Lei Jun gave a talk at a business summit. The Weibo hashtag page (use Chrome to translate).
Years ago he was inspired by the book Fire in the Valley (which I read way back then too, and recommend):
And he has a rather shocking ambition for Xiaomi.
He wants it to be a Fortune 500 company within the next two years:
Xiaomi just borrowed a billion dollars from a consortium of twenty-nine banks to fund international expansion.
We’re waiting to see what the “industry landscape” changing announcement next week will be.
But I’ll again say that this rumor of a cheap-ass tablet should never come true. Xiaomi made a bet on 4:3. Google went with 4:3 with the new Nexus 9. For Xiaomi to move away from 4:3 would display a lack of will.