Is Xiaomi Fooling Indians? Why Company Launched POCO In India

We all know about the growth Xiaomi has seen in Indian smartphone market. Xiaomi has certainly found a way to attract Indian customers and that too in big numbers.

The company has recently launched its sub-brand named POCO and amount of attention POCO F1 is getting, it is expected that this sub-brand will follow the success path as Xiaomi did.

We are not against Xiaomi or anything but was there really a need for launching a sub-brand for selling smartphones in India? Well, we think marketers of XIaomi are pretty smart and they know how Indian market works.

Xiaomi first conquered the online smartphone market in India but when the company came to know about the number of customers that buy offline, it happily started offline stores too, but that made them launch different phones in the similar price range. You will be surprised to know that still, 60-70 percent of Indians prefer buying phones from offline stores and this is the reason why brands spend so much on advertising offline. In a time span of 1 year, Xiaomi has increased its market share in the offline market from 0.5 percent to 20 percent.

Xiaomi saw a very high demand in India for smartphones in the price range of Rs 6000- 12,000 and the company made sure to capture the market by launching phones in this price range with minor differences in their models. Every new phone Xiaomi launches, it creates a buzz in Indian audience to leave the old phone and update with the newer one.

Xiaomi has maintained a trusted brand image and is giving competition to big brands like Samsung and Apple. Like Xiaomi, other smartphone brands such as Oppo, Vivo and OnePlus are also doing great business offline.

Also Read: Why Oppo & Vivo Are Ruling The Indian Offline Smartphone Market?

Why POCO F1 ?

POCO F1 has similar specifications to Mi 8, then why did Xiaomi launch it with a sub-brand? In my opinion, Xiaomi is just trying to distract everyone from knowing why Mi 8 isn’t here yet? Plus with POCO, they can afford to make changes and the company wants to do in Xiaomi phones but is scared to lose customers.

With POCO, Xiaomi can experiment a lot and still maintain the market presence with the parent brand. The thing that makes me feel that Xiaomi is fooling Indian customers is why the company isn’t launching its other flagship phones in India when customers in other countries are happily buying them. Is making a new sub-brand just for the sake of following a safe marketing strategy a good idea?

POCO F1 Specifications