Image source @ Visual China
Wen 丨 Internet jianghu
Just when domestic mobile phone brands are fighting to impact the high-end market, Samsung is coming back.
Recently, some media reported that Samsung has set up a new China team and plans to return to the domestic mobile phone market.
At present, since Samsung closed the Huizhou factory, there are less than 20,000 employees left in China, and the business is also concentrated in the semiconductor field, with a mobile phone market share of less than 1%. According to the Tianyancha APP, Samsung (China) Investment Co., Ltd. has cancelled 3 of its 8 subsidiaries in China.
The return of Samsung has brought new competitive pressure to the high-end of domestic brands, and the high-end road of domestic mobile phone brands seems to be more and more bumpy. So, how to go down the road of brand high-end next? How glory and millet face the competition of Apple Samsung in the future, we may wish to investigate deeply.
From "hard technology" to "soft power", the high-end brand is from the surface and inside
Looking back at the high-end road of domestic brands, it has roughly gone through two stages:
One is the "quasi-high-end" stage from the 2000 price point to the 4000 price point, and the other is the high-end stage that now hits the 6000 price point.
The first stage is to fight hard power, everyone is desperately stacking hardware, smoothing out the gap with the first echelon in hardware. In the second stage, in fact, more fight is "soft power", the key is to build the core of high-end brand.
What is the core of high-end?
Differentiation of the user experience.
The so-called high-end, in fact, is to make users have a sense of superiority. To create a sense of superiority in experience, it is actually dependent on a differentiated user experience. That is to say, in the face of high-end market competition with Apple and Samsung, domestic brands not only rely on "hard technology" such as processor technology, performance, endurance, and screen, but also need "soft power" to form differentiated competitiveness.
Why is the high-end of domestic mobile phone brands so difficult? Because differentiation is difficult, under the reality of supply chain homogenization, in the Android camp, everyone uses Snapdragon series chips, and the screens use Samsung and BOE, and it is difficult to make differentiated competitiveness on hardware.
Therefore, the key to differentiation lies in the system and software level.
Looking back, Huawei, Apple, and Samsung can win more than 6,000 yuan in the market, which is essentially the ability to integrate hardware and systems is strong enough. In fact, the underlying fusion of A series chips with the IOS system is Apple's killer skill. In the former Android camp, Huawei and Samsung are the few mobile phone manufacturers that have the ability to optimize the underlying Android system, and both are self-developed chips, and the understanding of the integration of software and hardware is deep enough.
For example, the rise of Huawei was not only because of the self-developed Kirin chip, but after having the chip design capability, through the optimization of the deep code of the system, it can better balance performance and endurance, when the technical advantages are effectively transformed into the competitiveness of the product, Huawei will naturally gain a relative advantage in the competition of the high-end market.
The high-end mobile phone brand competition is essentially the ability to optimize and adapt to the integration of software and hardware at the bottom of the competition. In the past, Samsung, Huawei, and Apple have a leading edge in this regard, and the arrival of folding screens has given OPPO, vivo, glory, millet and other brands new opportunities.
"At present, consumers' enthusiasm for folding screens is far from enough." A domestic mobile phone brand offline channel provider told the Internet jianghu: "The main force of folding screen mobile phone purchase is still dealer people or some scalpers."
The folding screen market is indeed still a new consumer market, the competition for folding screen high-end has just begun, and latecomers have more competitive opportunities. This may mean that with the maturity of hinge, folding screen technology and industrial chain, the folding screen market opened by Huawei and Samsung may ultimately benefit domestic brands such as Glory and Xiaomi.
On the one hand, the market share of domestic mobile phone brands is stable, and market stability is the foundation of high-end branding.
According to the 2021 Q3 Chinese market shipment share data released by the third-party agency Counterpoint, the glory market share accounted for 15%, an increase of 96% month-on-month, and the xiaomi market share accounted for 14%. Vivo, OPPO, Honor, and Xiaomi are the top four in terms of market share.
