Xiaomi Chief Executive Lei Jun has set the manufacturer's 2017 sales target at $14.47 billion as it overhauls its business.

The company is looking to set up 200 Mi Home stores and over 1,000 stores overall in the next three years. It has opened 54 Mi Home stores to date.

Xiaomi will also be looking to develop artificial intelligence and internet finance as part of its 2017 business strategy. Lei Jun claimed that it has over 300 people already working on the finance side of the business.

A difficult year

Rival manufacturers Huawei, Oppo and Vivo caused Xiaomi to have a difficult 2016 as it dropped out of China's top five smartphone vendors in 2016, having previously placed at second in 2015.

The company remains optimistic for the future, however. Lei Jun described 2016 as a "make-up year" and claimed that "the worst is over" for the firm.

While Xiaomi may have had difficulty in China in 2016, it saw success in India and surpassed $1 billion in revenue for the region after just two years of being in the market.

[Source: Reuters]