(also spelled Qalibaf) is the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament (Islamic Consultative Assembly), a position he has held since 2020. As of March 2026, he is a prominent, hardline figure within Iran's political landscape, with a background in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and as Tehran's former mayor.
Key details about Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf:
Role: He leads the Iranian parliament and has been considered a influential figure in negotiations, with some reports in March 2026 suggesting him as a potential contact for the U.S. in high-level talks, though these claims were denied by Iranian officials.
Background: Ghalibaf is a former commander of the IRGC Air Force and former Chief of Iran's Police.
Political Position: He is considered a conservative hardliner, known for close ties to the military and for enforcing strict conservative legislation.
Tenure: He has been consistently re-elected as speaker, maintaining his position through parliamentary votes.
Ghalibaf has been a constant presence in Iran's political power structure despite corruption allegations and public scandals.
Robin Zeng Yuqun is a Chinese billionaire businessman. He is the founder and chairman of the battery manufacturer CATL, and a vice chairman of the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce. Wikipedia
From Espresso: Lei Jun, the chief executive of Xiaomi, a fast-growing Chinese smartphone-maker, unveils his firm’s latest handsets today, prompting the usual comparisons with Apple. Steve Jobs-style jeans and and black top? Check. Minimalist black stage? Check. Crowd of adoring fans? Check. Cryptic invitation to build online buzz? Check. In truth, though, Xiaomi’s model is much closer to Amazon’s: sell hardware at low margins and then make money from services and downloads. This works well in China, not least because Google’s services have been blocked by the government, leaving the field clear for domestic firms. But things are harder abroad: in India, its most promising foreign market, Xiaomi faces patent disputes and increasingly capable local rivals. Of the 61m handsets Xiaomi sold last year, only 1m were in India. A new partnership with Bharti Airtel, India’s biggest mobile operator, will help. But building its brand and distribution outside China will be a slog http://econ.st/1545i48
Xiaomi: A bluffer's guide to 'China's Apple'
By Kevin RawlinsonBBC News
Xiaomi makes its own phones and wearables, as well as the Mi user interface that runs on top of Android
It is known as "China's Apple", not least because of the perceived similarities between some of its devices and the iPhone.
In fact, some have accused Xiaomi, which currently operates only in Asia, of blatant copying - a charge it has denied.
And analysts predict legal challenges as it seeks to move into new markets in the West.
"Ericsson [temporarily] blocked the sales of the Xiaomi handsets in India for patent infringement, and Apple has publicly accused Xiaomi of stealing some of its designs," said Ronan de Renesse, lead analyst in consumer technology at Ovum.
The devices he has produced are relatively low-cost - often half the price of the competition - with thin profit margins. They are sold only online, lowering Xiaomi's overheads. And, while some have called them flimsy, other critics have praised many of the phones' features.
Last year, the firm said it had surpassed its target of selling 60 million phones, up from less than 20 million in the previous 12 months.
The Android-powered Mi 4 was the firm's first mobile to have a metal frame
And, in an interview with the New York Times, Mr Lei dismissed the idea that his company was just a bargain-basement alternative, saying: "We're not just some cheap Chinese company making a cheap phone. We're going to be a Fortune 500 company."
According to Mr De Renesse, "Xiaomi represents a new generation of smartphone companies based in developing Asia".
He said that Xiaomi's focus on online sales allowed it to focus on distribution and limiting supply, "so that no devices remains unsold and inventory is gone in record time".
Xiaomi surpassed its own smartphone sales targets in 2014 and is the top manufacturer in the Chinese market
He added: "Its success can also be attributed to its excellent work at managing customer experience. It takes into account customer feedback and constantly update its devices' software and content offering accordingly.
"This helps the company build a very strong smartphone brand in its core market China, which is key to maintain customer loyalty."
Besides China, Xiaomi is operating in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, as well Malaysia, the Philippines, India and Indonesia.
In September 2013, Mr Lei told the BBC Xiaomi would be entering Western markets within "one or two years".
Former Google executive Hugo Barra is tasked with expanding Xiaomi on the global stage
And there has been speculation that Xiaomi will use this week's launch to make its move on the US market.
"There are several roadblocks to Xiaomi international expansion," said Mr De Renesse. "Smartphones are distributed differently across countries. For example, operators are key distributing partners in Europe, and Xiaomi would have to work with them if it were to launch in the UK.
"The software and services the company has developed for its phones need to be customised for each country to handle different languages and tastes in content."
BEIJING — China is notorious for its knockoffs. But now comes a knockoff of one of the gods of American ingenuity: Steven P. Jobs.
In a country where products
like iPhones are made but rarely invented, Lei Jun — entrepreneur,
multimillionaire and professed Jobs acolyte — is positioning himself and
his company as figurative heirs of Mr. Jobs. The Chinese media have
nicknamed his company, Xiaomi, the “Apple of the East.”
The title is a stretch, by
almost any measure. But Mr. Lei nonetheless is carefully cultivating a
Jobsian image here, right down to his jeans and dark shirts. He is also
selling millions of mobile phones that look a lot like iPhones. Chinese
consumers — and deep-pocketed investors overseas — seem to be believers.
And yet Mr. Lei’s biggest
believer may be himself. He bounds onto podiums to introduce new
cellphones. He proclaims things that may, to many, sound outlandish. For
instance:
“We’re making the mobile
phone like the PC, and this is a totally new idea,” Mr. Lei, Xiaomi’s
chief executive, said during an interview at the company’s spacious,
high-rise headquarters here. “We’re doing things other companies haven’t
done before.”
