Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Xiaomi’s Hugo Barra talks about the new Mi 5 flagship”.
Hey guys and leverage here at Mobile World Congress 2016 in Barcelona. I am supposed to be talking to Hugo Barra from Xiaomi, but he is yeah, hey, lad, hi! Sorry, I’m running a little bit behind everyone, loading for me! 5. So you know it’s been a busy day. This is uh. This is the ninebot meaning it’s actually one of our products. It’S right now only available in China, but I figured I would bring one along with me.
Helps me get around. You don’t call the hover buddy. This is not a hoverboard to be clear. This is an eyeball good, but that’s not what we’re here to talk about. We had talked about the me five, but also it’s it’s a menses occasion for you guys, because you’re at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and you’re, primarily Chinese company.
So first I wanted to let you guys introduce yourselves like who is yummy tell the world about Soze sure, first of all, thanks for coming here and for having us so show me it’s an interesting company. That’S a combination of hardware software services as well as ecommerce. So we started off as a company making and mobile operating system called me UI, which is built on top of Android, and it’s been around for almost six years now. It was a very first thing. We did a year after launching new UI, we launched our first phone and the thought there was simple.
How can we get new UI into the hands of as many people as possible? So we have always been thinking about hardware as a distribution vehicle for the software software, which includes platform services, which of course, we monetize so think of us more as an Internet company, a mobile Internet company that monetizes on digital content, advertising instruments. And then ecommerce is our sales job. In fact, it’s our own e-commerce. We are the third largest e-commerce company in China and we only sell our own products through that channel yeah that allows us to sell direct to consumer. We have a direct relationship with a consumer.
We don’t have intermediaries, so we don’t have to pay commissions and so on and so forth. So all of it supports this one business model, which is to be a mobile internet company. Let me ask you: you mentioned that your hardware store isn’t built into the phone and that’s a big deal for you, but also browsing around the interface there. I noticed that your serve Google’s Play Store in there.
That’S right, which doesn’t figure in China in China, is your biggest market, so in a roundabout way, what I’m trying to get at is you have the Play Store on there, because this isn’t just a phone for China. We know you have India’s the second market and you said there will be other markets and then the crowd kind of laughed, because you’re hinting at something more, and I think your presence here at MWC is hinting at something more and something more global. So can you tell us more on that front sure so to be clear on Google Play and Google services, we are very close partner of Google’s and we distribute GMS as we call it in every market outside of time yeah, which is wherever they are available.
We don’t include Google’s apps in our China, build right. So what we’re? What we’re playing with here today is our international build, which is what goes to India and all these other markets. Of course, our main focus for me five are our existing markets, including India and other markets.
You know Hong Kong, Singapore, etc, etc. There’S quite a few of them, because those are the markets were already present. We already have fans, they are clamoring for this product and of course we have other markets on our radar screen, but it’s far too early to make any statements. You know me: five is not launching outside of our of our core markets, but we’re starting to keep our eyes open, we’re starting to build our brand. We came to NWC as a global platform because we’re building up to an eventual launch and we have no idea when it will happen still working towards that really very, very, very sharply focus on a few markets or no especially India, but one day, one day, yeah One day, Europe one day, the United States – hopefully it will get to both of those it’s just too early.
To tell me, okay and – and I actually don’t know, I am not withholding information, but it’s it’s too early in the process to even be able to predict when it might happen. I understand well, just from my perspective, I feel like you’ve had a successful debut here at MWC, you’ve wowed a lot of people. You impress me – and I felt often talking about the phone, because we already did a big, hands-on video and people can go and see it on the verge, calm internet. So me five, you know, Xiaomi has heard this reputation, which you’re not happy with I’m sure for copying Apple products. But you know I look at this phone and there is none of that.
Like you’ve done your own unique industrial design, you did a whole excellent presentation. You know we love the fact that he got really geeky and down into the details. If anything, it reminds me more of Samsung’s designs with the Galaxy series. So yeah tell us a little bit about how you came came up with the design.
You also said it took you two years to put it all together, yeah, so the story started. Thank you for saying that, by the way, it is actually very touching to hear that I’m from own industry expert, like yourself, it started with me note, which was a 5.7 inch flagship that we launched almost exactly a year ago. Romina, which was me know, was the first phone, the first smartphone to introduce a 3d curved glass back design, which some phones this year have, but to be very clear. That was a design that we need to reduce last year with me notes.
The other thing that we had with me note was this notion of. Even though you have a very thin body, slim body, you can still have a flat camera, that’s flush. You know on top of the the rear part of the device, and it’s also tucked in on the corner, so the the main design lines for me, five are the ones we introduced.
We mean, of course, we made them better, but we also had to work extra hard to fit it all into a much smaller form factor. So this you can safely now say is our signature design right. It is curved 3d body, in fact, there’s a ceramic version which are holding right there, the way that we integrate the camera. It’S not sticking out it’s not in the center of the device, it’s very very elegant and I think people are really gon na start to look at phones out there and say huh. That looks like a xiaomi phone really. I do believe that I do believe that this is going to happen because we are pioneers with this particular kind of design we’re already seeing it this year. Yeah I mean I am not aware of Sherry’s recognition in China. I don’t spend that much time in China. So I’ll take your word for that on the ceramic playing around with it.
It feels a bit more substantial than the class version pursue the dimensions of it are unchanged, and this is going to be a pro model, so that comes with 128 gigabytes of storage. Yeah 4 gigabytes of RAM, but otherwise it’s unchanged is there anything about the ceramic material that makes it different other than the fact that it just looks different. So it’s if you look at the hardness moss scale. The ceramic, the zircon ixora m’q, that we’re using is an 8 diamond is of course a 10. It’S the hardest on that scale, and but still is only a 4 glass. Regular glass is somewhere in between, but ceramic is much much sort of more resistant to abrasion than any of the other materials it’s more expensive to make, and you can imagine how expensive heavy even a 3d surface like this would be especially more so with Zurich.
It’S 75 % more expensive, but it’s also takes a lot more work to make it the process takes hours and, of course, there’s the first time we’re doing it. So we are hoping that we’re going to perfect it and perhaps make it cheaper for future models, but you’re right. It just feels pretty unique and that’s the thing like you just described a very involved process, but even this, the pro motto is something like 350. That’S right, which is crazy to us and – and I think, is from a Western perspective. I think I’ve been speaking for a lot of our readers when I say that we want that price and we want that quality and those materials and everything else yeah just somewhere where we can actually buy it. So I mean that builds up to really.
The final question we want to ask of you, which is what should we expect from gem in the future, so I think, first of all, you’re going to continue to see us taking a leadership position in areas where perhaps people weren’t expecting us like mobile phone design. Industrialism, this is just one product this year, it’s our first flagship of the year. We have more products coming. I think they’re gon na continue to raise the bar when it comes to design. In many ways it takes a couple of years for a company. That’S not even six years old to get to the point right where it has a rhythm. It has a pace. I’Ve pushed a lot of people around internally over the last couple of years to really find a design language because we want to be the scene as an industry leader in every way, including design, I think we’re finally getting there.
Well, that’s a good season. Thank you. Very much again here you go thanks what thanks for having you want to go for right? Okay, I’ll just lean forward slightly .