Chinese budget smartphone maker Xiaomi plans to sell 40m handsets in 2014, more than double the number it sold in 2013, its chairman said on Thursday, reinforcing the company's ambitions to outsell more expensive offerings from Apple and Samsung Electronics.
Shipping that many handsets would put Xiaomi into the world's top 10 smartphone makers for the first time.
Lei Jun, who is also co-founder of the tech firm, made the projection on Sina Weibo, China's most widely used microblogging site, and it was reposted on Xiaomi's website.
"We again promise, we will at least supply 40m phones in 2014!" he wrote. China is the world's biggest market for smartphones.
Xiaomi's business model – offering "flash sales" of its mobile phones which generate excitement among would-be buyers, and have seen thousands sold in seconds – has led to its rapid rise. In August it tempted Hugo Barra to leave his position as head of the Android team at Google to come and work for the company as its head of global business.
Barra later explained that Xiaomi is happy to sell phones essentially at cost, and then to make money from selling services on them, and noted that countries such as India, Russia and Indonesia were "sweet spots" for its business. Xiaomi is expected to start selling its phones in Singapore later this year.
Lei said privately that Xiaomi had sold 18.7m smartphones in 2013 – a 160% increase from 2012 – and that sales revenues, including taxes, rose 150% to 31.6bn yuan (£3.16bn).
Xiaomi's sales growth far exceeds projections for the global smartphone market, which is expected to expand at an annual rate of 18% a year until 2016, according to research firm Canalys. Overall growth in China is far greater than the world market, because there are more people there who don't yet have a smartphone, and people tend to replace cheap phones much more quickly – on average every 13 months, according to data collected by sites there.
Xiaomi's cheap yet sleek phones are popular in China, where Samsung Electronics remains the market leader. Xiaomi's handsets sell for between £79 and £248, much lower than the £447 price tag for the least expensive iPhone 5C model or a Samsung Galaxy Note II, which can retail for £345.
The company even managed to briefly rank sixth by market share in the second quarter of 2013, one notch above Apple. But the launch of the iPhone 5S and 5C in the third quarter propelled Apple to third place there, behind Samsung and Lenovo.
Apple is poised to boost its sales in China after it signed a deal last month with China Mobile, the world's largest mobile carrier by subscriber numbers. The deal could generate $3bn in revenue in 2014 for the U.S. firm.
