Xiaomi, the Chinese smartphone maker valued at $10 billion last year, saw smartphone shipments for the first half of 2014 surge to nearly four times higher than in the same period last year. The Beijing-based Xiaomi shipped 26.1 million handsets in the first six months of the year, it said in a press release on Wednesday. It was the sixth biggest smartphone vendor in the world in the first quarter, according to Canalys.