Lei Jun, chairman and co-founder of budget smartphone maker Xiaomi, reckons the privately-held firm will sell 40 million handsets in 2014, more than double the amount last year.

Lei made his bullish projection on Sina Weibo, a micro-blogging site, and was quoted by Reuters.

The chairman said Xiaomi sold 18.7 million smartphones in 2013, a 160 per cent increase from 2012.

Handset sales in 2013 more than doubled to CNY31.6 billion ($5.2 billion) compared with the previous year

Xiaomi is enjoying strong growth momentum in its home market.

The company reported that the first 100,000 batch of its flagship Mi3 smartphones were sold out in under 90 seconds when they became available in October.

The Mi3, unsubsidised, retails for CNY1,999 (around $330).

Reuters reports that Xiaomi’s cheaper handsets sell for between $130 and $410, drastically undercutting the $740 price tag for the least expensive iPhone 5C model.

The Samsung Galaxy Note II can retail for $570.

Outside China, Xiaomi sells devices in Hong Kong and Taiwan. And according to a report from the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Singapore looks the next stop for the Beijing-based firm.

The newspaper reported that Hugo Barra, a former Google executive who joined Xiaomi in October, blogged Xiaomi was coming to Singapore and that more details would be announced soon.

According to numbers from research firm Canalys, cited by WSJ, Xiaomi has rapidly grown its market share. In the third quarter last year, Xiaomi ranked sixth in China, just after Apple.

China’s budget smartphone market, given its potential size, looks set to intensify.

In December, Huawei unveiled two new smartphone models as part of its “Honor” series targeting the budget market in China.