If you have not heard about a Xiaomi phone, then you would probably be surprised that this Chinese smartphone company has already sold over 18 million handsets during the past year. 

You may have heard several news about the company selling hundreds of thousands of smartphones in less than 10 minutes. But from the looks of it, the manufacturer is doing much better than that in terms of sales.

In a report by GSM Arena, Xiaomi has sold 18.7 million smartphones last year, which accounts for CNY 31.6 billion or about $5.2 billion. It is able to go beyond its target for 2013 which is 15 million units sold. 

In 2012, the Chinese company managed to sell 3.2 million handsets, which means 2013 saw sales growth by more than 150 percent. 

What's even more astounding is that the manufacturer only released four smartphones throughout 2013, which means it is really trying to imitate Apple's strategy in launching quality devices, but at affordable rates. 

Now that his company has gone beyond the target for this year, Xiaomi's CEO Lei Jun predicts a much more ambitious but nevertheless possible 40 million units sold. 

Let's see if the company, with the help of former Google Android executive Hugo Barra, can really take it to the next level this year.