Author | Yu Huiru Editing | Luo Lijuan
"Xiaomi's high-end mobile phones have officially begun to benchmark Apple and learn from Apple." A week before the release of Xiaomi 12, Lei Jun, founder, chairman and CEO of Xiaomi Group, said in spoilers on his personal Weibo.
On December 28, Lei Jun unveiled Xiaomi's most important digital flagship series of this year.
"This year we put forward Xiaomi's new three-year strategy, mobile phone sales for three years the world's first, this goal is not easy for us, because the competitors are very strong." But to surpass these tech giants, surpassing in sales is the first step. Lei Jun said.
What Lei Jun sees as the second step beyond the giants is his product strategy that spoiled on Weibo a week ago.
"We have decided to officially benchmark Apple in terms of products and experiences, learn from Apple, and surpass Apple step by step in the coming period." Lei Jun introduced that it is based on this strategy that Xiaomi has formulated a product strategy of the Mi 12 dual-size dual flagship, "one large and one small, respectively, benchmarking the iPhone13 and iPhone13 Pro Max." ”
"I think (Xiaomi) needs not only strength and investment to make a small flagship, but also the determination and courage to challenge Apple."
However, unlike the goal of selling for three years in the world, Lei Jun did not give a hard target that surpassed Apple in product strategy.
"This year is probably the year I've been criticized the most by users. After experiencing these tribulations and pains, I am more convinced of the iron law of Xiaomi - technology-oriented. Lei Jun summed up 2021.
Two years ago, Xiaomi released a five-year research and development plan, saying that it planned to invest 50 billion yuan in the next five years. Up to now, Xiaomi's R&D investment has exceeded 22 billion yuan, and the number of engineers has exceeded 16,000.
At the evening press conference, Lei Jun announced the renewal of the research and development plan: the next 5 years of research and development investment doubled to 100 billion yuan.
1
Officially benchmarked Apple
Benchmarking Apple is the mission of the Xiaomi Mi 12 series.
At the evening's press conference, Lei Jun compared the Mi 12 series with the iPhone13 and iPhone 13 Pro Max from the aspects of processor, camera, feel, weight, size and so on.
In terms of photography, the photo speed of the Xiaomi Mi 12 series has increased by 53.7%, the continuous shooting speed has increased by 209%, and the night shooting speed has increased by 39.9%, surpassing the iPhone 13 and the current mainstream Android high-end flagship.
In terms of size, the Xiaomi Mi 12 adopts a size of 69.9 mm, which is 1.6 mm narrower than the width of the iPhone 13 on the basis of completely retaining the configuration and experience of the high-end flagship. But the screen reached 6.28 inches, which is 8% larger. Refresh rate 120Hz.
Lei Jun believes that the launch of Xiaomi Mi 12 has broken the monopoly position of the iPhone 13 in the small size of high-end flagships.
In addition, in terms of performance, Xiaomi 12 series mobile phones, equipped with Snapdragon 8 Gen1 chips, the new Adreno GPU architecture, performance increased by 52%, energy efficiency ratio increased by 25%; the seventh generation of Qualcomm AI engine, performance increased by 400%.
Xiaomi Mi 12 has three capacity versions, 8GB + 128GB version 3699 yuan, 8GB + 256GB version 3999 yuan, 12GB + 256GB version 4399 yuan.
The Xiaomi Mi 12Pro, which benchmarks the iPhone 13 Pro Max, is 74.6mm wide, 3.5mm narrower than the former and weighs 205g, which is 33g lighter than the former.
In addition, in terms of display technology, Xiaomi Mi 12 Pro also debuted its self-developed intelligent dynamic refresh rate technology, which can dynamically switch between 1Hz and 120Hz instantaneously for different scenarios and different sliding speeds. This is Android's first sliding shifting screen. Lei Jun said that the performance of the Xiaomi Mi 12 Pro in display technology can be directly benchmarked against the ProMotion technology of the iPhone 13 Pro.
According to reports, Xiaomi 12 Pro first self-developed "Xiaomi Surging P1" charging management chip, filling the technical gap of the industry's 120W single cell, breaking through the technical barrier that large batteries and fast charging above 100 watts cannot be taken into account, and the battery endurance of the same capacity is increased by 1 hour.
