Last year, in January, Xiaomi split its Redmi brand of budget smartphones to make it independent and since then, the brand has launched several smartphones as well as had expanded its presence to other product categories as well.
Now, Chinese phone maker Xiaomi is repeating the same with its sub-brand Poco. Manu Kumar Jain, Xiaomi India MD and Global Vice President has today announced that Poco will now be an independent brand.
Given that the announcement comes from Xiaomi India Managing Director Manu Kumar Jain, it seems that the brand will be focusing on the Indian market only, at least for the initial time. This can be further confirmed through the brand’s online presence as the new Twitter handle is @IndiaPOCO while the website is now poco.in.
Manu Jain made this announcement through a tweet in which he said: “Excited to share: #POCO will now be an independent brand! What started as a sub-brand within Xiaomi, has grown into its own identity. POCO F1 was an incredibly popular phone. We feel the time is right to let POCO operate on its own. Join me in wishing @IndiaPOCO all the best.”
Excited to share: #POCO will now be an independent brand!
What started as a sub-brand within Xiaomi, has grown into its own identity. POCO F1 was an incredibly popular phone. We feel the time is right to let POCO operate on its own.
Join me in wishing @IndiaPOCO all the best.
— Manu Kumar Jain (@manukumarjain) January 17, 2020
Xiaomi’s POCO brand garnered a very strong fan following ever since the launch of its first smartphone — the Pocophone F1 back in August 2018. The major reason behind the popularity of the phone was its unique segment in the industry — top-of-the-line specifications at very aggressive price point, similar to how OnePlus started operations.
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However, after Poco F1, the company didn’t launch another other smartphones. There were several reports and rumors about Xiaomi working on the next Poco smartphone, but nothing was materialised. Then, rumors started that the company is shutting down Poco unit as it had launched the Redmi K20 lineup in India, which was placed in the similar segment as the Poco lineup.
The announcement about Poco becoming an independent brand comes just days after there are reports about Poco F2 smartphone coming soon. A few days ago, the company’s trademark filing for the Poco F2 surfaced online and recently, a new Xioami smartphone named Poco X2 was also spotted on Geekbench.
While we are not sure what smartphone from the Poco brand is coming, but with the rise in rumors and leaks related to a new Poco smartphone and the company’s announcement regarding the brand, we expect that the next-generation Poco smartphone isn’t far from getting official. What do you think?
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