Late on December 16th, Lei Jun, the turning 45-years old founder of Xiaomi, said he received the best birthday gift - Indian Delhi high court made its decision, which allows Xiaomi sell mobile phone again in India.
"Patent war is the adult ceremony for Xiaomi", Lei Jun talked about the patent problems on internationalization of Xiaomi in an interview on December 17th. But the cancel of ban on Xiaomi in India was just the beginning of patent war. On this issue, Lei Jun said that it might last 5 to 10 years. While standing on the "adult ceremony" of Xiaomi, there is more to deal with besides the patent problems, because outsiders are doubtful about the profits behind its heavy investments.
But Lei Jun was not worried about this. He told the reporters that Xiaomi set a goal which wouldn’t pursue short-term profits in the next few years, "a draw would be nice", and will continue to "adhere to the original road". He thought that Xiaomi’s strategies were "to be restrained, focused and promote steadily", the user loyalty and words of mouth were most important and Xiaomi was very competitive in this.
In addition, he said that Xiaomi had no profit target, and wouldn’t consider IPO in the next five years.
He told the reporters that Xiaomi is expected to apply for 1300 invention patents in 2015, of which 300 are international ones. "Xiaomi is relatively calm about the patent problem, but the similar patent disputes will continue for 5-10 years." As Lei Jun sees it, Xiaomi has greater challenges than patent issues- privacy of the users. In Taiwan, Hongkong, Singapore and other places, privacy issues almost brought a crisis to Xiaomi.