POCO to refresh entire lineup in India in first half of 2022, more 5G phones incoming: report | 91mobiles.com

Sharma told Gadgets360 that POCO is not planning to introduce any new smartphone lineup this year. Instead, the brand plans to refresh its current offerings with new ones in the next four months. “We’re not adding more complexity right now,” said Sharma. He further added, “We’ll definitely have at least one model in each of the series.” So, we’ll be getting new smartphones in the POCO F, X, C, and M series. The latter is getting refreshed today with the POCO M4 Pro 5G.

Since the government is preparing for the 5G spectrum auction this year, Sharma expects higher demand for 5G smartphones, and the company wants to cater to this demand. Sharma said, “Now, I think it makes a lot more sense to have 5G phones. And we’ll definitely do that”. As the name suggests, the POCO M4 Pro 5G is a 5G phone, and it’s the first launch for the company in India, and as per Sharma, there are going to be more of them this year. However, it will be challenging to balance the portfolio between 5G and 4G offerings as per Sharma.

“Now, I think it makes a lot more sense to have 5G phones. And we’ll definitely do that.”

Sharma notes that offering affordable smartphones isn’t as easy as before. “Affordability is going to be tough because if you look back for the last two, three years, at least in the entry-level lineup, there isn’t too much of an option. Things haven’t really changed too much,” he said in the interview. 

Sharma didn’t shy away from revealing more information about the upcoming smartphones. He suggests that some of the upcoming smartphones would be priced similarly to the POCO F3 GT, and some might be a little bit costlier than it. “I will probably breach the price points that we had on the Poco F3 GT and go up a bit more, but may not be a massive step, because I don’t really want to put a shock to the system suddenly,” he added further.

POCO Pop Buds coming this year?

Last but not the least, POCO plans to branch out from the smartphone segment to other segments as well. Last year, POCO asked its community members to name its upcoming TWS earbuds, and ultimately the fans chose the POCO Pop Buds. However, we’ve been waiting for them for a long time. But now, thanks to Sharma, we at least know that they are en route, but we don’t know when POCO plans to unveil them.

Talking about the company’s plan of expanding its portfolio, Sharma said, “From a team perspective, one of our key priorities for 2022 is to go beyond phones. I don’t want to say anything, saying that we’ll definitely do it because we’ve been trying to do it for the last, I think, five quarters. Explaining why the company hasn’t reached that point, he further added, “And we’ve basically run into roadblocks, mostly internally saying that we don’t like it, or this is not really hitting that particular threshold.”