Super hit smartphone brands/lineups that lost their way

When you end up with a super hit brand, it is very important to remember why that brand is loved by consumers and improvise on those core features. When you try to revamp the brand into something else, it makes even the hard core fans move to a different brand offering feature set for which they were buying phone. Here are four smartphone brands or sub brands that created super hit phones and then lost the fan base as they forgot what made the brand popular.

Poco : From flagship killer to rebranded Redmi clone

Ever since iPhone entered smartphone market, there were only two flagship killers. OnePlus One and Poco F1. I still remember he kind of hype created for Poco brand and how F1 absolutely lived up to justify the hype. For the first time since Mi entered India, they achieved success in flagship space and they finally had a brand for which consumers are ready to pay 30k or more. Many went ahead and paid upto 30k for the top spec carbon fibre finish model of F1. That was the time when everyone compared the Poco F1 with iPhone, Galaxy S series, OnePlus series.

The Poco F1 truly stood tall. For just 21k, buyers got a phone with top of the line Snapdragon 845, UFS storage, excellent camera system, IR face recognition, dual stereo speakers, liquid cooling etc. Xiaomi was able to sell truckload of units of Poco F1. A year later , there was huge amount of buzz and every Poco fan was waiting for the successor to Poco F1.

And they waited.

Finally, Poco announced a new Poco smartphone, the Poco X2. It was nothing like the F1. Poco management went to extreme ends to compare it with Realme X2 smartphone. They went so overboard that I think they promoted Realme more than their own brand. There were Twitter fights between Manmohan and Realme India head Madhav Seth. It was ugly and it was unncessary.

Still, Poco F1 fans waited for the next flagship killer from Xiaomi.

And they waited.

And they waited.

Xiaomi tried their luck again with flagship space by launching Mi 10 Pro, pricing at 50k INR and it was dead on arrival. With little bit of corner cutting, had Xiaomi created a 35k Mi 10 without 5G, curved display etc and named it Poco F2, it would’ve taken the fight to Oneplus 8 series which is having hard time selling due to camera/display issues.

Poco released a new phone, the Poco M2 Pro which is just a rebranded Redmi 9 Pro with faster charger and now, the comparison was with Redmi phones and Realme 6i/Narzo phones. The backlash from Poco fans was severe this time. Yes, Poco does sell lot of phones but that is more due to low price good value and there is no passion towards the X2 or M2 Pro. The passion that you see with Poco F1 is missing. For X2 or M2 pro, it is ‘either this phone or other phone, whichever is cheaper’. But with F1, it was ‘if you do not get F1, you are going to miss a lot’. It someone says F1 is bad, they would get massive backlash from F1 fans, reminiscent of Apple fanboys.

In a matter of two years, Mi/Xiaomi turned a brand that was competing with OnePlus/Oppo/Vivo/Samsung into a copycat brand that fought for breadcrumbs. In this same duration of 2 years, Realme evolved from a low cost phone brand into a brand that brought 5G smartphone to India, created stunning phones like X2 series, X3 series, X50 etc. While Poco brand value plummeted, Realme’s went through the roof. A flagship killer became budget brand and a budget brand became champion in sub 30k range.

Oppo Reno : From camera and power champion to overpriced me too lineup

The Oppo Reno is one of the best looking phones that Oppo ever created. The shark fin style pop up camera module is truly unique and the camera had 10x zoom (5x optical, 10x hybrid). While previous Oppo phones came with underwhelming chipset, this one came with Snapdragon 855. Oppo Reno 10X was priced at Rs 39,990 and it was worth every rupee.

Just like Poco F1, the world expected a worthy successor to to the Reno/10x. Oppo launched the Reno 2, 2Z and 2F. Reno 2 was priced at 35k at launch. Compared to Reno 10x, it came with lot weaker Snapdragon 730G, had slightly smaller display and battery and yet, Oppo priced it very close to Oppo Reno 10X price. That instantly killed the Oppo Reno 2. Though Oppo also launched Reno 2F and 2Z, under 30k, these phones were ignored mainly due to the MediaTek chipsets and also due to the fact that better phones were available from competing brands.

