Many friends who want to do cross-border business share a common understanding:Although the domestic marketislarge,it is not easy to get a piece of the cake.
Take the mobile phone track as an example, giants like Apple, Huawei, Samsung, and Xiaomi have long established their foothold. When consumers change phones, most of them still focus on these familiar faces. New brands and developing brands find it hard to squeeze into the market, making it difficult to make money.
Image source:Google
But do niche and less popular brands have to sit and wait for death?
Of course not! In Tuke's view, if you want to make your business thrive and earn real money, you can't just limit your vision to the domestic market. You need to go out and explore new growth space in overseas markets.
Even though the competition in the mobile phone industry is so fierce, its potential should not be underestimated.
According to research by grandviewresearch, the global smartphone market size is valued at $520.5 billion in 2024,and is expected to exceed $651.8 billion by 2030.
Image source:grandviewresearch
The research also specifically mentioned that the Indian smartphone market is particularly promising, stating that this market is expected to experience explosive growth between 2025 and 2030, waiting for brands to enter and dig for gold.
Some people may wonder: can this Tuke track targeting the Indian market really work?
In fact, a domestic niche mobile phone brand has already verified this with its own experience—it isPOCO.
Image source:Google
POCO's Counterattack: From Xiaomi Sub-brand to Independent Operation
According to reports, POCO is an independent mobile phone brand under Xiaomi, and its story began in 2018.
At that time, the global smartphone market had entered the stage of red ocean competition: the high-end market was dominated by two giants, Apple and Samsung, while the mid-to-low-end and emerging markets gathered strong players such as OPPO, vivo, and Transsion. Even Xiaomi's Redmi series, which focuses on cost performance, still had gaps in some overseas niche markets.
Based on this market situation, Xiaomi locked the core breakthrough for Tuke on India.
In August 2018, Manu Kumar Jain, Vice President of Xiaomi Group and President of Xiaomi India, officially announced on Twitter the launch of a new product series POCO under Xiaomi, and appointed former Google product manager Jai Mani as the head and product manager of the series.
On August 22 of the same year, Xiaomi held a new product launch event in New Delhi, the capital of India, and launched the first model of the POCO series, POCO F1.
Image source:indianexpress
With Xiaomi's hardware support, the POCO F1, with flagship-level configuration and a people-friendly price, sold over 100,000 units in its first month, received excellent feedback among young people in India, and successfully opened up the Indian market.
In January 2020, Xiaomi announced that POCO would operate independently, and the brand officially entered a new stage of independent development.
After independence, POCO accelerated the improvement of its product layout, successively launching the X, M, and C series targeting the mid-to-low-end market, building a complete mobile phone product line covering multiple price segments. At the same time, it continued to expand its sales territory, with business covering seven major regions: Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, CIS, Middle East, Latin America, and Africa.
Image source:Google
Market data from Stockanalysis confirms the effectiveness of POCO's Tuke: by the end of Q3 2025, POCO's revenue reached 440.13 million yuan, and the total revenue for the past 12 months reached as high as 1.74 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 13.43%, becoming a core force driving Xiaomi's overseas market growth.
Image source:stockanalysis
TikTok Matrix: Attracting Fans with Localized Content
Although product performance and pricing are indeed key considerations for consumers when choosing products,
in the end, these are just cold parameters. What really allows a brand to enter the hearts of consumers is precise and down-to-earth promotion.
Just like in the past, everyone watched TV, and TV commercials became the golden channel for brand sales; but now times have changed, everyone is glued to their phones, and the main battlefield for information acquisition has long shifted to mobile.
Therefore, brand promotion today must follow the trend and communicate in ways that young people like.
As a globally popular social media traffic platform, TikTok has naturally become a battleground for many brands. The protagonist we are talking about today, POCO, certainly won't miss this excellent promotion stage.
On TikTok, POCO has built an account matrix. In addition to establishing its own main brand account @poco_global_, it has also set up corresponding accounts in Russia, Indonesia, Iraq, the Philippines, Spain, Pakistan, and other countries.
Image source:TikTok
The main brand account@poco_global already has 2.4 million followers and has received 7.5 million likes in total.
This account mainly focuses on new product promotion, and most of the content released is blockbuster ads for new product series, which firmly establishes the brand's tone and conveys the core selling points of the products while users are watching.
Image source:TikTok
On the local accounts set up for different countries,POCOplays a localized approach tailored to local conditions.
What do locals like to watch, what content do they pay attention to daily,POCObrandscustomize content precisely around these preferences.
Take the account @poco.russia set up for the Russian market as an example. Local consumers, when browsing electronic products, do not like to watch rigid advertising explanations, but prefer real and intuitive unboxing review content. This account takes unboxing reviews as its main content direction.
From the data performance, the @poco.russia account has only 684,700 followers, but many videos have exceeded 10 million views. Such results are enough to prove that this content format precisely hits the preferences of local users and has an immediate effect on enhancing brand awareness and favorability.
Image source:TikTok
Influencer Empowerment: Vertical Cooperation Boosts Reputation and Conversion
Of course, building an account matrix is just one step forPOCO brand to play on TikTok.
To further amplify the product's voice on the platform, POCO has also cooperated with many vertical influencers, leveraging their influence to reach more precise consumer groups.
The TikTok tech influencer @asbytofficial, who has 129,000 followers, has cooperated with the brand many times.
Image source:TikTok
Although asbytofficial's fan base is relatively small, the promotional video data produced in cooperation with POCO is quite impressive.
Take one of the viral videos as an example. So far, this video has reached 16.2 million views and 522,900 likes.
The content focuses on the immersive unboxing of the new POCO phone, and through asbytofficial's hands-on demonstration, intuitively showcases the phone's smooth performance and high-definition shooting capabilities.
The comment section is flooded with inquiries like "How much is it?" "Can someone tell me the price?"
Obviously, such influencer content can reduce the decision-making cost of potential users and further promote purchase conversion.
Image source:TikTok
Opportunities in overseas markets belong to those who dare to venture+ know how to play
The story of POCO is not so much the success of a brand as it is a validation of the Tuke path for domestic enterprises.
It proves two things: first, even in a red ocean market like mobile phones, emerging brands can still find a space for survival through differentiated positioning; second, globalization does not mean one-size-fits-all, localized operations and finding the right platform for promotion are the key.
Nowadays, as the consumption potential of markets such as Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America continues to be released, the window period for Chinese enterprises to Tuke is still expanding.
But opportunities always come with challenges. How to avoid price wars? How to understand local culture? How to acquire customers at low cost through new channels such as TikTok? There are no standard answers to these questions, but POCO's experience at least points in one direction, that is, to first find the right niche market, and then use flexible tactics to "fight big with small".
There is never a lack of competition in overseas markets, what is lacking are players who dare to step out of their comfort zone. When the domestic market is no longer viable, maybe changing the battlefield will reveal a whole new world.