Chinese smartphone developer company Xiaomi has received a favorable appraisal: the corporation is worth approximately $45 billion, the New York Times reports.
Xiaomi founder Lei Jun announced the appraisal on his verified Weibo account. Weibo is a social media messaging service based in China that is similar to Twitter.
The announcement has revealed that the quickly-growing company is now valued higher than Nokia, Sony and is approximating Yahoo's current value, the newspaper also reports.
The company, technically a start-up, is now more valuable than ridesharing organization Uber, which is appraised at just over $40 billion.
Xiaomi is a privately owned Chinese electronics company that was founded in 2010 and is now the world's third-largest smartphone distributor. In recent years, Xiaomi developers have released products that resemble those released by Apple, such as tablets and application-based gadgets.
The company's developers, however, have been criticized by many for allegedly copying Apple's concept designs, specs and overall features.
"If you have two similarly skilled designers, it makes sense that they would reach the same conclusion," Xiaomi's global vice president Hugo Barra told The Verge during an interview earlier this year.
"It doesn't matter if somebody else has reached the same conclusion. We're not copying Apple's products. End of story."
Xiaomi is soon expected to rollout plans for phone development in 2015.
