Xiaomi responds to accusations that it blatantly copies Apple

Xiaomi isn’t called the “Apple of China” just because its products are ridiculously popular and has a rabid fanbase, it’s also due to the fact that the company copies Apple’s style… a lot. Apple’s own Jony Ive has called Xiaomi a thief, and referred to the company’s decision to copy Apple’s hard work as pure laziness. However, Xiaomi Vice President of Global Operations Hugo Barra claims that these similarities are no different from the similarities that all smartphones share. 

In a video interview with Bloomberg published on Thursday, Hugo Barra, vice president of global operations at Chinese mobile hardware upstart Xiaomi, addressed accusations that his company’s products are derivative and take more than a little inspiration from Apple’s iOS lineup. Barra told Bloomberg’s Emily Chang that all smartphones need to have certain elements to function, and because form follows function, many handsets share common features. While true to some extent, Barra glossed over the how and why of modern smartphone design. “Without a doubt, every smartphone these days kind of looks like every other smartphone,” Barra said. “You have to have curved corners. You have to have, you know, like a home button in some way, that’s how interaction design works.” Whether by purposeful omission or an unconscious disregard of past events, Barra fails to mention those heady years of personal device evolution when pagers moved from one-way to two-way technology, cellphones went from bricks to flip-phones and candy bars, and touchscreen PDAs joined the mix to create a primordial soup out of which emerged the beginnings of the modern smartphone. Current handset designs are formed around multiple factors, functionality, operating system UI, capability and accessibility being but a few.