Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday announced that his company had hired former Xiaomi vice-president Hugo Barra to head its virtual reality business, which included the team developing the Oculus Rift headset. In a post on the website, Zuckerberg said Barra shared his belief that “virtual and augmented reality will be the next major computing platform”.
“I’ve known Hugo for a long time, starting when he helped develop the Android operating system, to the last few years he’s worked at Xiaomi,” Zuckerberg said. Virtual reality will allow people to “experience completely new things and be more creative than ever before”, he said, adding that Barra was going to “help build that future”.
The former Xiaomi executive said it had always been a dream of his to work with virtual reality. “I learned from Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun that there’s no greater calling in our industry than taking breakthrough tech and making it available to the greatest number of people...really looking forward to doing just that at Facebook.”
Barra’s departure from the Chinese technology giant comes at a time when the company is seeking to adjust its strategy because of poor domestic sales figures, despite performing well in developing markets like India. In 2016, the company pulled out of countries such as Singapore and Brazil, according to Reuters. It is also increasing its offline retail presence and is exploring avenues such as artificial intelligence and internet finance.
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