"similarly to" in the sentence beginning

This is a typical awkward wording I see in Japanese-English translation.

If you want to use an adverbial phrase, you need something like the following:

As with the previous version of the product, this version also contains feature XXX

I suggest something like:

As with

As in

As was (is) the case with

A related awkward structure is the following:

Similar to John, Bob lives in Tokyo.

Literally, this says only that Bob is similar to John and that Bob lives in Tokyo, but nothing about where John lives. If both live in Tokyo, then:

Bob lives in Tokyo, as does John.

Or something along those lines

I'm surprised no one's mentioned "Like...", as in "Like the previous version of the product..."

"Similarly to" (in a similar way to) at the beginning of a sentence is grammatically correct. Because many Americans generally don't use adverbs correctly, beginning a sentence with one such as this would certainly sound quite odd. People tend to go with words that are frequently used. Let's start re-educating people by using English correctly again. Don't forget that an adverb is "how" and action is performed, and an adjective describes a noun. As an English person, I prefer English English :)