Xiaomi haven’t exactly been around for a long time, but they’re still one of the only Chinese companies to see such monumental growth in such a short time. Xiaomi’s Lin Bin was interviewed earlier today after the launch of the Xiaomi Mi CC9 Pro, and he reveals details about the structural changes within Xiaomi in the recent years.
First of all Lin Bin is apparently not too happy with being out and about for the company. This is also the first time that Lin Bin has been interviewed by the media since Xiaomi’s IPO. He said that after the listing of Xiaomi, he experienced a series of organizational restructuring, which has led him to focus more on internal tech development.
He claims he much prefers being inside the company helping develop new products and technology, but was asked to represent Xiaomi for the product launch. He then goes on to talk about the inner changes that have happened to the company, including the formation of the camera department and expansion of the R&D team.
While the company only had about 400 workers in R&D before 2016, now they’ve added more than 3700 workers to the R&D team. On top of this, the company has also opened up R&D centers in places like Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai and Bangalore. The biggest change has been the conception of Xiaomi’s own camera department, which now has bore fruit.
In May 2018, Lei Jun sent an internal letter to Xiaomi employees. In this letter, he said that Xiaomi will set up a separate camera department in the mobile phone department, and it will concentrate on using the company’s resources to produce better phone cameras. He then appointed Zhu Dan as the general manager of the camera department.
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Lin Bin also revealed that Xiaomi MIX Alpha was a very radical attempt to change things up even from inside Xiaomi. He had almost given up on it, when the R&D teams managed to produce a working unit. “I have confidence in Xiaomi’s research and development, and at the same time, it is more responsible for young people, such as Lu Weibing of Redmi, Wei Siqi of CC series, etc.” Lin Bin said.
In the latest organizational restructuring, Lin Bin was appointed as the vice chairman and will continue to serve as executive director and president of the company, responsible for managing the company’s mobile phone R&D department. This is also a continuation of the organizational restructuring after the listing of Xiaomi.
“After the listing of Xiaomi, the organization structure has been continuously adjusted, and it has also moved to the new park. Up to now, these adjustments have basically ended.” Lin Bin claimed. According to him, Xiaomi’s work style has changed from before, and Xiaomi pays more attention to technology trends and changes.
He then goes on to talk about the recently launched Xiaomi Mi CC9 Pro. “It’s harder to make a camera than to make a mobile phone.” According to him, although the Mi CC9 Pro managed to tie with the Huawei Mate 30 Pro over on DxOmark, Lin Bin says they could’ve boosted the score higher if they had two to three more weeks to work on it.
Lin Bin revealed that Xiaomi set up a core device department in 2016, including the camera team. In May 2018, the camera team then expanded and became more independent, experimenting with integrated software, algorithms and other teams. At present, the camera department has 9 R&D centers around the world.
Ending the interview off, Lin Bin hints that Xiaomi have a lot more “secret projects” in the works that will be launched next year, and that they’re going to be very exciting. He also states his hopes that the camera and imaging systems next year will be even better than what we’ve seen with Mi CC9 Pro, which is absolutely insane.
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