Xiaomi Spins Off POCO as an Independent Company

Xiaomi said today it is spinning off POCO, a sub-smartphone brand it created in 2018, as a standalone company that will now run independently of the Chinese electronics giant and make its own market strategy. From a report: The move comes months after a top POCO executive — Jai Mani, a former Googler — and some other founding and core members left the sub-brand. The company today insisted that POCO F1, the only smartphone to be launched under the POCO brand, remains a “successful” handset. The POCO F1, a $300 smartphone, was launched in 50 markets. Xiaomi created the POCO brand to launch high-end, premium smartphones that would compete directly with flagship smartphones of OnePlus and Samsung. In an interview in 2018, Alvin Tse, the head of POCO, and Mani, said that they were working on a number of smartphones and were also thinking about other gadget categories. At the time, the company had 300 people working on POCO, and they “shared resources” with the parent firm.