple Inc’s iPhones.

Xiaomi claims sales of more than 61 million smartphones last year, up 227% from 2013.

Xiaomi could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.

US technology giant Apple did not even place in the top five for market share in China for all of 2014, according to IDC.

However, it took second with a 12.3% share in the fourth quarter of last year — behind Xiaomi’s 13.7% — helped by the launch of its large-screen iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.

“Apple had a jump to the second position in the fourth quarter as its iPhone 6 and 6 Plus models were only launched in China in the last quarter of the year,” IDC said.

Smartphone shipments for China by all vendors reached 420.7 million units in 2014, IDC figures showed.