스마트폰, 정수기 등 분야를 가리지 않는 샤오미, "모든 스마트폰은 아이폰을 모방"

샤오미의 휴고 바라는 요즘 나오는 모든 스마트폰은 다른 제품들과 비슷하다고 말하면서, 라운딩된 모서리나 홈버튼 등 아이폰과 유사하고 Mi4는 아이폰5와 매우 흡사하고 했다. 자신들의 제품이 애플과 매우 유사함을 인정하면서 디자인은 차별화된 것이라고 주장한다. 최근 미국 진출을 앞두고 짝퉁 애플의 이미지와 디자인 특허 등에서 머리를 숙이고 들어가려는 모습처럼도 보인다. 처음에는 무조건적으로 애플을 모방했지만, 마케팅과 샤오미 보조배터리, 샤오미 정수기, 샤오미 TV 등 새로운 분야에서 자신들만의 제품을 만들어가고 있다.

Xiaomi exec says all smartphones look like the iPhone

Evan Killham (4:04 pm PDT, Jul 16th)

Look, things just look like other things.

Xiaomi executive Hugo Barra doesn’t put much stock in what he calls the “copycat melodrama” surrounding the company’s products, which bear more than a passing resemblance to Apple’s hardware.

Barra gave his thoughts on the matter to Bloomberg’s Emily Chang. He says that the criticism is not so much because Xiaomi’s stuff looks like Apple’s stuff but rather because “every smartphone these days kinda looks like every other smartphone.”

You can see the whole clip below.

“You have to have curved corners. You have to have at least a home button in some way,” Barra continued. “I just don’t think that we can allow a company to take ownership of things that just are how they are.”

Basic interaction design is one thing, but several of Xiaomi’s phones, tablets, and hardware look like they came straight out of Cupertino. And who says you have to have rounded corners or a home button? We’ve been hearing rumblings for months that Apple might drop its own home button on future iterations of the iPhone in favor of the Force Touch analog feature currently available on the Apple Watch.

“I’ll be the first to admit that yes, [the Mi 4] does look like the iPhone 5,” Barra said. “And by the way, that chamfered edge is present in so many other devices.”

He’s referring to the thin, sloped border around the iPhone 4 and 5’s screen, which was one of the main resemblances that people calling shenanigans pointed to. And that wasn’t the only deflection Barra employed; his most confusing line blames the backlash on people simply not liking China.

“It was in many ways people projecting their bias against Chinese companies onto us,” he said. “People just couldn’t bring themselves to believe that a Chinese company actually could be a world innovator, could build amazingly high quality products.”

That seems like a bit of a stretch to us, but then again, we’re not the vice president of a $45 billion company trying to explain why people think our stuff looks unoriginal. He has to say something, apparently.

About the author

Evan Killham is a freelance writer who lives in Nebraska and isn't interested in football, so he has plenty of time to play and think about video games. He has written for Bitmob and GamesBeat and sometimes, he even goes outside. But not too often because he's heard there are bees out there.

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Posted in News, Top stories | Tagged: Force Touch, iPhone 5, Mi 4, Xiaomi |