Lei Jun, the CEO of Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, recently confirmed that its upcoming Mi 11 is following in the footsteps ofApple. The Xiaomi Mi 11 won’t ship with a charging brick in the box, a practice Applestarted with its iPhone 12.
Jun cited environmental concerns when explaining why the latest model won’t have a charger. Still, as The Verge points out, the announcement raised some eyebrows, as just a few months ago Xiaomi tauntedApplefor no longer including key accessories alongside new purchases.
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Jun made comments on the Chinese social media site Weibo, saying people already have too many chargers at this point. The amount of charging bricks out there was causing an environmental burden, according to the executive. In order to try and relieve that burden, the CEO said his company canceled plans for an individual charger for the Mi 11. Considering the Mi 11 uses a standard USB-C cord, plenty of people possess the requisite chargers already, but Xiaomi joined Samsung inmocking Apple for dispensing with a chargerprior to now before turning around and doing the same thing.
Jun’s company alsothat specifically mocked Apple. That move had some experts describing the taunts as a bit shortsighted. Not long after the iPhone 12 launched, Xiaomi tweeted that it “didn’t leave anything out of the box” for its Mi 10T Pro. It also included a short video with the tweet that showed a Mi 10T box with a charger inside.
The Verge also points out the lesson thatSamsung and Xiaomi should have learnedis to make sure the marketing department is in the loop about future product decisions. For the most part, an argument that a company is looking out for the environment by cutting down on excess accessories is met with acceptance, and previous versions of the Mi smartphone were built in order to be compliant with a previous model’s accessories. A new phone being able to use a charger customers already had is considered a selling point.
However, despite it being a selling point,Appleonly recently stopped including earbuds and chargers in packages. They were only the first to stop the practice.Samsung’s Galaxy Note has long brought a cordand charging brick along with each new iteration, but it will reportedly stop doing so with the next model. Xiaomi was in the same boat, yet its CEO now confirmed it will be following suit.
