Dialogue Glory Zhao Ming: In the past year, the strings have been too tight, and they have been carried by biting their back teeth

Text | Most talked about FunTalk, by | Wang Fangjie, Editor | Yang Yu

"The Internet is not optimistic about us, and we feel that the glory is finished."

In April 2020, Honor held an online employee forum inside, CEO Zhao Ming answered the questions of colleagues online, the more sharp the more to answer, no matter how difficult it is, it can not be avoided, everyone is watching. For example, the above one.

Zhao Ming replied to him: Well, if the opponent really thinks that the glory is not good, it is a good thing for us, and the opponent's underestimation and underestimation are definitely positive.

In fact, that April was the darkest hour of glory. After a long period of chip supply, the early batch of chips on hand was gradually exhausted, and colleagues in the supply chain procurement department could only find chips outside, grab them one by one, and do what products they had. At the lowest point of a month, the shipment volume was only a few hundred thousand units, and even the original one-day shipment was not enough.

In March, Glory held a channel meeting in Sanya, distributors and retailers came, everyone drank a lot of wine, some people said that they wanted to spend the most difficult time with Glory, and some people said that they wanted to make some money in Glory in the past few years and take it all out.

To this day, when Zhao Ming remembered that night, he still got stuck, and his eyes moved away from people's faces, suddenly becoming far away.

From the parties' perspective, trust is also a form of pressure.

This startup is no longer as well-supported as it used to be at Huawei. It has to keep itself alive under limited resources, try to ensure that dealers have water, so that everyone can live to the day when glory restores supply. At that time, where each mobile phone was going to flow had to be distributed through the Headquarters of China. But it is too difficult, and there are still many people who can't get a share.

By April, the inventory was almost exhausted. This moment is marked at the bottom of a smile curve.

Two months later, upstream chips resumed supply, and Honor's sales in China rose rapidly until the end of September, almost at an all-time high, and surpassed Xiaomi to rank among the top three in the country.

Overseas markets also began to restart in early October. For most of the year, there are no products to sell overseas, and Honor's overseas employees can usually only give a prediction when communicating with customers, but under the influence of various factors, the forecast is often dropped. Until October, the Honor 50 series began to be listed simultaneously in Europe, Africa and other regions.

Finally, the time has come to rejoin the global competition, and many of our honored colleagues have applied to work overseas, which is certainly not an easy decision, and the world is still in a state of epidemic outbreak outside of China. Someone really went after the stroke and calmly accepted the treatment.

But even at the bottom of the valley, a lot of work can't be stopped. In this daily competitive environment, in order to seize the market share of Huawei's withdrawal, opponents continue to increase the supply of new products downstream on the one hand, and frantically grab chips upstream on the other hand. If Glory had not prepared earlier, he might never have been able to get out, fulfilling the wish of his opponent.

Because the chip is out of supply, Honor has not released a new product for too long. So at the beginning of 2021, Zhao Ming vowed that no matter what, he must turn the rhythm of supply over.

In this year, honor opened fire across the board, the X series priced at 1500-2000 yuan was sent in two generations of 20 and 30 consecutive generations, the Play 5 series was released in the above 2000 gears, and the digital series that focused on flagship positioning released the Honor 50 and 60 generations of products in half a year, unprecedented.

In August 2021, Honor launched the high-end product line magic3 series, with a price of 4599 yuan all the way up to 7999 yuan. Just a few days after the beginning of 2022, Honor released the first folding screen mobile phone, the Honor magicV series, and the price bandwidth was widened to 9999 yuan again.

This rhythm puts a great strain on the entire company.

Every product needs front-end R& D work, if it is still in Huawei's system, things are of course much easier, because it is backed by a 100,000-person R & D team, may inadvertently be able to use one of the group's technologies and capabilities. But when it came out, Honor brought 4,000 R&D personnel.

Zhao Ming later recalled that everyone was "biting the back teeth to carry things down", in order to ensure that the 50 series can be listed as scheduled in June, the glory of the research and development team experienced 211 days of urgent march, in the case of 45 days later than the opponent to get the Snapdragon 778 chip information, and finally released the product 30 days earlier than the competitor.

