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Hugo Barra to lead Facebook's virtual reality efforts after leaving Xiaomi
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Barra was given the task of taking Xiaomi global, helping the company make inroads into India, where sales topped $1 billion for the first time in 2016. (Bloomberg/File)
Hugo Barra, a former Xiaomi Corp. and Google executive, is joining Facebook Inc. to lead its virtual reality efforts.
Barra, who led the Chinese smartphone maker’s international expansion, will now take on a different challenge: helping Facebook navigate the competitive and young virtual reality market, where its Oculus Rift and Gear products have drawn interest but not dominance.
(Read also: Xiaomi’s Barra leaves phonemaker to return to Silicon Valley)
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisions virtual reality as a social platform, and says Barra will help the company achieve that. Competitors have been more focused on gaming.
“Hugo shares my belief that virtual and augmented reality will be the next major computing platform,” Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post. “They’ll enable us to experience completely new things and be more creative than ever before.”
