Poco announces a new India head and teases a new flagship phone

Xiaomi’s off-shoot Poco which prefers to be seen as an independent brand has announced the replacement of its outcount country head, Anuj Sharma. To recall Sharma has moved back to Xiaomi to head the marketing operations as a part of a massive corporate rejig.

According to Poco, Anuj Sharma will be succeeded by Himanshu Tandon who has been with Xiaomi for close to five years and is a part of the founding team of Poco in India.

Apart from announcing the new country head, Poco made two more announcements. The first one was aimed at helping the end customers by increasing the number of after-sales support centres. The company plans to increase the number of service centres to over 2000 to offer an “enhanced customer experience.”

While the third announcement was more of a teaser hinting at the obvious, the company teased the launch of its upcoming phone in India. While people are waiting for the Poco F4 GT, the company might launch the Poco F4 in the global markets including India.

The Poco F4 has been making its presence felt on various platforms collecting mandatory certifications ahead of the launch. And during this process, various leaks have revealed its key specifications as well.

According to the rumours, the Poco F4 might not be as powerful as the Poco F4 GT and may sport a Snapdragon 870 SoC – which despite being an old chipset still offers a flagship experience at a budget.

The phone might come with a 120 Hz AMOLED Panel, 6GB of RAM and a 4,520 mAh battery pack with 67W fast charging tech. The phone is expected to come with a 64MP triple rear camera module and might run on Android 12 powered MIUI custom ROM out of the box.

Rebranding might not work as a long term strategy

While Poco and Xiaomi want to be identified as two different brands, both the brands aren’t doing anything that helps a user differentiate between the two.

Both the companies have been interconnected on various levels and the executive team members switching roles between the organizations isn’t helping the cause either.

If that was not all, most Poco phones apart from the first device Poco F1 – all the phones have been rebranded as Xiaomi/Redmi phones. Its current crop of devices that are already selling in the country are all rebadged Redmi Note 11 phones while the upcoming Poco F4 GT and the vanilla Poco F4 are said to be rebadged Redmi K40 series devices.

Though this strategy might have worked for Poco and the company has been able to carve out a niche for itself in this highly competitive market, this might not turn out to be a viable long term strategy. Realme is a perfect example for this.

Hence the Poco global team including the new country head needs to quickly find out ways to churn unique and innovative products if it needs to grow its customer base and wants to become a force to reckon with. 

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