We based our report on the figures presented by Xiaomi so imagine our surprise when we read on other internet sites how Xiaomi results were worse than last year and the company was failing to meet its targets.

Reuters said for example "The firm said it sold 34.7 million handsets in January-June versus 35.0 million in July-December - the first sequential fall since the company began disclosing six-month figures in 2013. For 2015, it aims for minimum sales of 80 million smartphones."

Now we can see where Reuters went wrong here. Tried to make a statistic which was insignificant more important than it was.

Everyone in the IT industry knows you do not compare the second half of one year with the first year of another. This is because a company makes most of its sales in the second half.

Comparing like with like the company had a 30 per cent increase on last year when the company managed to sell 'only' 26 million units in the first half of the year. So contrary to what Reuters said Xiaomi has made a huge leap in sales. Normally the company sells double what it sold in the first half of the year in the second, last year it flogged about 61 million smartphones. Xiaomi should sell 70 million if it does nothing else.

However by putting a negative spin on positive results, it could take its news to an analyst who would claim that it was all due to a fall in smart phone sales in China. When it wasn't.

So why did experienced financial journalists make such a howler? It is easy to put it down to incompetence, but we have seen this before. In Apple's reality distortion field it claims to be doing well in China, even if evidence suggests otherwise. If a success story like Xiaomi is not doing well then it gets Apple a get out of jail free card with analyst when its own figures turn out to be rubbish.

Of course it might have to deal with the fact that by then Xiaomi will be coining it in during the second quarter. Xiaomi has said that they intend to move 80-100 million units by the end of this year and the terrified Tame Apple Press has consistently mocked it. Our guess is that Xiaomi will make its 80 million figure.