In the commercial market, stepping on two boats can be said to be a big taboo, such as the early Meituan, which introduced the owner Alibaba from the beginning of the B round of financing, but the follow-up merger with The Dianping, which tencent invested in, eventually made Ali choose to let go of the Meituan, and cultivated a strong opponent for the Meituan, fortunately, with the support of Tencent, the Meituan is now developing vigorously. But luck is not for everyone.
For example, the veteran domestic mobile phone brand Coolpad, in the era of functional machines, can reach a year's revenue of up to 1.3 billion Hong Kong dollars, in the smart phone hundreds of controversy, is also in the forefront of domestic production, with Huawei and ZTE and so on and called "China Cool Union". But just when the industry was in the Red Sea, Coolpad was "ambiguous" with 360 and LeTV at the same time, and was eventually abandoned by 360, and after the LeTV thunderstorm, it lost 4.38 billion yuan annually, and then almost disappeared in the domestic market.
Founder of dual-card technology, annual revenue of 1.3 billion
Many people know that the brand of Coolpad began after Xiaomi made its fortune, and the name "China Cool Union" appeared, but if we carefully study the development history of these companies, we will find that the initial business of ZTE and Huawei is communication equipment, Lenovo is an assembly computer, and Lei Jun, the founder of Xiaomi, was a polytechnic man who played software before making mobile phones. Coolpad, which has been doing pagers since 1993, is the closest company to the mobile phone industry.
Coolpad's mobile phone business has begun to exert its strength in the era of feature phones since the end of the pager. Its achievements in the domestic mobile phone industry can also be regarded as a strong stroke. For example, the first CDMA color screen mobile phone in China was released, and the first GMS dual card technology was developed.
Also because of the leading technology, when Huawei, ZTE, etc. have not yet paid attention to the mobile phone market, Coolpad has created nearly 1.3 billion yuan in revenue with the mobile phone business, at that time Coolpad, can be said to be the most optimistic domestic mobile phone brand, but the market is changing rapidly, with the prevalence of Android systems, Coolpad found that its position that has been working hard for many years is not so stable.
Pedaling two boats, dragged by LeEco, with an annual loss of 4.4 billion
In the era of feature phones and even in the early days of the smartphone era, Coolpad's annual revenue performance can be said to have doubled, from HK$1.3 billion in 2007 to HK$24.9 billion in 2014, and even sat on the first seat of domestic 4G mobile phone sales in the first quarter of 2014. However, as a comparison, Xiaomi, which released its Android mobile phone a year later than Coolpad and is just starting out, has reached 68.4 billion yuan in 2015 after its revenue exceeded 10 billion yuan in 2012, almost three times that of Coolpad.
Perhaps out of the prevailing Internet thinking at that time, Coolpad, which was in the bottleneck period of its career, began to seek cooperation with Internet companies, first stripping out its brand "Dashen" and cooperating with 360 to create Qiku Technology. It later sold 18% of the company's shares to LeEco. However, Coolpad and LeTV's ambiguity attracted 360's dissatisfaction, and at that time, it said that it would sell its shares to Coolpad according to the terms of the shareholders' agreement and at twice the market price.
In the end, the dispute between Coolpad and 360 ended with Coolpad losing control of Qiku Technology, and when he turned his head, Jia Yueting, who was suffocating for his dream, also brought LeTV into another abyss. This wave of cool operations can be said to be thankless. By 2016, Coolpad's annual revenue had dropped to HK$7.9 billion, with a loss of nearly HK$4.4 billion, and in the next four years, three years were still in losses, and the domestic market was hardly a big waste.
Returning to the heat of rubbing Hongmeng again, and making a three-year covenant
What people did not expect was that when such a former leader once again caused a hot discussion, it was because of a negative news. Just in June of this year, Coolpad posted a poster on Weibo that reads "Greeting Hongmeng Tonight", which makes many consumers think that Coolpad has joined the Hongmeng camp and participated in the ecological construction of Hongmeng. However, when I entered the live broadcast room of Coolpad that night, the whole live broadcast had nothing to do with Hongmeng, so it was immediately scolded by many netizens.
In December, Coolpad once again held a press conference, telling the five years of mental history, in these five years, LeEco lost 7 billion yuan, these years have been deeply cultivating overseas markets, and now finally turned a profit, and built a new Coolpad building, today's Coolpad can be said to be a completely new look, but the market it faces is also new.
Although Chen Jiajun, chairman of Coolpad, announced that he would return to the first echelon of domestic mobile phones within three years, nearly a month has passed, and the sales of Coolpad new machines in Jingdong's self-operated stores are only more than 200 units. In this way, this old brand does not seem to have too much affection in the eyes of consumers, and for Coolpad, the three-year contract may still be far away.