It's not just the rhythm of supply that needs to be adjusted. With independence, Glory faced a crisis, but it also established a new strategic positioning, or an opportunity to reinvent itself. It no longer plays the younger part of the dual brand, but to fully participate in the market competition and gradually move towards high-end.

As Ren Zhengfei promised during the farewell glory period: "Be Huawei's strongest competitor in the world, surpass Huawei, and even shout down Huawei, become a self-motivating slogan for you." ”

After all, it is impossible to really shout like this, in August, Zhao Ming took the lead in the industry to shout out: "There will be a war with Apple", but to defeat Apple, it is not so easy, and it is necessary to comprehensively benchmark on software and hardware.

Therefore, in this year, although the R & D team is uneven, Honor still set aside a team to carry out the research and development of magic live intelligent engine, Zhao Ming's goal is to create a system and software experience that can be compared with IOS, as early as the Huawei period, he has firmly believed that the operating system and personalized experience are the strategic control points of the product.

"Finally we can make the best product according to our ideals, which is the biggest reward for us, there is no problem with the ceiling, to break it." Zhao Ming said that he and his team have a sense of happiness.

On January 11, around how glory has gone through this year, Zhao Ming chatted with institutions such as "The Most Talking" for two hours. Although it is not the time to write a memoir, this trajectory of fate, which has been changed because of a special event, deserves to leave a mark in the present.

It may be a comma, it may be a dash, but it is by no means a period. Like every tenacious life, always recovered after the first rain of spring.

The following is the conversation with Zhao Ming, with abridgements.

01 The breadth, breadth, and depth of decision-making are greater than ever

Q: As an independent company, is the scale of strategy different from before?

A: Before glory did not come out independently, our strategy was Huawei and honor dual brands, after independence, you can choose the same strategy as the original glory, you can also choose to benchmark Apple. We chose a completely different strategy.

In the new strategic positioning, we go to win the competition.

Q: Did you ever think about benchmarking Apple before you became independent?

A: I didn't think about what I wanted to do with apples at that time. At that time, in the dual brand, glory's positioning was still aimed at young people's brands, and how to achieve cooler technology and more dazzling design in the whole design was what glory was thinking about at that time.

Q: From Magic 2 to Magic 3, there was a three-year hiatus in the middle, and it was also because the Magic series and Huawei had a competitive relationship, so it was not done at that time?

A: In fact, when I was doing Magic, there was a conflict with the positioning of Huawei's Mate series and P series. But more importantly, at that time, we regarded Magic as a breakthrough and exploration of future technology, which was a series of products of technological idealism.

Today, we have regained our technological idealism.

For today's Glory, every step of the Magic series is for us to break the original ceiling and limitations, it is an arrow, carrying glory to continue to push the ceiling up.

Q: Are there any differences in other aspects, such as the chain of decision-making and the extent of management.

A: The resource integration is more complete and thorough. Maybe in the original platform system, there was balance and coordination of these resources, but now all the resources are under the glory company, and the responsibilities and responsibilities of balance and coordination have also come to me.

Q: Will this make a big difference for you personally?

A: As far as I am concerned, there is no essential change. Because the glory of management at the beginning was also a relatively independent system, with a high-level above, and today I also have a board of directors above me. It's just that the breadth, breadth, and depth of decision-making are greater than before.

To some extent, I also have to do a good job of self-restraint and restraint to avoid greater losses caused by wrong decisions. In business decisions, the CEO has to assume core responsibilities, and the arbitrariness of decision-making will bring more problems. Therefore, within our company, there are various committees that play a role, such as products, compliance, is to concentrate more people's wisdom to balance the decision-making.

Q: Judging from some previous interviews, you still have a strong Huawei background on you, such as remembering "survival of the fearful". As the scale of decision-making becomes larger, is there a deeper understanding of this sentence?

A: Definitely every day there will be problems, but the difference between big and small. Many times, in the end, it is necessary to make a decision, it is a few hundred million, dozens of billions of investment, this process involves a lot of judgments, such as the judgment of the further development path, the judgment of consumer recognition, but also involves the judgment of risk. So after independence, I realized this more deeply. The good thing is that your nerves will be tempered more and more coarsely.

