Last year, Xiaomi came in with a new brand called POCO. It was developed for the overseas market only. Moreover, under this brand, the manufacturer designed the cheapest smartphones in the niche. But since then much has changed. Now there are two independent brands supported by Xiaomi – the original Mi series and the Redmi series. The latter is going to become Xiaomi’s representative in Europe and other markets outside China. So does Xiaomi still need POCO? According to 91mobiles, IDC analysts said that Xiaomi may plan to stop its smartphone brand POCO.
Recently, Xiaomi just launched the Redmi K20 Pro, a flagship smartphone equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 processor. It is way better than the POCO F1, which is one of the most affordable smartphones equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor. It turns out currently Xiaomi has released a few flagship smartphones under three brands and they all are struggling against each other. The company doesn’t need this at all.
An IDC analyst said that POCO was launched to provide low-cost high-end processor phones. But at present, Xiaomi launched the flagship Redmi K20 series, which conflicts with the positioning of the POCO series.
It is worth noting that when interviewed by the Economic Times, Xiaomi’s Indian head did not say too much about the POCO brand: ‘We will not be able to answer it (question) right now. Whether the products are coming in brands or series … of course, we are working on something but what are those products and when will they come, we will not be able to share those details.’ However, the source said that Xiaomi claims the brand will continue to exist as planned.
But 91mobiles (and we) guess that it would make no sense for Xiaomi to release a new POCO phone because the price of the Redmi K20 series is low enough.