After more than a year of inactivity, Xiaomi might be prepping to launch a new device under the Poco brand next year. The announcement comes from the GM of Xiaomi Indonesia and the head of Pocophone global, Alvin Tse, who just hinted that the brand might be revived in 2020. There’s no further information on the subject for now, but you can take a look at his tweet for yourself to make up your own mind about what it means.
You will hear more from POCO in 2020 ♥️
— Alvin Tse #MiFan (@atytse) December 21, 2019
Rumors prior to the launch of the Redmi K20-series in India claimed that the company might rebrand one of those devices as the Poco F2 in the country, but as we now know, things didn’t quite materialize that way. In fact, in what was seen as the last nail in the Poco coffin, the brand’s operational head, Jai Mani, called it quits earlier this year, just a week after the launch of the Redmi K20 and K20 Pro in the country.
Mani’s resignation came at a time when the global tech media was already speculating over the future of the Poco brand and, was seen as further proof that Xiaomi may be deprecating it in favor of existing lineups. Adding more fuel to the fire, an IDC analyst in July claimed that the company may be planning to scrap the value brand for good.
On its part, Xiaomi always denied plans to kill off the Poco brand, although, it never openly talked about its Poco F2 plans either. Following Jai Mani’s resignation, the company released a statement to ET, saying: “For Poco, nothing changes because of an executive leaving and work will go on as planned (on future Poco products)”.
Now that the company is seemingly working on a new Poco smartphone, it will be interesting to see how it will be positioned vis-a-vis some of the other upcoming products in the company’s lineup, including the Mi Note 10, which is expected to be launched in India next month.