Huawei sold 108 million smartphones in 2015, leaving Xiaomi in the dust

Chinese mobile phone giant Huawei disclosed on Wednesday that it shipped 108 million smartphones in 2015. That number is up 44 percent year-on-year, the company said, primarily due to strong sales in China and Europe.

It still has a long way to go before catching Apple.

Huawei has had a banner 2015 despite broader trends that saw global smartphone growth slowing over the course of the year. It still has a ways to go before catching Apple, which sold well over 200 million iPhones this year. But it has overtaken domestic competitor Xiaomi, which won the Chinese market in 2014 but apparently had such a disappointing 2015 that the company stopped sharing its sales numbers.

In its quest for even stronger numbers in 2016, Huawei has set its sights on a big target: the United States. Huawei’s telecom infrastructure products are banned in the US on security grounds, but its consumer smartphones are available and currently hold a negligible share of the American smartphone market. This year, Huawei will make its Mate 8 flagship phone available there for the first time , and it is clearly hoping that an increased focus on the US will help boost its sales there.