Hugo Barra is one of the highest-profile Westerners to join a Chinese technology company.
TOKYO — In a sign of the rising export ambitions of the Chinese mobile phone industry, a smartphone maker called Xiaomi said Thursday that it had hired a top executive away from Google to lead its international expansion plans.
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The executive, Hugo Barra, is one of the highest-profile Westerners to join a Chinese technology company, analysts said. At Google, he has served as vice president for Google’s Android mobile operating system, which is used by the vast majority of smartphones in China.
“He’s a significant figure in the industry, a significant figure at Google,” said Pete Cunningham, an analyst at Canalys, a research firm. “It underlines the trend we’re seeing in the market. The Chinese vendors are going to play a big part in shaping the future of the industry.”
Xiaomi is one of a number of Chinese smartphone makers that have been gaining market share in China against foreign rivals like Apple and Nokia. Until recently, these Chinese companies seemed happy with their rising sales in China, the biggest smartphone market, but now companies like Xiaomi, Lenovo and Huawei seem intent on expanding internationally.
Xiaomi controlled 5 percent of the smartphone market in China in the second quarter, according to Canalys. That put it well behind the leader, Samsung Electronics of South Korea, which had an 18 percent share, but slightly ahead of Apple, with 4.8 percent.
Despite selling mostly in the domestic market, Chinese smartphone brands already account for about one-fifth of sales worldwide, according to Canalys. Including smartphones made in Chinese factories for foreign brands like Apple, however, Chinese production accounts for a majority of global sales.
Mr. Barra said in a statement posted on a Google social networking service that he intended to help Xiaomi “expand their incredible product portfolio and business globally.”
“I’m really looking forward to this new challenge, and am particularly excited about the opportunity to continue to help drive the Android ecosystem,” he wrote.
A main selling point for Chinese smartphones has been price. Xiaomi sells phones ranging from about $180 to $300, according to Counterpoint Technology Market Research. That is less than half the price of high-end phones from Samsung or Apple, though slightly higher than comparably equipped devices from many other Chinese brands.
“The phones are not necessarily superior, but they have created a lot of buzz,” said Tom Kang, an analyst at Counterpoint. “They’ve realized that the differentiation you can do now with hardware or software is very marginal, and that the future will be about marketing.”
The chief executive of Xiaomi, Lei Jun, has taken a page from the marketing playbook of Steven P. Jobs, the late Apple co-founder, organizing flashy, on-stage product introductions at which he appears in jeans and black shirts.
Mr. Lei welcomed Mr. Barra to China in a microblog posting in which he wrote: “Hugo Barra will indeed join Xiaomi in early October, and he’ll take charge of expanding international business.”
While Xiaomi phones bear physical resemblances to iPhones, they are different in at least one significant way: they run on a customized version of Android. Though Google pulled much of its business out of mainland China three years ago, its Android software is used on more than 90 percent of smartphones in the country.
The hiring of Mr. Barra is part of an effort to move Xiaomi beyond selling phones and to widen its scope, said Lu Shan, a technology industry analyst.
“Xiaomi, if they remain a hardware company in the future, they’ll always be undervalued,” Mr. Lu said. “So I think in the future they will do more development and expansion on the software and applications side.”
Xiaomi recently upgraded its sales forecast, saying it aimed to sell 20 million smartphones this year, up from a previous estimate of 15 million. Mr. Lei said this month that the company had raised new funding from outside investors in a deal that gave Xiaomi a valuation of $10 billion.
“We wish Hugo Barra the best,” Google said in a statement. “We’ll miss him at Google and we’re excited that he is staying within the Android ecosystem.”
Chris Buckley contributed reporting from Hong Kong.