02 If you don't rush forward quickly, you will always run behind the rhythm

Q: Magic V is priced at 9999 yuan, which exceeds the expectations of many people, because everyone originally expected to be more than 10,000 yuan.

A: There are actually different opinions in the company, can we price it higher? With high pricing, these goods can also be sold and can make a little more money. Several products on the market now are either product design and experience are not at all a level, or the pricing is high, and the experience is not as good as ours.

But in the past, the recognition that folding screens can be used as the main machine has not yet been established. In this way, we hope to achieve this recognition. Let everyone quickly unify their thinking in the face of controversy, and don't spend time and energy on it anymore.

Q: Ultimately, what will be the brand label that everyone thinks of glory, such as some brand UI is particularly good, and some business is particularly good.

A: In terms of intelligence, we can definitely do the best.

Q: How to ensure that this intelligence is not self-righteous intelligence, for example, I am just passing by the subway station, but the mobile phone calls up the subway card.

A: Making products is also a kind of value to some extent, which will involve what kind of logic you use, technology is not tendentious, but engineers have, enterprises have, which also determines that the intelligent experience of each manufacturer and platform is not the same.

Advertising mobile phone recommendations is certainly unacceptable to consumers. For example, at lunchtime, when I am familiar with your habit of using Hungry, I will recommend Hungry to you, not Meituan.

Q: For a long time before, the proportion of online and offline sales of Honor was basically five or five, and the latest data reached three or seven open, which offline dealers should have made a lot of efforts.

A: Last March, we had a channel meeting in Sanya, and glory was really difficult at that time. But everyone knows that Glory will definitely come back and will bring different things to the mobile phone market, so they are willing to accompany Glory through the most difficult times, and even take out the money they made in Glory before.

Everyone drank a lot of wine that day, and I was really touched, honor has always insisted on the idea of "having friends and having a future", everyone believes in us, because they believe so they see.

Q: At the end of October, the overseas market also restarted. What are the goals of overseas markets?

A: In 2022, overseas will definitely develop at a high speed, and we will be more patient, with the goal of surpassing the Chinese market in three to five years. Because China is also growing, the growth rate overseas will be faster.

Q: In the past year, the frequency of Product Releases of Honor has been very high, and this acceleration is targeted or has to be chosen.

A: We have to adjust the rhythm, in the first half of 2021, Honor is out of stock, and many products shipped in the second half of the year, including Magic3, should theoretically be issued in the first half of the year. So we have to deliver them quickly, and then we can settle down, think about it and optimize it.

Because I have to do technical reserves, and to do product delivery, but also to maintain and improve the satisfaction of existing users, in this process, the strings of the entire team are particularly tight, which makes me feel very entangled and unbearable. But if you don't use this unconventional way and rush forward quickly, your rhythm will not be adjusted, and you will always run behind the rhythm. So, we made up our minds to grit our teeth and carry it.

But there are certainly not so many products this year, and if 2022 is still like the release density in the second half of last year, our team will be crazy, and the market will be crazy.

Q: But at the beginning of this year, Honor is the first manufacturer to release flagship products, or a folding screen.

A: Folding screen is too expensive investment, money is on the one hand, more is the investment of research and development resources, from this point of view, we have to start to prepare key technologies from the first half of the year, until the hinge technology breakthrough, we made up our minds to make this product.

Some people say that our hinge supplier is brought out from Huawei, which can bring out so much, in fact, in the end, everyone's choice is different. The basis for development is on the day of independence on November 17, and then on this basis everyone forks in development. To this day, the software system and system, the folding screen are our own things.

Q: In this process of acceleration, you need to make decisions very quickly, right?

A: I can't attribute everything to myself, our core team is more radical than I am in many cases. For example, the president of our product line is a product fanatic, very hot, and very thoughtful. So in the product field, his work and thinking are very complementary to me. Because of the balance and combination between the teams, we are better able to make the right decisions.

And I will focus more on the construction of the system, balancing the relationship between short-term and long-term. There is no short-term, and people cannot live, but people cannot live in dreams.

Especially strategically, I have to consider making everyone unwavering and unswerving. For example, in the strategy of high-end rise, the research and development investment of a folding screen is definitely the order of investment of the entire Magic 3 series. But the sales of magic V and Magic 3 are certainly not a grade. In the short term, you can't expect magic V to bring much profit. But if you break through it, you will achieve a huge breakthrough in high-end strategy, leading consumption, and product innovation. After passing this hurdle, looking at other things in turn, it will be very easy.

