Hugo Barra Joins Facebook; Will 'Lead All VR Efforts'

Xiaomi's Global Vice President Hugo Barra, who is leaving the Chinese company to head back to the Silicon Valley, is joining Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg made this announcement via the social network on Wednesday.

Zuckerberg said in his Facebook post said that he is "excited that Hugo Barra is joining Facebook to lead all of our virtual reality efforts, including our Oculus team."

He adds, "Hugo shares my belief that virtual and augmented reality will be the next major computing platform. They'll enable us to experience completely new things and be more creative than ever before. Hugo is going to help build that future, and I'm looking forward to having him on our team."

Hugo Barra, who's globally been the face of Xiaomi ever since he joined the company after leaving Google around three and a half years ago, announced his exit from the company via Facebook earlier this week stating health and other personal reasons.

Before he was the face of Xiaomi, Hugo Barra was the Vice President of Product Development for Android at Google.



Source: Facebook

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Hugo Barra, Global VP, Xiaomi Is Leaving the Company in February; Senior VP Xiang Wang to Take Over

Hugo Barra, Xiaomi's Global Vice President, is leaving the smartphone brand to return to Silicon Valley after a three and a half year stint at the Chinese company. Hugo had been the face of the company and played a crucial role in Xiaomi's growth as an influential name in the highly competitive smartphone market. Before joining Xiaomi, Hugo Barra was the Vice President of Product Development for Android at Google.

The exit of Hugo Barra from Xiaomi will certainly be hard for the company. Although Xiaomi has hit some major milestones, increased competition and growing challenges lie ahead of it due to it's increased global presence. It'll be interesting to see how it deals with it without Hugo Barra, who will be moving back to the Silicon Valley for a "new adventure" out of Xiaomi in February.

Hugo quoted health as one of the reasons for leaving Xiaomi in a Facebook post announcing his departure. He wrote in the post, "But what I've realized is that the last few years of living in such a singular environment have taken a huge toll on my life and started affecting my health. My friends, what I consider to be my home, and my life are back in Silicon Valley, which is also much closer to my family. Seeing how much I've left behind these past few years, it is clear to me that the time has come to return."


Xiaomi co-founder Bin Lin also announced in the comments of this post that Xiang Wang, Xiaomi Senior Vice President, will lead the company's entire global efforts February onwards and also shared that the company has ambitious expansion plans for 2017 and is confident in Xiang's leadership to take our global business to greater heights.

The move comes at a time when Xiaomi is facing new challenges and might have burdened itself. For the first time, the company hasn't shared its annual sales figures. In early 2015, Xiaomi had announced an ambitious goal of 100 million smartphones but managed to rake in only 70 million sales figure by the end of the year. This mismanaged goal setting prevented it from announcing any such prediction figure last year, nor announce any sales number this year.

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