The 12 Pro also uses a new generation of Snapdragon 8 processor, and the official Xiaomi 12 Pro's Antutu running score reached 1.07 million points, an increase of 41% compared to the Xiaomi 11 Pro.
The Xiaomi Mi 12 Pro is equipped with a 32MP front-facing lens that combines a 50MP wide-angle, a 50-megapixel portrait, and a 50-megapixel ultra-wide-angle lens. Its price is 4699 yuan for the 8+128 version, 4999 yuan for the 8+256 version, and 5399 yuan for the 12+256 version.
"This is the only small high-end flagship in the Android camp." Lei Jun said that Xiaomi 12 is Xiaomi's annual masterpiece, and in the future, Xiaomi will continue to launch a new round of impact on the global high-end market with a new positioning of dual-size and dual-high-end.
At the press conference, Xiaomi also launched the Xiaomi Mi 12X, equipped with a 6.28-inch AMOLED screen, built-in 4500mAh battery, support for 67W wired fast charging, equipped with Snapdragon 870 processor, rear 500 million pixel triple camera. Xiaomi 12X8+128 version is priced at 3199 yuan, the 8+256 version is priced at 3499 yuan, and the 12+256 version is priced at 3799 yuan.
But for the Xiaomi 12 series benchmarking Apple, the market's views are mixed.
"Everyone said that they thought Apple was hacked, but this price was also placed here, which was almost the same as expected." As long as this Snapdragon 8 doesn't pull across, I feel that it should sell well. A mobile phone industry analyst told 24/7 Technology.
The analyst believes that from the pricing of Xiaomi 12, we can see the sales status of domestic high-end mobile phones: "Lower than Mi 11, the domestic high-end is really selling, we heard from the industrial chain that the sales volume of Mi 11 is about 8 million." ”
2
Beyond mobile phones: the new MIUI13, watches and headphones
"On November 25, MIUI's global monthly active users exceeded 500 million, which means that 500 million people around the world are using Xiaomi mobile phones, and we have more responsibility to do a good job and make a better system." Lei Jun said at the press conference.
On December 28, Xiaomi officially released MIUI13. Compared with the previous version, MIUI13 further strengthens the basic experience and breaks through the underlying core technology.
The new MIUI13 achieves a maximum 52% increase in fluency. In addition, MIUI13 further optimizes multiple leading self-developed technologies such as focus computing, atomic memory, and liquid storage. The new system brings Focus Computing 2.0, which provides dynamic fine computing power allocation for high-frequency scenarios of head applications.
At the same time, MIUI13 has a new round of optimization and upgrading of atomic memory and liquid storage technology, bringing leading Android's background application residency and excellent anti-aging performance, and after 36 months of mobile phone use, the read and write performance decay is reduced by 5%.
It has become common practice to launch a variety of products at the mobile phone conference, and this conference ended with the release of the smart hand Xiaomi Watch S1, Xiaomi True Wireless Noise Reduction Headphones 3 and Xiaomi True Wireless Noise Canceling Headphones 3 Pro Lake Light Blue.
Xiaomi Watch S1 is a high-end smart watch dedicated to business people, using sapphire mirror glass, equipped with 1.43-inch AMOLED HD retina screen with 60Hz high refresh rate, with classic brown, deep sea blue, Ruiya black three leather straps with Ruiya black, eagle feather gray two fluoroelastomer watches can be selected. The first sale price starts from 1049 yuan.
Xiaomi Mi True Wireless Noise Cancelling Headphones 3 is a noise reduction headphone with HiFi sound quality, the maximum noise reduction depth can reach 40dB, and has passed the test of China Metrology Institute. When depth noise reduction mode is turned on, up to 99% of external noise is blocked.
In terms of calls, the Xiaomi Mi True Wireless Noise Cancelling Headphones 3 has hybrid noise reduction, and the three noise reduction microphones are configured in the cavity to work together with each other: feedforward, feed-back and call. In daily use, the call noise reduction algorithm with the neural network model effectively separates sound and noise, and accurately eliminates environmental noise.
Xiaomi true wireless noise-canceling headphones 3 have two colors of snow white and ink jade black can be selected, and the first sale price is 449 yuan.