It's not that no one questions me if I'm the CEO, it's normal, but when everyone is questioning you, you have to hold on.

Q: Do you think the development over the past year is in line with expectations? How many points are given to the team?

A: After Honor came out of the Huawei system, the family foundation was not so thick, so many times, we had to do something that seemed to be beyond our own capabilities at the time, and the whole team worked very hard in the past year, especially the research and development team.

Standing in the moment, I think it's basically in line with expectations, and if it's a perfect score of 10, we give ourselves about 8 points.

Q: Where are the remaining 2 points?

A: Objectively speaking, many aspects are not enough, such as the resoluteness of some decision implementation. Because there are more trade-offs every day, I will wonder if I can be more decisive and resolute in standing in the situation at that time.

03 If this industry really rolls apple down, it is a skill

Q: Last year, the entire chip market was tightly supplied, will the old injuries of such an industry spread this year?

A: Compared with 2021, the chip problem will have some structural relief this year, and the overall shortage will improve. Because there is another reason in 2021, Huawei and Glory suddenly left the market for a while, and everyone came to grab this market, so everyone is over booking. At that time, we were happy to see it, and if the chips of each family were satisfied, it would far exceed the market capacity. Unless there are special circumstances, few companies will starve to death, and they will all die.

Q: Based on historical reasons, the glory impact on the high-end is slightly later, but the latecomer has an advantage is to see more clearly, the current trend, folding screen, self-developed chips, etc., which we will follow, which will not?

A: We don't talk to others, we don't show up with others. And always being led by others and public opinion is not necessarily the right choice. I'm more interested in lengthening the time to see if the decision was made right.

Including the matter of making chips, it can be said that making chips is not difficult for Glory, I was doing algorithms at the beginning, and the person in charge of Kirin chips was out of my team, so I am very clear about the core key points of making chips. In fact, the real difficulty is to do SoC chips, if you don't do SoC chips, there are many design companies that can cooperate.

For Glory, if we need such a chip in the technological development route, and we can't find it in the industry, we will consider doing it ourselves.

Q: Will Glory respond to the challenges launched by those friends online?

A: I'm still used to speaking with facts and products. Even when Glory was the first brand on the Internet, you see when I tore people on the Internet, this is not what I am good at, I still hope to use facts to punch others in the face.

Q: So they're taking the initiative?

A: The competition of the product, the comparison of functions and performance, are normal. We'll also compare Apple. However, this process should be based on objectivity and seeking truth from facts. Frankly, today Apple is doing a better job than we are in the overall system design and consumer experience. However, Apple also has Apple's shortcomings. Honor's goal is to take the lead in surpassing Apple's experience in China's service ecosystem, such as various Internet services supported by the Magic Live intelligent engine. We're already better than Apple in terms of communications. Of course, compared with Apple communication, people will say are you bullying people?

Q: Now the mobile phone industry is relatively internal, everyone's overall price is stuck below 4500 yuan, it is difficult to go up, it seems to be in the low-end to do homogeneous things.

A: I think or what we do does not meet the needs of consumers, everyone is still at a relatively low level of repetition, which is also the glory of the comeback has been vigilant, to have a more sober understanding of themselves, do not complain about the world, do not blame the market and consumers, consumers are always right, to ask themselves whether they have made products that make consumers scream and amaze.

Objectively speaking, the flagship products of 2021, there is nothing that I can recognize. It's not that with flagship chips, consumers have to recognize you. Because he didn't buy chips, he bought the experience. The price is determined by the value, you did not sell well above 4500, that is, the value you provide to consumers is insufficient, including the value of the brand, the value of experience, and the value of use.

Now look, the competition has reached a new state, as everyone said, the entire industry is relatively inward-volume. In fact, the inner volume means that the time has come for change and breakthrough. Otherwise, if you roll in, the value of this industry will be greatly reduced.

I'm still optimistic overall, after all, Apple's value is anchored there. If this industry really rolls apple down, it is a skill. Otherwise, it is actually just a feeling of being rolled up.