POCO explains its new market strategy ahead of its next phone launch

Following POCO’s split away from parent-company Xiaomi, the company’s General Manager in India, C Manmohan, has explained POCO India’s new market strategy ahead of its next phone launch. The company will be forced to compete with both the Mi and Redmi series of smartphones, whilst retaining the same philosophy of “everything you need, nothing you don’t” that made its first (and only) smartphone, the Poco F1, so successful. What’s interesting is that, for the time being, C Manmohan will continue to work out of a Xiaomi office, closely with Xiaomi headquarters in Beijing. The company will grow more independent in the future, and will legally become its own entity in time.

“I think, Mi and Redmi have their own standing in the market — in fact, a very strong standing in the market,” said Manmohan in conversation with Gadgets 360. “But Poco has been able to differentiate itself and kind of lived its life for the last one and a half years as well. For the time being, you will see me in Xiaomi’s office, because we are kind of leveraging their resources for the time being,” he said. “Now coming to Xiaomi and Poco relation — how would that work? Poco will get a product team of its own, a sales team of its own, and a marketing team of its own.”

However, the company will still continue to store data on Xiaomi servers and leverage its after-sales service as well. The company’s departure from Xiaomi will not be immediate, and they will continue to make use of the resources of Xiaomi offers, including continued usage of MIUI for Poco. The Poco F1 will still continue to get updates, and future devices shouldn’t be much different from the F1 either. The company will not sell future devices through Xiaomi-exclusive stores, however.

“Some of my Poco fans say that it is much more stock Android-ish,” he said. “So essentially, we are kind of, leveraging that and with our Poco fans feedback and the community feedback, we’ll work towards making it much more better and better. So, that’s the plan right now.”

The company may also aim to copy the “fan” model of Xiaomi, creating its own “Poco fan” community. The company intends on listening to existing and new buyers in order to plan its own expansion, to meet the requirements of users and nothing else. The company hasn’t decided on price segments for its smartphones yet, but Manmohan knows that they will likely be in competition with Xiaomi.

“Whether Xiaomi will be competition, I’m guessing, yes,” said Manmohan. “Of course, it’ll be a competition and so will Xiaomi also face the heat from Poco, right? But having said that, at the end of the day, if customers are winning, everything is hunky dory.”

On Poco F2 news, Manmohan was quiet. All that he revealed was that it will be a direct successor to the F1, offering a high-end chipset and great value for money. He also revealed that it may even debut this quarter, with the company set to evaluate other options outside of smartphones in the future as well. It’s worth clarifying that the Poco brand is limited to India – Pocophone is still owned and controlled by Xiaomi, and will still operate globally as per usual.

“One thing we are very clear about is that the smartphone market in India is something which is extremely important right now,” said Manmohan. “And from me being Poco India General Manager, I will continue to be focussed on that. Now Poco plans globally is something which we are kind of thinking through — it might take some more time for us to kind of validate that.”

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Source: Gadgets 360

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