After Samsung confirmed its absence the Mobile World Congress, China's Xiaomi has also decided to skip the telecom industry's largest event beginning from February 27 in Barcelona 2017. The decision comes after Xiaomi's Global Vice President Hugo Barra quit the company and joined Facebook this month. 

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The Barcelona-based event, Mobile World Congress, is one of the largest events for the global mobile industry which attracts over 100,000 attendees every year and it has a reputation as the place to show off the latest developments in mobile.

It was highly unexpected for a company like Xiaomi to skip this year's event, a spokesperson told TechCrunch. The tech giant had used last year's event to introduce the its flagship smartphone Mi5. At the event, the company gained a popularity in the West when Hugo Barra, the then head of international, took part in an on-stage interview explaining about the company and its business.

Barra announced his departure from Xiaomi this week after working for around three and a half years at the company, who is now joining Facebook to lead its VR team. According to TechCrunch, this could be a reason why Xiaomi is not attending MWC in Barcelona. But it could also be simply because the company does not have any new devices to launch during the show which means that the rumors of the Mi6's impending launch around the time of the event are wide of the mark, reports the news website.

However, Xiaomi recently launched a new smart TV at the CES event in Las Vegas earlier this month. Aside from Barra exiting on the grounds of health issues and homesickness, CEO Lei Jun also admitted that the company is entering a transitional period after growing too fast. 

With an ambition to expand globally, the company extensively poured in humongous sums of capital into the businesses, reports the Tech Portal. Additionally, for the first time in its five-year history, Xiaomi did not reveal how many smartphones it sold last year.