Just a few days back everyone was doubtful whether the Poco brand was still alive, or if Xiaomi had silently killed it after giving us a one-hit wonder in the Poco F1. But over the past couple of days, the internet has been flooded with rumors of the Poco F1 successor, and just as our excitement of the Poco F2 or Poco X2 (or whatever it might end up being called) was about to die down, we are now getting another piece of big news regarding the Poco brand, and fans of the Poco F1 who are eagerly waiting for Poco to announce its successor are surely going to love the development.
Well, apparently the newly revived Pocophone isn't a Xiaomi sub-brand anymore. In a new development, Xiaomi has announced that the Poco brand is now a stand-alone brand and will be independent of Xiaomi, meaning that the brand will operate in its own from now on.
Poco is now an independent brand
The news has been confirmed by none other than Xiaomi India's CEO, Manu Kumar Jain, who shared a press release as well as made an official announcement on Twitter to make Poco's stand-alone identity official.
"What started as a sub-brand in Poco has grown into its own identity in a short span of time. Poco F1 is an extremely popular phone across user groups, and remains a top contender in its category even in 2020. We feel the time is right to let Poco operate on its own now," Jain said in the press release.
Redmi had spun off from Xiaomi last year
The development has also been confirmed by Xiaomi Indonesia, General Manager, Alvin Tse, who too took to Twitter to congratulate Poco India on being an independent brand now, saying that it's time to excite the smartphone scene in 2020.
The latest development would mean Poco will now run independently of Xiaomi, and will have its own team and marketing strategy going forward. Also, unlike Redmi which kind of spun off as an independent brand from Xiaomi last year, Poco will have no ties whatsoever with Xiaomi. For those who don't get us, the Redmi brand despite being officially independent, still falls under Xiaomi's umbrella and shares a lot of resources from Xiaomi. However, this doesn't seem to be the case with Poco, which is great news for the millions of Poco fans who are excited and eagerly await the brand's next smartphone.
Independent brand or just a business gimmick?
A lot of brands, especially in India, are letting their sub-brands be independent entities. Like Oppo, which earlier last year let go of Realme to be a stand-alone smartphone brand. This strategy has worked wonders for Realme, which is now the fourth largest smartphone brand and the fastest growing smartphone brand in the country.
However, this is more of a business strategy to identify the sub-brand and give it a separate identity that is slightly different from the parent brand and although brands spinoff from their parent companies, they still continue sharing their design and resources.
Being independent will allow Poco to work on different strategies including how it markets its future phones and how it prices them. It will be interesting to see how Poco operates now and whether it will be completely independent or will it continue sharing design and resources with Xiaomi.