The news that "Xiaomi Automobile is expected to be mass-produced in the first half of 2024" previously mentioned in the "Preview" of Lei Jun's Weibo was not mentioned at the press conference, and there was no disclosure of related content of the automobile business.
3
A year of ups and downs
"2021 is a year of ups and downs for Xiaomi, with a lot of progress, but more twists and turns." Lei Jun mentioned at the opening of the press conference.
Indeed, benefiting from Huawei's overall concession, xiaomi's market share has repeatedly reached new highs in the first half of this year. But as Lei Jun said, the competition is still strong, and in the third quarter just past, Xiaomi's mobile phone shipments were seriously impacted by Glory and Apple.
Xiaomi's first quarter report in 2021 shows that Xiaomi mobile phone shipments in the first quarter were 49.4 million units, up 69% year-on-year. In July, Third-party Market Research Agency Canalys released a report saying that in the second quarter of this year, Xiaomi's mobile phone sales surpassed Apple's, second only to Samsung, becoming the world's second for the first time, with a global share of 17%.
For Xiaomi and Lei Jun, this is "great news" worth sharing.
At the speech on the tenth anniversary of Xiaomi's mobile phone a month later, Lei Jun set a new goal of Xiaomi - to win the world's first place within three years. However, this is not an easy task.
Xiaomi's mobile phone shipments last year were 146 million units, and this year's target is about 200 million units. At present, the annual shipment volume of Samsung, the world's first smartphone, is about 260 million units, which also means that Xiaomi needs to achieve annual shipments of more than 260 million units in the next three years to sit on the world's first seat.
It has proven that it is indeed not easy to achieve new goals.
Xiaomi's third quarter 2021 financial report information shows that after achieving double-digit high growth in the first four quarters, Xiaomi's quarterly shipments fell back to less than 50 million units. In the third quarter of 2021, Xiaomi smartphone shipments were 43.9 million units, down 5.8% year-on-year. Shipments and market share fell back to third in the world.
For the decline in mobile phone shipments, Xiaomi President Wang Xiang said on the earnings call that the chip shortage has a great impact on Xiaomi's mobile phone shipments, and the problem will continue until the second half of 2022.
A TMT industry securities analyst told All-Weather Technology that in addition to the impact of the shortage of parts supply, honor regained a new life and Apple ushered in a peak sales season are also important reasons for the decline in Xiaomi's mobile phone shipments.
All-weather technology learned from the Xiaomi financial report data collation that the first three quarters of this year's Xiaomi mobile phone shipments have accumulated to 146.2 million units, if you want to complete the target of 200 million units, Xiaomi needs to achieve shipments of 53.8 million units in the last quarter.
And how much help will the high-end market that Xiaomi has high hopes bring?
In February 2020, Xiaomi released the Xiaomi Mi 10 series flagship machine, officially impacting the high-end market of mobile phones. Since the beginning of this year, Xiaomi has released high-end smartphones such as Xiaomi 11 Pro, Xiaomi 11 Ultra, and Xiaomi MIX.
According to market public information, in the first three quarters of 2021, Xiaomi's mid-to-high-end mobile phone global shipments were nearly 18 million units, compared with only 10 million units last year, which means that Xiaomi's mid-to-high-end mobile phone shipments are expected to double throughout the year.
The high-end strategy has indeed brought real gains to Xiaomi: Xiaomi's third-quarter financial report shows that in the third quarter of 2021, the gross profit of Xiaomi's smartphone business was 6.12 billion yuan, an increase of 53.3% year-on-year; the gross profit margin of the smartphone business was 12.8%, an increase of 4.4% year-on-year, returning to a historical high. At the same time, in the case of tight supply chain, the increase in the average price of mobile phone shipments exceeds the impact of price increases on the cost of materials.
But compared with Apple, the gross profit margin of Xiaomi mobile phones is still at a low level.
Apple's fiscal third quarter 2021 financial report shows that Apple's overall gross profit margin is 42.2%. Among them, the gross profit margin of various hardware products such as iPhone, iPad, and Mac was 34.3%.
Benchmarking Apple has clarified the next direction of Xiaomi's transformation into a high-end model. But the "gap" between Xiaomi and Apple still needs time to make up.
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