As you probably already know, Xiaomi has held their press conference yesterday as part of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona. This China-based company grew immensely over the last couple of years, and has managed to achieve a lot in 6 years since it was founded. Xiaomi is the number one Chinese smartphone manufacturer as far as shipping within the country goes in 2015, they’ve actually managed to sell around 70 million smartphones last year. That being said, the company has introduced their Mi 5 flagship in Barcelona yesterday, which we’ve talked about at length yesterday. Well, we do have some new info to share with you now, read on.
Former Google employee, Hugo Barra, has been working for Xiaomi for quite some time now, and he is actually taking care of the company’s international affairs. He was also the man who introduced Mi 5 yesterday, while he has also been interviewed by The Verge after the announcement. Hugo Barra answered a series of questions during the interview, and even though he said it is far too early do discuss additional markets for Xiaomi (presumably the US and Europe), he did say that they’re keeping their eyes open for new opportunities. It seems like we’ll wait a bit more before we see Xiaomi arrive in Europe or the US, but who knows. Either way, they will remain primarily focused on China, Southeast Asia, India plus some other countries, at least for now
In addition to that, the Mr. Barra has also talked about the Xiaomi Mi 5, of course. He seemed very proud of the Mi 5’s design, and said that the company developed this design based on the Mi Note and Mi Note Pro, two identically looking devices which were announced in January last year. The company has pioneered the 3D glass back design with those two devices, and you can find that same design in the Mi 5, though it is improved this time around, of course. It seems like Xiaomi is trying to step away from being called an Apple copycat, and develop brand recognition to the best of their ability. Mr. Barra basically said that during the interview, he seems to want consumers to look at one of Xiaomi’s devices and instantly know who made it. You can check out the full interview down below if you’re interested.