Connection
“Xiao Mi is an E-commerce company”, we can feel it directly from the frankness of Hong Feng. The profit from three MIUI mall has been over 100 Million, in which 174 Million was distributed to the developers, and not only we shared the profit with the developers, but also the developer shared their profit with us through browser navigation, and living service.” In Hong Feng’s opinion, the value of MIUI can not be limited as profit, actually what we have done is connection.
After the year of 2013, MIUI launched the internet service, which were focused by Hong Feng and Lei Jun recently. Except for integrating these internet service companies like Thunder and Cheetah, also calendar, address book are internet-oriented. Even the tools App like Compass can be included.
Just like Wechat, in order to get the entrance of Wechat, Dianping has paid 20% of shares. The cooperation between Xiao Mi and the Third parties is wider while lighter, including Shunfeng Express, China Merchants Bank, also Sohu Video and Baidu Music, which formed the local services and content distribution platform of XiaoMi. However, Hong Feng he didn’t like the word “layout”, “just because we have more human resource, and finally we can have a try”.
Something XiaoMi is engaging in can not be done by just one or two person, such as Smart home and Smart hardware. What’s more, Wechat joined in — Tencent published a series of API in August to attract the developers to connect their hardware with Wechat. Heros think similarly, Hong Feng didn’t feel anxiety because of Tencent, “we believe the connection between hardware and hardware shall be purer and more effective”.
Have you ever used Vista?
The similarities of Tencent and Xiao Mi are not only the products, but also the accusation of “copy”. The international style of Xiao Mi can be felt from the massive critics of foreign medias.
“It is recommended to root the development version of MIUI V5, and open the file to check are there any transparency blur effects, if adopting transparency blur was considered as a kind of “copy”, then it should be copied from Windows Vista“, Hong Feng thought the judgment of copy shall be determined from the whole history of computer interaction, “Flattening was began from Metro UI of Microsoft, even Microsoft was not the pioneer, all the original design were flatten”.
“However, MIUI is much similar to iOS in the overall visual effects, so what is Xiao Mi’s design language?”
“We have a guideline of unified design language, including the bi-segment and T type structure as you said “, Hong Feng thought the design style of Xiao Mi is being formed, but it is no need to be limited in one design language, exceptions are permitted, for the tools or contents App, it is unified highly in MIUI.
Even though the design language has been formed, still some people will be unhappy. Google released new Android L of Material Design in the I/O conference. The candy color of MIUI 6 and iOS7 sight visual should be a kind of betrayal for the Android loyal fans.
“Actually Google they don’t care about what you like, they care about the developer’s work can be run in all Android cell phones or not, you need to know the ambition of Google Empire. We have the official cooperative relationship with Google, and we will contact with them on every updates, you can know the situation better from the large number of our staff came from Google”, the contacts and cooperation mentioned by Hong Feng is mainly refer to anti-fragment agreement and CTS compatibility test.
Growing pains of Xiao Mi
The major problems of MIUI are features rather than design. MIUI is considered to be the first choice ROM for fanciers, however, after the number of its users reaches 70 million, they must consider the usability, Hong Feng has ever said that in one time the functions of MIUI were too much, and the solution was to hide many features, and active if needed.
Another result from the users expansion is work quantity increasing. V5 only needs to adopt two models, while V6 needs at least 6. “Now we are still discussing MIUI 6 shall be based on Android 4.4 or 4.1”, Hong Feng felt that it is no doubt that a company want to make all users updating to the latest version. However, the update of XiaoMi tablet and Xiaomi Phone series have to be delayed to the end of this year.
They suffered lots of troubles, in Taiwan, they are accused of leaking the users’ information to the servers at Beijing, in Southeast Asia, they need to look for a local company to offer the O2O service. And just this article to be finished, ustwo announced that XiaoMi has not been authorized to use the Monument Valley as the demostration in the conference press of MIUI 6.
When we discussed these items, Hong Feng was a little tired until we talked about the future of MIUI. “MIUI 7 and 8 shall be more intelligent, and is capable of acquiring more information you need, and you can see what you need, maybe we have to wait until MIUI 100” .
