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By Eva Dou and Wayne Ma 

BEIJING -- Xiaomi Corp. was little known outside China in 2013, when Hugo Barra left a top job at Alphabet Inc.'s Google and signed on to make the Chinese smartphone maker a force internationally.

That has yet to happen, and on Monday Mr. Barra announced his resignation, saying he wanted to return to Silicon Valley. Complicating matters, Xiaomi has been eclipsed by rivals in its most important market -- China.

With Mr. Barra's departure, Xiaomi loses a high-profile executive who had served as its point man for many new international initiatives. But analysts say Xiaomi now has bigger challenges than winning more customers overseas.

"It's important for them to put resources back into China to bring momentum back for their smartphone business," said Canalys China Research Director Nicole Peng.

Except for India, Xiaomi has had little success in foreign markets, said James Yan, a research director at Counterpoint. He estimates overseas markets accounted for 15% of the company's total shipments last year.

In a Facebook post linked to his verified Twitter account, Mr. Barra called his time at Xiaomi "the greatest and most challenging adventure of my life" but said he missed Silicon Valley.

"What I've realized is that the last few years of living in such a singular environment have taken a huge toll on my life and started affecting my health," Mr. Barra said. "My friends, what I consider to be my home, and my life are back in Silicon Valley, which is also much closer to my family. Seeing how much I've left behind these past few years, it is clear to me that the time has come to return."

Mr. Barra declined to comment further.

Conflicts about Xiaomi's business challenges also played into his decision, according to two people familiar with the situation. Lei Jun, Xiaomi's founder, was frustrated at the company's limited gains in some overseas markets, and during the past year he shifted some of the oversight from Mr. Barra's international team to other divisions, these people said.

A Xiaomi spokeswoman dismissed those accounts, saying Mr. Barra "left for entirely personal reasons" and would remain an adviser to Xiaomi.

Mr. Barra also had grown weary of a grueling schedule, often crisscrossing the globe for product launches and promotions, people who know him say, adding that the workload left him little time to study Chinese and otherwise settle into China. "It was a grind," said Hans Tung, an early investor in Xiaomi and friend of Mr. Barra's who once sat on the smartphone company's board of directors. "After a while, it takes a toll on your body."

Xiaomi, which counts among its investors San Francisco-based IDG Capital and U.S. chip maker Qualcomm Inc., was No. 1 in the Chinese smartphone market in 2015, with a 15% share of total shipments. At that time, the privately held company was valued at up to $46 billion.

But its established Chinese rivals soon copied its sales tactics and swamped it with advertising blitzes. In an effort to cut costs, Xiaomi also launched several smartphones with glitches, which hurt its reputation.

The most recent data shows Xiaomi with an 8.7% market share in the third quarter of last year, behind Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Corp., Vivo Electronics Corp. and Huawei Technologies Co, according to data firm IDC.

Mr. Barra was in a unique position to aid Xiaomi when he was recruited from Google in 2013. At the time, he was product head of the company's Android mobile operating system, a version of which runs on Xiaomi's smartphones.

His job was to repeat this success overseas. In the process, he was supposed to help prove that a Chinese company such as Xiaomi could be a global-level innovator, not just a copycat.

Mr. Tung said Mr. Barra benefited from his familiarity with Xiaomi and his profile as a global citizen. Brazil-born Mr. Barra attended college at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston and later held various roles at Nuance Communications Inc. in London before moving with Google to Silicon Valley.

When Mr. Barra came aboard, Xiaomi was doubling sales each year. The Chinese startup, whose name is pronounced sh-YEOW-mee, used fan clubs and online "flash sales" of limited batches to build buzz. He became popular with many Chinese consumers, who dubbed him "Hu Ge," a play on his name that meant "Tiger Brother." Xiaomi employees said Mr. Barra was a hard worker and that some of the company's challenges in overseas markets were beyond his fixing.

"Lots of people outside the company think he was just a 'flower vase' to the company," said a Xiaomi employee. "But those who worked closely with him knew that this guy exhausted himself with work."

Xiaomi Senior Vice President Xiang Wang, a former senior executive of Qualcomm, will lead the company's international business, Xiaomi President Bin Lin said in a Facebook post.

Mr. Wang said on Monday that the India market would continue to be the company's main focus overseas, with expansion in other markets based on "the needs of Xiaomi's fans."

Yang Jie contributed to this article

Write to Eva Dou at eva.dou@wsj.com and Wayne Ma at wayne.ma@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 24, 2017 02:47 ET (07:47 GMT)

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