“That phone? That phone is a pain in the ****.” Those were the words of a rather emotional executive when we recently asked him about the Poco F1. After
“That phone? That phone is a pain in the ****.”
Those were the words of a rather emotional executive when we recently asked him about the Poco F1. After all, the phone has notched up sales of 700,000 units globally since its launch, a figure that in itself has sparked some confusion. After all, there are some numbers that are considered noteworthy in the mobile business. Fifty thousand, A hundred thousand. A million. Multiples of a million.
Seven hundred thousand is not one of them. It is much more than a hundred thousand, but not a million either. You cannot even call it three-quarters of a million.
So when Xiaomi’s Vice President Manu Jain tweeted on December 5 that the Poco F1 had “700,000 users across the globe,” a number of people were mildly confused. Was this a big number? After all, did not its rival, the OnePlus 6 sell a million (1,000,000) units globally in a mere 22 days? But then, others will point out; it was the first device from a new brand so was this figure actually impressive? After all, did not even the mighty Apple sell “only” 1.4 million units of the iPhone in its first year? And if it was that low a number, why was the company’s VP tweeting about it?
The truth, as always, is somewhere between all these extremes and we will not really know until we have detailed figures (and even then, there will be debate aplenty). What we can however say is that this is definitely a significant number, even though Jai himself often insists “ It is not just about numbers, you know! ” Seven hundred thousand might not seem too large a number on its own (especially in an industry which talks in millions), but it becomes significant because of the cross segment of price segments which it affects.