Xiaomi Is Eating Samsung's Lunch In China

Xiaomi had an incredible year.

The Chinese smartphone maker more than tripled its sales in the last year, outstripping Samsung, Apple, and everybody else.

Analysts at Gartner said Xiaomi got a huge boost from sales in China, where it's now the number one smartphone company.

That's bad news for Samsung, because China is the company's biggest market.

"Samsung's smartphone sales declined 28.6 percent in China, the biggest market for Samsung," said Gartner.

Samsung is still the number one smartphone maker, by far. It sold 73 million last quarter, compared with just less than 16 million for Xiaomi.

But if Xiaomi can hold onto its lead in China, it could one day knock Samsung down and become the number one smartphone company in the world.

Two of the other top five smartphone makers during the quarter, Huawei and Lenovo, are also Chinese. Every company in the top five grew except Samsung.