Xiaomi has posted strong smartphone shipment growth over the last year and has now become the third largest smartphone vendor in the year, according to Strategy Analytics.

The rising China-based OEM shipped 18 million smartphones during the third quarter, good enough to give it nearly six percent of the global smartphone market share and put it ahead of LG, Huawei and Lenovo. Xiaomi’s performance marked a big improvement over the year-ago quarter when the company shipped 5.2 million smartphones and captured 2.1 percent global share.

“Xiaomi’s Android smartphone models are wildly popular in the Chinese market and it shifts millions of them every quarter through its extensive online and operator channels. Xiaomi’s next step is to target the international market in Asia and Europe, where it may face stronger headwinds of low brand awareness and technology-patent challenges next year,” Neil Mawston, Executive Director at Strategy Analytics, said in a statement.

In all, global smartphone shipments rose 27 percent annually to a record 320.4 million for the quarter.

The top two spots still belong to Samsung and Apple respectively but both companies gave up share during the third quarter. Apple nabbed 12.3 percent, compared to 13.4 percent in the year-ago quarter. But Samsung’s share plummeted, with the Korean OEM falling from 35 percent share a year ago to 24.7 percent during this quarter. Apple managed to increase its shipments to 39.3 million from 33.8 million a year ago. Samsung’s shipments fell to 79.2 million from 88.4 million a year ago.

LG shipped a record 16.8 million smartphones during the third quarter and secured 5.2 percent global share, up from 4.7 percent a year ago.