Hugo Barak talks about Millet entering Singapore: Starting from small scale overseas

TechWeb, vice president of Millet Global Operations, Beijing time February 19 Evening news, Millet today officially launched the International Business development, and will be the first stop in Singapore. Millet announced that the no-lock version of Millet 3 mobile phones will be opened in Singapore on March 7, the price of 419 Singapore dollars (about 332 U.S. dollars). Millet has previously announced that it will be in Singapore on February 21 to open the sale of red rice mobile phones. Hugo Barra, vice president of Millet Global operations, received an interview with the Next web for the US Technology blog. The new market for millet is like building a new company, says Barak. Millet team needs to start building new business, including logistics, user support, release, after-sales service and quality assurance. And with millet products in Singapore this week, Millet also needs to improve the local brand awareness in Singapore. From a product point of view, Barak points out that this is the first time that Millet officially launched the MIUI firmware in English, and this is a huge challenge. In order to accommodate English fonts, the millet has made a lot of adjustments to the user interface because Chinese text is more compact, says Barak. The experience of MIUI as Google's former vice president of Android has helped to internationalize the international, which Barak believes is not much different from the introduction of a Nexus phone in Google. Previously, the industry believes that the addition of the millet will promote MIUI faster development, and the future MIUI may be rid of Android, become an independent system. But Barak said this time, Millet will insist on using Android. "We've invested a lot in it, and we've done a lot of development on it, so porting MIUI to other operating systems would be a disaster and it would take years," he said. In addition, supporting other operating systems means that millet needs to build the entire ecosystem. And from a technical point of view, for Millet, Android is also the right choice. On the other hand, millet engineers should not spend time on other operating systems. So why does millet choose Singapore as the first station for overseas business? Recently, it has been reported that Chinese technology companies are accustomed to start from Singapore to open up business in Southeast Asia. At the press conference, Lin, President of Barak and Millet, said that for Millet, Singapore is the first good challenge for overseas business and will help millet understand how to build logistics and after-sale services. With more developed infrastructure in Singapore, Millet will be able to take Singapore as a springboard to other more complex markets. Some insiders believe that the price of millet mobile phones for emerging markets more attractive, such as the rest of Asia, Latin America and Africa market, so millet should first enter these markets. However, Barak said: If we are a traditional handset manufacturer, just want to develop products, then this is reasonable. But we are not. We try to establish a highly accessible end-to-end relationship with people. From their visit to the Web site to the purchase of products, to the experience of our customer support, this requires a lot of work, a large number of infrastructure and partners. In the newThe slopes are relatively easy to work with. Moreover, because the Singapore market is small, the cost of failure is low. Barak and Lin stressed that Millet was not concerned about how many handsets could be sold in Singapore. Millet wanted to start off on a smaller scale, to understand the user's view of the millet products and MIUI firmware, and then to improve. Millet's overseas business may face challenges including translation and operator testing, and Millet can gain a lot of experience in these areas. Because of the small size of the initial stage, millet will be shipped through the courier company ups from Shenzhen to Singapore users. Barak also pointed out that this is a costly approach. However, after millet better understand the Singapore market and know how to open up the market, millet will be shipped directly in Singapore. To this end, millet will be built in Singapore warehouse. In China, the release of millet products tends to spark fan mania. "It's a huge challenge and it's not easy," says Barak, for the same mania in Singapore. It requires us to do a lot of work, but I think we can do it. Millet will still focus on the young user groups who are interested in science and technology products. It is unclear how Singapore and Southeast Asian markets will respond to China's booming millet handsets. If all goes well, millet will be able to develop into a company similar to Samsung and Apple. But it's a long way off, and Singapore is a small step for millet.