The outfit’s chief executive Lei Jun said on his official microblog account that Xiaomi sold a total of just over 61 million phones in 2014, up 227 percent from a year earlier.

The privately-held tech firm has risen to become the world's No.3 smartphone maker and is challenging Appleand Samsung and Huawei.

The post did not give a related profit figure, although a filing last month showed that the firm was grappling with razor thin margins as it rapidly expands.

Lei predicted that growth in China's smartphone market would ease in 2015 and that the firm would look to focus on innovating new products and pushing into more overseas markets.

Lei, who is chairman and chief executive, claims 77.8 percent ownership of the company he co-founded in 2010, while unnamed shareholders split the remainder, according to a recent filing.

Last week Xiaomi raised $1.1 billion in a round of funding that valued the firm at $45 billion, from investors including All-Stars Investment, DST Global, Hopu InvestmentManagement, and Yunfeng Capital, as well as Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC.

It looks like 2015 could be the year that Xiaomi causes the big names some serious headaches.