Two people pass an advertisement board of Xiaomi Smartphone in Yichang, Hubei province on April 23, 2013. [Photo/Asianewsphoto]

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp said it sold 18.7 million smartphones in 2013, up 160 percent year-on-year, and that it officially expanded to Singapore on Jan 1, in a bid to enter the global market.

Lei Jun, founder and chief executive officer of Xiaomi, said in an internal e-mail that the company had sales of 31.6 billion yuan ($5.18 billion) last year, an increase of 150 percent over the previous year. Lei said previously that he expects the company's revenue to hit 100 billion yuan by 2015.

"Xiaomi will see shipments of more than 40 million handsets in 2014," Lei wrote in the e-mail.

The Beijing-based company, which started as a smartphone manufacturer, now also makes televisions, set-top boxes and mobile phone peripherals.

Last year, Xiaomi, which has more than 4,000 employees, hired Google Inc's former vice-president Hugo Barra.

Lei also said in the e-mail that the company set up an office in Singapore on Jan 1, in an attempt to sell smartphones outside mainland China.

Liu Wei, Xiaomi's spokesman, told China Daily that Xiaomi selected Singapore as a regional hub to expand to Southeast Asian markets.

"We don't have any specific targets for those markets yet," Liu added.

The rapid rise of Chinese smartphone vendors such as Xiaomi and Huawei Technologies Co Ltd has hampered Apple Inc's progress in China, though the US company signed a deal with China Mobile Ltd last month and is preparing to offer iPhone devices running on China Mobile's network starting on Jan 17.