Poco India Says It's Prepared With 1-Month's Stock Amid Coronavirus Outbreak

At a time when smartphone giants like Apple and Samsung have shut stores in China following the deadly coronavirus outbreak, Poco, an independent brand by Chinese handset maker Xiaomi, said on Tuesday that it is prepared to deal with the situation as of now.

"This is a very unfortunate situation and we read about it daily. Fortunately, for Poco, we have enough steps to take care of the situation including supplies. But I don't know about the situation later," C Manmohan, General Manager, Poco India, told IANS in an interaction.

The original equipment manufacturer (OEM) has one month of stock of devices for sale in India, he added.

The coronavirus threat, in the long run, can severely impact the flow of key components required to assemble smartphones at manufacturing facilities of several Chinese players in India.

When asked if Poco would follow the same go-to market strategy as Xiaomi, Manmohan said: "Xiaomi is a lot bigger brand. I don't think we are in a position to compete with them right now. We are starting to work with online channels first and will start expanding into offline channel later".

The handset maker has partnered with e-commerce site Flipkart to sell the Poco X2 (Review) launched on Tuesday with a starting price of Rs. 15,999 (6GB+64GB variant). The device will be available on the platform starting February 11.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 730G chipset-powered Poco X2 is the second smartphone from the brand, following Poco F1 that was launched way back in 2018.

The smartphone sports a side-mounted fingerprint scanner. Poco X2 runs Android 10 operating system (OS) and house a 4,500mAh battery with 27W fast-charging.

Currently, the company shares manufacturing facility in India with Xiaomi.

Is Poco X2 the new best phone under Rs. 20,000? We discussed this on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts or RSS, download the episode, or just hit the play button below.