Employing Hugo Barak, an important step in the globalization of millet

China's smartphone company, Millet, has begun to be known to the world, according to US media reports, but many people want to know what strategy the company has developed to sell its equipment around the world.  TNW, the US blog site, recently interviewed Lin, the founder and president of the Millet Association, who revealed that the key to answering the question was: Hugo Barra.


     The globalization of millet requires a software character      Millet confirmed that it will hire the former Google Android vice president of Shambhala as the global vice president of millet, suggesting that it has a plan to move to the international market. In the company's Beijing headquarters, Lin received TNW's interview. The whole job, he says, is to "think about the next market we're going to break into" and how to make it.      Lin said: "We hope that when he formally joined the company in October, we will come up with a strategy." His job is to work with me, Lei and other co-founders to develop our strategy and execute it. "In China, the millet handset is popular because of high-end configuration and low price." This may be due to what Lin calls "the triathlon business model"-hardware, software, and Internet services-the company's revenue comes mainly from the latter.      Lin said: "We think the hardware is just a platform to run the service." We don't expect to make money on hardware, we aim to buy hardware and then use our services, and ultimately revenue is service. "The Millet software refers to Android based, highly customizable firmware MIUI, while selling services such as themes, apps, and purchase in-game." Internet service refers to the E-commerce platform of Millet.      Lin points out that software is critical in the company's business model. "Most of the product features people feel are actually software and services," he says. Users like this software, like the experience, they like to know how to surf the Internet and download apk. They play very fluent games. We must do the software well before doing anything else. "     For this reason, the hiring of Shambhala is due to his product management experience. "Consumers in different regions and countries have different needs," Lin said in an explanation of the role of Shambhala. We need to know what software designs these consumers want, even some hardware designs and some Internet services. Before we sell, we have to be very good at adapting to international users. So we need someone with a lot of experience in Hugo, who is one of the best people in the world to do it. "In addition to its software expertise, Palawan has been actively involved in hardware design."      User evaluation is an important part of the success of Millet      Lin owes a large part of the company's success to a very different way of working with the user, and he intends to extend it to the international arena. "We are the only company that does this: Super Open, User-rated and weekly upgrades (software)," he said. We are the only one, and no other company does. "     In addition to software, Millet also listens to the user about the hardware feedback information. When consumers get their phones, they reflect their ideas to the company, prompting hardware improvements. By allowing customers to participate in each step of the smartphone manufacturing process, Millet's user base is different from other smartphone companies, but is very loyal. Lin said: "The real reason is that users have a sense of ownership and become a system to improve the mobile phone to improve the sense of a part, so that they feel respected and feel that they are one of the children." This sense of participation will enable them to participate actively in the discussion, which is essentially why they become our hardcore fans. "     in the United States there are thousands of millet handsets      However, given that the millet model has only been tested in China, does this limit its likelihood of success overseas?" Lin said not. Millet now has fans all over the world, he says. Its MIUI software can be translated into other languages by independent developers and ported to unofficial versions-the list on its Web site includes several European countries as well as Brazil and Indonesia.      Lin says the work in Palawan is in this area because MIUI is mainly a system that absorbs feedback from Chinese fans. "There are a lot of fans outside China, but they are scattered around the country, unable to focus on the feedback of a nation's users in depth," he explains. I think this is the work we need to do. We have done so in China, which is why, in my opinion, today's MIUI can be said to be the best mobile system for Chinese users. This is not the case for other regions. So we need to look deeper into the needs of different regions.      Lin also revealed an astonishing message: "We actually have tens of thousands of mobile phone users in the United States." We did not sell it to the US because of logistical problems--delivery only to Chinese cities--but by analysis we found that tens of thousands of mobile phones were flowing to the United States. "     MIUI is part of the Android ecosystem      When the final internationalization of millet, Google will feel threatened to suppress it?" Android has become a mainstream system in China, but Google Play hasn't really been involved. While Google's laissez-faire approach to Android, it blocked Acer from publishing devices based on Aliyun systems last year because Aliyun was considered "semi-finished" for Android.      However, Lin said Miui certainly belonged to the Android ecosystem, and in fact, Sander Pi (Sundar Pichai), Google's senior vice president for Android, welcomed Palawan to stay in the Android ecosystem, Confirmed that Google has accepted the existence of MIUI. This, he explains, is because MIUI's maintenance is completely compatible with Android.  &nbSp;   The only thing Google feels threatened is the millet trend to international. Lin clearly, the future of millet depends on miui--after all, the former Google executives are very clear about the development of global attractive mobile software, Millet has not overcome the obstacles. The extent to which a Chinese company can adapt to the tastes of Western users is unclear, but Millet's attempt to bring its Chinese success model to the world has attracted much attention.