China's Xiaomi Announces New Venture To Bring Budget Flagship Smartphones To Over 50 Markets; Announces $300 Handset Featuring Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845 (venturebeat.com)

Chinese electronics giant Xiaomi has made a name for itself selling impressively durable smartphones at aggressive price points. But the company has so far focused on low and mid-tier handsets that it mostly sells in China and neighboring countries. At an event in New Delhi, India today, the world's fourth largest smartphone maker announced an ambitious plan to expand its offerings and reach. From a report: Xiaomi announced a new venture called Poco under which it plans to produce and sell high-end handsets that would compete directly with the top offerings by OnePlus and Samsung, two companies that have demonstrably performed well in what analysts call the "budget flagship" smartphone segment. To mark the debut of the new venture, the company today unveiled the first handset under the Poco umbrella, the Pocophone F1. The handset houses top-of-the-line hardware modules, including Qualcomm's flagship Snapdragon 845 SoC, a 20-megapixel selfie camera, and fast-cooling tech to sustain performance, in a polycarbonate body. The base model, which in addition to Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC also features 6GB of RAM and 64GB of expandable storage, is priced at Rs 20,999 ($300), less than half the price of an arguably comparable Samsung handset. The handset, which runs a customized version called MIUI, which is based on Android 8.1, would be sold in more than 50 markets, the report added.

Further reading: Chinese Smartphone Maker Xiaomi Says It is Working To Enter the US Market Next Year.

Comments

Wait what?

[Ecuador]

"But the company has so far focused on low and mid-tier handsets..."

I beg your pardon? Xiaomi for those who actually know the company, because indeed it had not been trying to sell globally until relatively recently, was well known for its high quality, yet inexpensive, flagship Mi series. Sure, their cheaper series like the various Redmi were higher volume, but one of the main points of the brand was that you can get a flagship phone that was higher quality than the other Chinese makers and still stay at around $250 - $300. It was always trying to be "the Apple of China".
I got tired of paying $600+ for Samsung Galaxy, especially given various issues I had and the Mi 4 was the first time I switched to Xiaomi, to find out I could get the same hardware, including things like Gorilla Glass etc, for almost a third of the price, with a longer lasting (and non-exploding) battery. And I even preferred the Android distribution (MIUI) which does get updated often.
And Xiaomi went beyond run-of-the-mill flagships, e.g. their original Mi Mix was one of the first "bezel-less" phones and it got copied by many companies. I currently have last year's Mi Mix 2, which was the first smartphone that I found "exciting" in quite a long time (I guess since the amazing Nokia N9 running Maemo/Meego).
So, no, a $300 flagship is what they have been doing for several years now, and they had Snapdragon 845 phones for a while (Mi Mix 2S), so the only difference I see is that they now are starting to give very silly names to their new phones. As much as I have enjoyed Xiaomi, I cringe at the thought I'd get a device called the "Pocophone". Oh, and they are trying to expand their markets, but that's not exactly news, they've been doing steps for a while now (e.g. the Mi Mix 2 was their first phone that supported US LTE bands like T-Mobile so they seem to be preparing for jumps to the West).
And no, I don't mind that (in addition to Google etc), Xiaomi tracks me instead of Samsung. I mean, it's in the price of owning a smartphone, get a feature phone if you want to avoid it.