Xiaomi is a Chinese company, which has been rightly and repeatedly accused of copying the design of iPhone terminals or iPad tablets when it designed its own products. The most recent accusations came from the senior vice president Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC),, Jony Ive, this arguing that he doesn't feel flattered when he sees that weekends spent away from his family working on Apple products and creating unique designs turn out to be in vain, his work being easily copied by others.
If you look at the iPhone 6, the iPhone 6 has been using the design language that has been around for a while. The iPhone 6 is using the design language that HTC has had for 5 years. You cannot claim full ownership of any kind of design languages in our industry. Designers have to be passionate, they have to be emotional, that's where their creativity comes from. I would expect Jony to be even more aggressive than he was in answering this question. Jony is one of the classiest people in the industry. I would bet you anything that he did not say the word Xiaomi in his answer. He is speaking generally about how he feels which is what I would expect from any world-class designer.
In an attempt to defend the company Xiaomi, his vice president Hugo Barra, former vice-president of Google, says that iPhone 6 it has a design similar to those used by HTC for 5 years now, saying that Jony Ive's reaction is a passionate one and nothing more. Going further, Barra praises Jony Ive for his talent and tries to bring into question the fact that Ive did not make a direct reference to Xiaomi, although everyone understood this from his statements.
Those from Xiaomi have always been seen as having products that are very similar to those of Apple, its CEO copied the product presentation style used by Steve Jobs and Apple, so in the end we are talking about a company that tries to either a copy of Apple.
