Redmi: end of the road for Poco?
Jai Mani has left Poco. He was the driving force behind the Pocophone. Together with the new positioning of the sub-brand Redmi, this could mean the death of Poco.
With its new sub-brand Redmi, smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi is targeting the mid-price segment. The catch? It doesn’t make any sense to keep Poco and Redmi. And Xiaomi seem to have realised this now. Looks like major changes are ahead.
Source: India Times/Jai Mani
As the Indian daily India Times reports, one of the driving forces at Poco, Head of Product Jai Mani, has left the company. This creates a sensitive vacancy at Poco, which might mean the end of the young brand.
Redmi resurrection
Redmi isn’t new: the first smartphones in the Redmi series were launched as early as 2013. As these phones are good and low in price, they’ve proved popular in the mid-price segment. Since January 2019, Redmi is officially its own brand, a sub-brand of Xiaomi. The rise of Redmi prompts the question of how Poco's existence is justified.
Poco made its debut last year with the Pocophone F1. The conceptual-technological differences between Pocophone’d F1 and a Redmi phone are tiny. Thus, if Xiaomi was to continue both brands in their current form, the specs and prices would have to be almost identical. But does it make sense for Xiaomi to invent two phones that cater for the same price segment?
A soft kill?
In an interview with the India Times, a Xiaomi India spokesperson said: «For Poco, nothing changes because of an executive leaving and work will go on as planned». This could imply that the plan is to kill Poco. The opposite of a soft launch might happen: while a soft launch involves introducing a new product to the market without much marketing activity, a soft kill could see Poco disappear from the market. This would mean using resources in other places and putting development work into Redmi.
In any case, with the new focus on Redmi and its positioning as a brand of its own, the market won’t be missing anything.
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