This company just sold 2 million phones in half-a-day

By Benjamin SnyderManaging Editor
Benjamin SnyderManaging Editor

Benjamin Snyder is Fortune's managing editor, leading operations for the newsroom.

Prior to rejoining Fortune, he was a managing editor at Business Insider and has worked as an editor for Bloomberg, LinkedIn and CNBC, covering leadership stories, sports business, careers and business news. He started his career as a breaking news reporter at Fortune in 2014.

UNICORN 2015 — Lei Jun Xiaomi
Photograph by ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images

Chinese phone maker Xiaomi sold more than two million phones in 12 hours during its “Mi Fan Festival” celebrating the company’s fifth anniversary, according to Re/code. The half-day event generated approximately $335 million in revenue for the company.

Xiaomi has a loyal fan base in China and other parts of the world, and events like the Mi Fan Festival help the company cultivate that community.

Xiaomi sold 61 million smartphones in 2014, pulling in revenue of $11.98 billion and making it the world’s third-biggest smartphone maker by units shipped, according to IDC. The company has increasingly been looking outside China’s borders to fuel its growth, recently starting sales in Malaysia, India and Indonesia, Re/code notes.