NEW DELHI -- There's no denying that Xiaomi's new Mi 4i looks familiar, with its cute and colorful rounded plastic frame. But while the Chinese smartphone maker is likely to take flak for its Apple-ish emulations, Hugo Barra, the company's global vice president, says he had this phone in his head when he joined up with the company two years ago, after leaving Google.
"I came on board thinking that Xiaomi needed a flagship phone for emerging markets," said Barra here at the launch of the Mi 4i. "I've spent plenty of time in these markets and thinking a lot about this stuff in my previous job. I do think that price really matters and everyone should have a flagship."
Through the 18-month journey of the Mi 4i's production process, Barra knew he wanted to make a phone specifically for India, and getting the project approved was much easier than expected.
As Barra explains it, the Mi 4i built upon some of the concepts from Google's Android One, which was launched last year. The former Android spokesperson may have had an inkling of some aspects of the Android One plan, but Xiaomi has gone with a slightly more expensive and premium phone instead.
"It wasn't hard [to convince Xiaomi's co-founders Lei Jun and Bin Lin]. We just spent a lot of time discussing what components we would use. They were very supportive from the beginning," Barra said.
Given that the company barely sold phones in India at that time, the decision to create a phone specifically for that market speaks of Xiaomi's far-reaching global ambitions.
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