That might come as a
surprise to Apple and Samsung Electronics, the twin giants of
smartphones. But Xiaomi (pronounced SHAO-mee) did sell $2 billion in
handsets in China last year. It is emerging as a force in China, the
world’s largest mobile phone market, and it expects its revenue to
double this year.
Mr. Lei, for his part,
hardly discourages comparisons to Apple and Mr. Jobs. And why would he?
Founded by a group of Chinese engineers three years ago, his company
sold seven million mobile phones last year by using designs that mimic
the look and feel of the iPhone and using marketing that seems right out of Apple’s playbook.
It’s no surprise that
entrepreneurs aspire to create a Chinese Apple. Many talk about moving
China beyond the dead end of assembling devices for other companies.
So far, however, true innovators have been scarce. At best, they have adapted others’ technology to the Chinese market.
Mr. Lei has attracted
believers because no company’s annual revenue has reached the $1 billion
mark in China faster than Xiaomi, not even Amazon, which took five
years to get there. Xiaomi did it while earning a profit.
Its backers include Qiming
Venture Partners, the venture capital arm of Qualcomm and Digital Sky
Technologies, an investment firm run by Yuri Milner, an early backer of
Facebook, Groupon and Zynga.
Xiaomi, which is privately
held, says an initial public offering is years away. But the company is
worth $4 billion, according to its latest round of financing last June.
If that valuation holds up,
it would make Xiaomi one of China’s most valuable technology companies,
behind Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent and Netease.
The company caters to
young, college-educated people who want a smartphone but cannot quite
afford one, people like Lu Da, a 26-year-old education consultant in
Shanghai.
“I chose Xiaomi because it’s good value for the money,” he said.
Skeptics say the company
produces low-price iPhone imitations with no significant software or
hardware advantages. They also say the company faces stiff challenges
from Apple and Samsung, which are in a position to offer low-price
smartphones.
The marketing power of
bigger local handset makers like Lenovo, Huawei and Taiwan’s HTC, which
together recently sold about 25 percent of all smartphones in China,
cannot be discounted either.
Whether the company
succeeds, its rise has solidified Mr. Lei’s reputation as a start-up
wizard. Part entrepreneur and part start-up investor, he spent more than
a decade at the Chinese software company Kingsoft and took it public in
2007. (He remains chairman and holds a $300 million stake.)
He also invested in a
string of successful software and Internet companies, including YY, an
online social platform that went public on the Nasdaq stock exchange in
the United States last year and is now worth about $1.5 billion. One of
Mr. Lei’s earliest successes came in 2004, when Amazon paid $75 million
to acquire his e-commerce company Joyo.com.
“Lei Jun is a phenomenal
entrepreneur,” said Kai-Fu Lee, the former Google executive who now runs
Innovation Works, a Beijing-based firm that invests in Chinese
start-ups. “He’s insightful about user needs and markets, and now he has
this incredible desire to create a household brand in technology.”
Mr. Lei has revealed little
about his personal life, but he has nearly five million followers on
Sina Weibo, a sort of Chinese Twitter, and is treated like a celebrity
in technology circles.
He grew up near Wuhan, a
gritty industrial city in central China, and studied computer science at
Wuhan University. It was during college, in 1987, he says, that he read
a book about Mr. Jobs, and decided to emulate him.
“I was greatly influenced
by that book, and I wanted to establish a company that was first class,”
Mr. Lei said. “So I made a plan to get through college fast.”
After finishing his
coursework in two years, he joined Kingsoft, a Chinese software company.
A talented engineer with sharp marketing skills, he worked his way up
into the executive ranks, and was named chief executive in 1998.
At Kingsoft, he also found time to set up Joyo.com and to become an angel investor in dozens of other companies.
“He has vision,” said Liu
Ren, a longtime friend who runs an investment fund. “He sees trends
earlier than others and is always ready to adjust. For instance, Joyo
started as a downloading platform and at the beginning YY was just doing
RSS subscription.”
With $41 million in initial
financing, Mr. Lei teamed up with a former Microsoft and Google
engineer, Bin Lin, and five other engineers to set up Xiaomi in a small
office on the outskirts of Beijing.
Work began in 2010 on a
software platform for the phone adapted from Google’s Android system.
The company also sought out many of the same suppliers and contract
manufacturers that worked with Apple, including Qualcomm, Broadcom and
Foxconn.
In August 2011, Xiaomi
introduced its first smartphone, the Mi-1, which sold out in two days.
The Mi-2 was released last August, and sold out so quickly that some
analysts claimed Xiaomi was creating artificial shortages to generate
buzz through “scarcity marketing.”
To lower costs, the company
cut out middlemen and distributors, selling directly through its Web
site. The marketing was not just innovative for China, the company said,
but allowed Xiaomi to sell smartphones for just half the price of the
iPhone or Samsung Galaxy phones.
Xiaomi also outsources
designs and features online from its so-called Mi-Fans, and releases a
new version of the operating system every Friday, to add new features
and keep the Mi-Fans excited.
“For a start-up it’s quite
impressive what they’ve achieved,” Sandy Shen, an analyst at the
research firm Gartner, said. “But the question is: how are they going to
grow their market share beyond the narrow segment they’ve targeted?”
Many technology analysts
and investors in China say that the company’s valuation is a bubble and
that it will be difficult for Xiaomi to maintain its growth.
Mr. Lei insists his company
could sell more than 15 million phones this year. Xiaomi — like Apple —
is also looking at television.
Mr. Lei, listed by Forbes
as one of China’s wealthiest entrepreneurs, worth $1.7 billion, has
already helped create three multibillion-dollar start-ups in the last
decade. Little wonder, then, that he comes across as confident, even a
little cocky.
“We’re not just some cheap Chinese company making a cheap phone,” he said. “We’re going to be a Fortune 500 company.”