On the other hand, third-party data show that since the third quarter of last year, thanks to the increase in the shipment of folding screen mobile phones, China's high-end mobile phone market share of more than 600 US dollars has continued to expand, and domestic brands have also made efforts in this market.
OPPO, released OPPO Find N, from the perspective of product industrial design, OPPO Find N continues OPPO's consistent product design ideas, the overall style is still exquisite and fashionable, more for users to use as a daily machine.
Xiaomi, the previously released MIX FOLD is equipped with a Snapdragon 888 processor, using an 8.01-inch AMOLED foldable flexible inner screen, starting at 9999 yuan.
Honor, on January 10, Honor released the first folding screen mobile phone Honor Magic V, from the pricing strategy to the hardware configuration to the latest technology on board, which declares that this is an important product for Honor to impact the high-end market. As Zhao Ming, CEO of Glory, said, "The consumer goods market will never have the so-called big picture set." For the impact on the high-end market, Honor seems to be full of confidence.
A year after Huawei's independence, Honor also seems to be using a new flagship to prove that it was born out of Huawei's hardware and software technology and product capabilities, and is expected to establish a competitive advantage in the next high-end market competition. In fact, compared with the competition in the traditional high-end market, the high-end competition in the folding screen market tests the ability of manufacturers to systematically optimize and integrate the software and hardware.
From the successful experience of high-end in the past, today's folding screen market, the high-end of folding screen, hardware is on the one hand, and software can make users feel the difference in experience. Therefore, whoever cultivates a better software ecosystem first can gain a competitive advantage.
"The size of the folding screen is different, which means that software adaptation will bring new technical costs," an APP developer told the Internet jianghu.
In fact, for many APP manufacturers, adapting to a new model means adding a new cost expenditure, and the total number of folding screen users is not large, and it is difficult to have enough motivation to re-develop and adapt. The use experience of the folding screen is very similar to the tablet, on the tablet, many commonly used APP adaptations to the tablet are still relatively poor, and the user experience is far from reaching the level of the mobile phone.
That is to say, the competition in the folding screen market is not only a competition at the hardware level, but also a new ecological level of competition. How to achieve a first-mover advantage in such ecological competition may become the key point for the successful high-end of the brand in the future.
The Internet jianghu believes that the high-end of domestic mobile phone brands is a protracted battle, and it is also a process of "from the surface to the inside".
The surface high-end market is a market where domestic brands are difficult to compete directly with Apple, but from the perspective of "Lizi", any mature consumer market must be a highly segmented market, and the same is true for the high-end mobile phone market.
In fact, the folding screen market does prove that the high-end mobile phone market will be further subdivided, and how to dig deep into the increment of the high-end segment may also become another direction for the high-end of domestic mobile phones.
"Fighting the Country and Guarding the Country", the "Pricing Economics" in the High-end of Mobile Phone Brands
The ancients said, "It is easy to fight in the country, but it is difficult to defend the country." Although Apple and Samsung have enough experience in the high-end market, they are not once and for all, and the experience is worth pondering.
In fact, Apple has not been smooth sailing in China.
In 2016, the domestic mobile phone industry popularized the full screen, until 2017 Apple released a full-screen iPhone X, when even Cook felt the pressure from domestic brands: the innovation of the iPhone 8 directly allowed domestic brands to achieve a relative advantage in the market competition, so that Apple had to lower its revenue expectations.
In terms of Samsung, in addition to the impact of the explosion and the negative impact of the differential treatment of consumers in the Chinese market, there are actually two reasons for Samsung's defeat in the Chinese market: 1, pricing failures; 2, lack of channels.
In terms of pricing, on the one hand, it overestimated the brand premium of Samsung brands in China, on the other hand, the collapse of the second-hand market price system has made Samsung's high-end product line S series and Note series lose price support, resulting in weak sales of new machines.
Once, Samsung arrogantly thought that in the face of competition from domestic mobile phone brands, Samsung brands still have a certain premium space, it turns out that they underestimated the competitiveness of domestic mobile phone brands, consumers are not interested in the low-end models of Samsung with the same product strength as domestic brands, and more consumers in the high-end market choose Huawei.
