Xiaomi is starting to look like a car manufacturer with how many sub-brands it has: Redmi, Poco, Mito, CC, Black Shark, the list goes on. Only one phone was ever released under the Poco name, the wildly-successful Poco F1, which was developed by Xiaomi. Poco is now being spun off as Xiaomi's new sub-brand, with a (somewhat) independent team.

Xiaomi announced today that Poco will now operate independently, with its own market strategy and resources. Speaking to TechCrunch, Xiaomi Vice President Manu Kumar Jain said, "We feel the time is right to let POCO operate on its own now, which is why we’re excited to announce that POCO will spin off as an independent brand."

The announcement didn't reveal how the new company would be structured, and how much autonomy Poco would have. Xiaomi spun off its Redmi brand a year ago in this same fashion, but devices from the two companies remain either closely related or are simple rebrands. OnePlus and its parent company Oppo operate in much the same way: new Oppo phones usually give clues about what the next OnePlus device will look like.

At the very least, now we know the Poco brand isn't dead. There are undoubtedly plenty of people interested in seeing a Poco F2, but with Poco supposedly now in charge of its own market research, it remains to be seen if a sequel phone would have the same killer price as the F1.

Source: TechCrunch