Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi sold 35 million phones this year - but it's still nowhere close to beating Apple

Doubts have been cast on technology startup Xiaomi's ability to wrestle control of the Western smartphone market from Apple after it revealed it only sold 34.7 million smartphones in the first half of 2015.

Xiaomi revealed the smartphone figure in a tweet, claiming it marks a 33% year-on-year sales increase.

While the growth sounds impressive, it has raised concerns about the viability of Xiaomi's expansion plans for a number of reasons.

• First, the sales are actually behind Xiaomi's own forecasts. Xiaomi's founder and chief executive Lei Jun, predicted the firm would shift 100 million smartphones in 2015 on Weibo, a popular social media platform in China, earlier this year. 
• Second, the figure still puts Xiaomi well behind its main rival Apple, which sold 61.2 million iPhones in the first three months of the year - the firm is yet to reveal sales figures for the next quarter.
• Third, the fact is Xiaomi hasn't disclosed its revenue and profit, making judging the true performance of its smartphone business difficult.
• Either way, Xiaomi has stiff competition to beat as Apple recorded $58 billion in revenue and $13.6 billion in net profit between January and March.

For those that don't know, over the last five years Xiaomi has become an increasingly big player in the Chinese smartphone market.

In December 2014 the Wall Street Journal reported Xiaomi had become "the world's most valuable tech startup," listing it as being worth at least $46 billion.

Analyst house IDC later reported Xiaomi managed to beat Samsung and Apple to become China's biggest smartphone seller in February.

Since then Xiaomi used its success to expand into new markets where before 2015 their handsets were not available. To date, these have included expansions into India, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines and more recently Brazil, where Xiaomi launched its Redmi 2 smartphone mere days ago.

Despite its impressive growth, analysts have listed its handsets' lack of availability in key "tier one" markets, such as the US and Europe, as an ongoing mitigating factor decreasing its sales. 

Gartner research director Annette Zimmermann told Business Insider that the lack of availability meant 95% of Xiaomi phone sales in 2015 remained in China.

Hugo Barra, Xiaomi vice president of international, announced the firm doesn't plan to target either the US or European markes for "a few years" in January, during an interview with the BBC, indicating Apple will retain its global lead for the foresable future.