Hugo Barra is leaving his position as head of international at Xiaomi after 3.5 years – TechCrunch (Jan 23, 2017)

I attended Xiaomi’s press conference at CES earlier this month, and once again the company disappointed by not bringing more of its big products to the US. Although Hugo Barra has been in charge of Xiaomi’s international expansion for three and a half years, it has mostly expanded into other markets like India rather than major mature markets like the US or European countries. Ostensibly, Barra’s reasons for departing now are personal – he misses friends and family in the US, and wants to return there. But I wonder if he’s also been frustrated by Xiaomi’s lack of progress in pushing into some of those big markets. It’s impossible to know who’s been making the final decision on some of those moves – whether Barra or CEO Lei Jun – but not making it into the most high profile markets outside of China as head of international must feel like something of a failure. As with other recent high profile executive moves, it’s tempting to see this as a sign of broader troubles at Xiaomi, and things do seem to have been going poorly there recently, but this is so far something of an isolated case.

via Hugo Barra is leaving his position as head of international at Xiaomi after 3.5 years | TechCrunch (more coverage at Techmeme)

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• Xiaomi

• China
• Executives

• Chinese Expansion

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