When Vivo announced the first iQOO smartphone in early 2019, it was marketed as the first phone under Vivo’s new gaming smartphone line. More than two years later, the iQOO line has gotten bigger and now includes mid-range and upper mid-range phones that don’t have the design we have come to associate with gaming smartphones. New info from China says that iQOO will become independent next year.
This should not be too surprising considering this is a common trend among Chinese manufacturers. Honor was originally Huawei‘s online brand targeted at a younger audience before it became an independent company. Redmi and POCO also started out as smartphone lines under Xiaomi before becoming independent in 2019 and 2020 respectively while Realme was under OPPO when it first began business a few years ago.
The info comes from the Weibo user @Arsenal who has a good track record when it comes to leaks. According to a post made earlier today, iQOO will become an independent brand in April 2022 which means it will now be another company owned by BBK.
Just like the other brands listed above, save for Honor, Vivo and iQOO should continue to share resources, though some departments such as sales may be separated. We may also see iQOO expand its product category to include other devices.
One question that arises from this new development is what exactly is BBK’s plan considering it just merged OPPO and OnePlus, the latter of which is a much bigger brand than iQOO. If it is merging some brands and separating others, there doesn’t seem to be a clear pattern regarding its mobile business. We hope more details surface soon.
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