In terms of channels, after abandoning the self-built sales system, Samsung did not give the channel system enough profits.
Some dealers have said that at that time, Huawei could give more than 16% of the profit ratio of the channel, and domestic brands could also give the channel more profit ratio, on the contrary, it was difficult for Samsung to give the channel enough profit.
Judging from the failures of Apple and Samsung, domestic mobile phone brands such as Honor, Xiaomi, and OPPO may need to pay attention to two key points when they enter the high-end mobile phone market.
First of all, high-end products are essentially a collection of advanced technologies. Among them, technology supports pricing, and the product force factor is greater than the brand element and the price element.
In other words, the technical premium of high-end products should be enough to support the brand premium. Because economically, when the value of the commodity itself to the consumer is greater than the price, then the product has sufficient market competitiveness in the market.
For example, friends who like cars may know that the tank 300 car is very hot, directly helping the Great Wall to increase the unit price of the model to about 200,000 yuan, which is in the past the height of domestic car brands unattainable, and a car is difficult to find on the market. The strategy of the Great Wall is simple and crude, the price of models with similar product strength on the market is often 400,000 yuan, and the actual value of the product is much greater than the price.
Of course, the mobile phone industry is different from the automotive industry, the gross profit margin space is limited, and the market competition environment does not allow "in-roll" competition, but for domestic mobile phone brands, as a challenger in the high-end market, the product itself must have enough technical richness to support high-end pricing.
Second, there must be enough influence on the second-hand market price system.
The Internet jianghu believes that the high-end of the brand is not only affected by the pricing strategy of new products, but also by the circulation pricing of the second-hand market.
If technical support pricing is to "fight the country" in the high-end market, then the effective control of the second-hand market price is "shou jiangshan".
One of the important reasons for Samsung's defeat in the Chinese market is the collapse of the high-end model price system, which in turn leads to the competition of domestic brands, and gradually loses the premium right of the brand. Samsung's case shows that the collapse of second-hand prices will directly affect the sales of new flagship products, and the target user group will either turn to Apple or Huawei, resulting in the loss of the high-end user market.
In fact, for mobile phone manufacturers, it is difficult to effectively control the price of the second-hand market.
Taking Apple as an example, Apple in the past two years, whether it is to suppress the subsidy channels of a certain platform or to rectify the distribution system, the purpose is to control the second-hand price system, although the circulation of the second-hand market is very complex, the industrial chain is very long, it is difficult to achieve effective control, but there will be an effect of control, apple will have an effect, the result is that after the release of 13, the price of the 12 series is still strong, but to promote the sales of the 13 series.
In addition, neither blindly pursue the shipment of new machines, the iteration of new products must also open up enough gaps, because now the replacement cycle of consumers has become longer, and many consumers' acceptance of second-hand electronic products is also improving, so the old pricing can easily affect the price system of new machines.
In addition to strengthening the influence of the channel, it is also a good idea to recycle the official channel and then establish the official sales channel. One can maximize the retention of users, and the other can indirectly affect the pricing of the second-hand market.
From the user's point of view, they all hope that their second-hand mobile phones can sell at a good price, and the reason why the Android camp cannot sell in the second-hand market is due to the limited premium ability of the brand on the one hand, and the second is that the second-hand market circulation pricing is basically not affected by the brand, resulting in the collapse of the price system. Therefore, it may be a feasible idea to influence the second-hand price system and circulation channels through official channels.
Write at the end:
For domestic mobile phone brands, the war in the high-end mobile phone market is a technical war, an ecological war, and a protracted war. In the process of brand high-end, brands such as Honor, Xiaomi, oppo and other brands have accumulated a lot of experience. Today is different from the past, after competing with Apple, in the face of potential competition brought about by the return of Samsung, perhaps today's domestic brands will be more relaxed.
For Chinese mobile phone brands, at least one thing is certain, that is, over this mountain, over this mountain, the scenery of the world will be very different.