Then Oppo came with Reno 3 series and again, due to MediaTek chipset and overpricing of phones, these Reno models too ended up with lacklustre sales. The same is the fate of Reno 4/Pro. The Reno 4 pro is priced at 35k and it is powered by Snapdragon 720G. Can you guess which other phone has 720G chipset? Redmi note 9 pro that costs 12k INR.

Thanks to the confusion that is created around Reno brand, Oppo ended up with product line up that is insignificant and forgotten. Atleast Poco X2 and M2 Pro are selling. New Reno phones are decorating shelves in shops.

Nexus/Pixel : From ‘this is how you make Android’ to ‘this is how it should not be’

From the first Nexus phone that arrived in January 2010 till the Nexus 6P that arrived in September 2015, the Google branded phones created benchmark in providing clean and fast Android experience with super fast updates. The strategy of teaming up with OEMs to create one perfect Google phone every year worked very well. Then, Google decided to kill Nexus and push for in-house designed Pixel phone.

There was one major flaw in Google’s Pixel plan. Earlier Nexus phone were made OEMs who knew what they were doing. Those phone were rock solid with no hardware bugs. They were super reliable. Most of the phones were variants of stable models. Icing on the cake was that these phones were affordable. Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 sold like hot cakes. They looks great, priced lower and were butter smooth. Two of the last three nexus phones, Nexus 6 and Nexus 6P had this industrial design that looked so good that buyers turned towards Nexus as the holy grail of Android.

For Pixel phones, Google worked with HTC to create the phone. Every single pixel phone had some or other hardware issues and reliability issues. While the first pixel was okay to look at, every other pixel is an ugly phone. On top of this, Google created Pixel as a premium flagship. All pixel phones are overpriced, lacked features to compete with other Android phones and iPhones. Yes, they do take amazing photos and astro photography but that is the only thing that is good with a Pixel phone. When compared to Nexus 6/6P, the pixel phones looked like toys.

While Nexus phones were always affordable, Pixel phones were overpriced. While Nexus phones were beautiful, Pixel phones looked average at best. While Nexus phones were rock solid, Pixel phones crashed and had way too many hardware bugs. The only good thing with Pixel phones is camera and many were not ready to burn a hole in pocket for a camera that can do calls.

The worst was yet to come. Pixel 4 and Soli. Google announced that Pixel 4 will come with Soli that can sense gestures etc. They did not even consider that the 60GHz spectrum that the Soli sensor uses is restricted in some of the countries.

Motorola Moto G : Lenovo does it again

When Google acquired Motorola, they created three lineups that turned out to be super hit. The Moto G, Moto X and Moto Z. The best of these three was the Moto G lineup. Till Moto G5, the lineup enjoyed massive success. Every household in India would have atleast one variant of Moto G. From Moto G6, Lenovo tried to change the brand image of G series by adding more premium looking features and up the price and it back fired spectacularly.

Moto G has four hey features that made it a major hit. Moto G was a sub 16k phone series. Moto G came with clean android experience and no bloatware. Moto G came with legendary reliability of Moto devices. Moto G had this perfect fit in hand that is essential for those who just need a phone that fits well in hand and doesn’t cost much. While G6 was reliable and came without bloatware, it had brittle glass back and price was upped. But the G7 was instant flop as it was priced at 19k and was over priced for those specs. G8 too met with same fate. As there were much better phones available for that price, Moto G disappeared into shadows of Redmis and Realmes.

Do not forget the brand image, do not forget the fan base

When you end up with a super hit brand, it is very important to remember why that brand is loved by consumers and improvise on those core features. When you try to revamp the brand into something else, it makes even the hard core fans move to a different brand offering feature set for which they were with you. The same happened for all above mentioned brands and product lineups. Look at Redmi or Realme. These brands continue to deliver phones that have the core features that made these phones super hit phones few years ago. They do sell higher specced and higher priced varuants but they never went away from selling phones that made the lineups a fan favourite.