Xiaomi creates new Poco brand to take on Samsung, Huawei in premium smartphone market
The launch of Poco in India next week would come after Xiaomi was unseated by Samsung as the country’s leading smartphone brand in the second quarter
Xiaomi, the world’s fourth largest smartphone supplier, is set to introduce a separate mobile phone brand, Poco, to take on industry leaders Samsung Electronics and Huawei Technologies in the premium segment of the global Android handset market.
The first device under the new brand will be unveiled on August 22 in India, according to Jai Mani, Xiaomi’s head of product for Poco, in posts made on his Twitter and Facebook accounts on Monday.
Mani, who joined Xiaomi in 2014 after working at Google from 2009 to 2013, first confirmed the Chinese company’s Poco project in social media posts on Friday, when he described “making a powerful smartphone with the technologies that truly matter”.
“Recently it feels like the pace of innovation in the smartphone industry has slowed down, while prices are creeping up with flagship smartphones now past the US$1,000 mark,” he said. “We set out to build something to buck the trend.”
It would be a strategic launch in India for Poco, which means “little” in Spanish, because it would come several weeks after Xiaomi was unseated by Samsung as the country’s leading smartphone brand in the second quarter.