Samsung is not the only phone builder who won’t be announcing a new phone during Mobile World Congress, the telecom industry’s largest event. China’s Xiaomi makes a similar move and plans to skip the event entirely, an orator reliable to TechCrunch.
This move taken by Xiaomi surprised the audiences as it was unexpected because it was widely assumed that Xiaomi would widely attend. Barcelona-based Mobile World Congress is one of the largest events for the worldwide Mobile trade, attracting over 100,000 attendees, and it has a reputation because it’s the place to point out the most recent events or developments of mobile.
Xiaomi used last year’s event to introduce the Mib5, its flagship smartphone, through a press event that was live-streamed. At the 2015 delegation, it raised its visibility in the West when Hugo Barra, its then head of international, took part in an interview on stage, explaining more about the then-under-the-radar company and its business.
Barra announced his departure from Xiaomi this week after a 3.5-year army – he is relocating Facebook to lead VR efforts – that could be one of the reasons since Xiaomi won’t be present during MWC. So, that means rumors of the Mi 6’s impending launch around the time of the event are wide of the mark.
This doesn’t mean that Xiaomi is allergic to events in the West, though. It launched a new intelligent TV and talked about the plan during CES in Las Vegas progressing this month, and we perceive that it does have plans to attend, and organize other events exterior of China.
It’s been a challenging start to 2017 for Xiaomi. Except for Barra exiting on the grounds of well-being points and homesickness, CEO Lei Jun admitted that the company is getting into a transitional period after rising too quickly. For the first time in its five-year history, didn’t exhibit how many smartphones it sold last year – most certainly as a result of it didn’t notice fast progress in previous years.
In 2016, competing companies like Huawei and Oppo rose up to knock Xiaomi off the number one perch for smartphone sales in China. Overseas, it stays misleading how internationalization – a plan that Barra spearheaded – is faring. Xiaomi revealed it cleared $1 billion in revenue in India, its second-largest market behind China, last year, however, nothing was mentioned about its efficiency within the different 20-odd nations where its phones were sold.
