Poco launches multiple 5G phones in India starting this week

Poco — the brand that was spun off from Xiaomi in 2020 — is planning to launch a series of smartphones in India this year, an executive revealed to Gadgets 360. The Chinese brand wants to upgrade its entire lineup in the country and add more 5G phones to its portfolio as early as May-June in a bid to expand its market position. To kick off its plans, the brand is launching the Poco M4 Pro 5G this week as its first model of 2022 in India.

Anuj Sharma, Country Director, Poco India, told Gadgets 360 that the brand plans to refresh its entire phone lineup to the fourth generation in the next four months.

“We are not adding any additional complexity at this point,” he said, adding that the new models will just be part of the existing Poco F, Poco X, Poco M and Poco C series.

“We will definitely have at least one model in each series,” he noted.

The last model that Poco launched in India was the Poco C31 that debuted in September last year. The phone had a starting price of Rs. 7,999 and offered features like MediaTek Helio G35 SoC along with triple rear cameras and a 5,000mAh battery.

In December, the company claimed that the Poco C-series, consisting of the Poco C3 and Poco C31, had sold over three million units in the country.

However, Sharma stressed that maintaining affordable prices is not so easy these days.

“Affordability is going to be tough because if you look back over the last two, three years, at least in the entry-level models, there’s not a lot of choice. Not much has really changed,” he said.

The executive also stated that Poco is unlikely to enter new affordable price segments in the market, but the company will be launching some new models that will be priced around Rs. 30,000.

“I will probably exceed the price of the Poco F3 GT and go up a little bit more, but it might not be a huge leap because I don’t want to suddenly shock the system,” he said.

The Poco F3 GT was launched in India at an initial price of Rs. 26,999.

“We will continue to have longer life cycles, longer than the industry life cycles. I don’t think that will change,” Sharma said.

Poco will launch the Poco M4 Pro 5G in the country on Tuesday. The phone made its debut in Europe in November.

Sharma said that Poco has made the M4 Pro 5G for both the European and Indian markets, but the launch in India has been delayed as the brand initially expected to have enough stock of its existing models until January.

The ongoing shortages of various components in the supply chain also allowed Poco to supply more and more new products.

“We had a small portfolio; we doubled our volumes and yet we ran out of most models before Diwali. So November, December and January were quite lean for us,” he said.

Poco is confident that this time it has corrected the errors in its predictions, the director said.

New 5G Poco phones are on the way
Poco already has the M3 Pro and the F3 GT as two of its existing 5G models. The M4 Pro 5G is indeed the next in the lineup. Nevertheless, Poco is planning to bring more 5G phones this year.

Sharma told Gadgets 360 that the demand for 5G will increase as the government confirmed plans for a 5G spectrum auction in its 2022 budget.

5G spectrum auctions in 2022: Stakeholders positive about next-gen network rollout in India

“Now I think it makes much more sense to have 5G phones. And we will definitely do that,” he said.

He added that it would be a challenge to balance the overall portfolio between 4G and 5G technologies.

Looking beyond phones is a top priority
Besides phones, Poco has long been in the news for working on truly wireless stereo (TWS) earbuds. In 2020, the company even announced that the earbuds would be called Poco Pop Buds. However, the offering never made it to market.

Sharma told Gadgets 360 that TWS earbuds were still in the works. However, exact details on when the earbuds would debut are still unclear.

“From a team perspective, one of our key priorities for 2022 is to go beyond phones,” Sharma said. “I don’t want to say anything, but I’m not saying we’re definitely going to do it, because we’ve been trying for the last, I think, five quarters. And we’ve actually hit roadblocks, mainly internally saying we don’t like it, or this doesn’t really hit that specific threshold.”

Last year, Poco also launched its community which it claimed would get direct feedback from its customers and improve the experience. Sharma said the community was initially in beta and only reached its stable stage last month, though it added 300 people who are actively contributing on the feedback side.

Poco has also set up a camera lab in India to offer localized camera experiences to users.

“It’s important because you know if you have a darker skin tone, even in full daylight, sometimes devices have a hard time figuring out what the exposure value of the person should be. And how do you balance that with the background? So all of those aspects are just a part of what we’re looking at,” Sharma said.

He also noted that both the community and the camera lab will work together to improve the experience and make it more useful for Indian users.

In the recent past, Poco faced complaints about rolling out a malfunctioning update that degraded the user experience. The brand acknowledged the issue and said that the problem affected only 0.2 percent of the Poco X2 units it sold in the country. However, several consumers reported the impact online.

The launch of the community will likely help Poco address such issues in the future. However, the software side of things that Poco uses on its phones is still handled natively by Xiaomi’s MIUI team. So we may have to wait and see how setting up the community can help improve the experience.

Poco X2 users complain about camera, touchscreen issues and slower charging after update

Market experts are optimistic about Poco’s growth in India.

IDC India Research Director Navkendar Singh told Gadgets 360 that Poco as a brand was liked for its smaller product range, fresh brand identity and heavy-spec devices.

“Given the intense competition in the market, where the top 5 is so dominant, Poco has managed to capture a decent market share in the sub-Rs 20,000 segment,” he said.

Like Singh, Faisal Kawoosa, founder of market research and consulting firm Techarc, said Poco had built good brand equity and product positioning. However, he noted that it was one of those brands that was hit since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020.

“Now it makes a lot of sense to go into expansion mode and take advantage of its strengths,” he said.