SINGAPORE - With smartphone giants Samsung and Apple slugging it out for centrestage this week, a lesser-known rival has quietly stolen the show, CNBC reported on Friday.

Xiaomi, China's low-cost smartphone maker announced on Thursday that it had set a Guinness World Record for selling the most mobile phones on a single online platform in a 24-hour period.

The comoany sold 2.11 million handsets in a 12-hour online sale held on Wednesday - dubbed the 'Mi Fan Festival' - outstripping the 1.3 million phones sold at least year's event

The Mi Fan Festival is an annual sales promotion event held around the company's birthday.

Last year, Xiaomi leapfrogged Lenovo and LG to become the world's third largest smartphone maker in terms of shipments behind Samsung and Apple, according to IDC. Xiaomi sold over 61 million smartphones in 2014, up from 18.7 million in 2013, and expects to sell 100 million handsets this year, CNBC reported.