It turns out the rumors were true indeed. Xiaomi has just announced that Lu Weibing, the former President of Gionee, will head the independent Redmi brand. The company also confirmed we’ll meet the Redmi Note 7 at the event today, its first smartphone after becoming independent.

Lu Weibing will act as the General Manager of the Redmi brand and will be the VP of Xiaomi Group. As the head, he’ll be responsible for brand building, product design, and sales of the Redmi brand. Weibing will directly report to Xiaomi’s President and co-founder, Lin bin.  The appointment goes into effect today and he’ll present at the Redmi Note 7 unveiling event that starts in a few minutes.

Splitting up the Redmi brand will turn out to be an important move for the company. Huawei’s sub-brand Honor seems to be doing extremely well, and we’ve seen further split-ups like POCO and Realme proving successful. In this regard, splitting up the Redmi brand makes sense. However, it’ll be interesting to see how Lu Weibing steers the brand in this competitive market.

It is also worth noting that Xiaomi’s share price on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange has been falling down in recent times. The share price has fallen down below HKD 10 as of writing this article, which is more than 40% drop from its IPO price of HKD $17.

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Lu Weibing stepped down from his position as President of Gionee back in 2017. He has over 20 years of experience in this industry.

The Redmi Note 7 will be joined by a couple of other products at the event today. If you are looking for what to expect from the Redmi Note 7 before its announcement, check out this roundup from us.

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