After hiring Jai Mani from Google to lead its Indian product team, Xiaomi has reportedly poached Spotify's Donovan Sung to lead international product development.
TechCrunch states that Xiaomi has successfully managed to lure Sung away from Spotify, which if turns out to be true, will be a significant move for the company. Sung was pivotal in the development of Spotify, being the streaming service's first product manager in the US. He also orchestrated the overseas expansion of Spotify, along with handling product partnerships.
Before Spotify, Sung worked with Hugo Barra at Google, which reinforces the Google connection seen in Xiaomi's latest hires, Barra included. According to TechCrunch's source, Sung, who is bilingual, will act as a bridge between Barra and Xiaomi's executive team, most of whom are not fluent in English.
After becoming the third largest smartphone manufacturer in the world, Xiaomi is setting even loftier goals for 2015. The Chinese vendor has set a sales target of 100 million units, and to meet that, it needs to have an active presence in more international markets. An executive like Sung would be able to achieve just that.
Source: TechCrunch
