In June 2020, ZTE carried out a large-scale integration, and Nubia, which had operated independently, officially returned to ZTE, bringing back two mobile phone brands of Nubia and Red Devil, and also brought back Ni Fei, who was the president of Nubia at the time, as the president of ZTE Terminal Division.
In this year, the smartphone market has suddenly changed, as the head player of the Chinese smartphone market, ZTE smelled a long-lost opportunity.
Integrating resources and letting professional people do professional things, ZTE, a mobile phone brand that has gradually faded out of the vision of many people, sees the possibility of reshaping brilliance. In the following year or so, we saw the mass production of the first off-screen lens mobile phone, and also saw the Red Devils occupy a place in the game mobile phone industry.
Nineteen months later, Ni Fei once again sat in the spotlight and was interviewed by the media. For the achievements he has made in ZTE in the past year and a half, whether he is satisfied with the changes in ZTE in the past year or so, and where ZTE mobile phones should go in the future, he answered one by one.
I am not satisfied with the results of the past year or so
On the last day of 2021, Ni Fei, senior vice president of ZTE and president of ZTE Terminal Division, delivered a New Year's speech for 2022. Among them, he mentioned a set of figures: in 2021, ZTE terminal shipments exceeded 100 million units, of which 50% were self-developed chips, and at the same time, the 5G CPE market share ranked first in the world.
When asked what he thought of the achievement, Ni Fei bluntly said that he was both satisfied and dissatisfied. The satisfactory part includes more than 100 million terminal shipments, the world's first market share of mobile terminals and more than half of the self-developed chips, which is undoubtedly ZTE's last pride as a veteran of the communications industry.
The point that Ni Fei was not satisfied with was focused on the single category of smart phones. Ni Fei admitted that at present, ZTE mobile phones have been away from the head camp for a long time, and if you want to reshape the glory, ZTE mobile phones still have a long way to go. Obviously, this is also the original intention of ZTE to integrate the Nubia brand and let Ni Fei become the president of the terminal business unit.
In March last year, ZTE announced a new market strategy of "1+2+N" intelligent ecology, in which smart phones were placed in an absolutely important central position. For the current stage of the smart phone market, it is no longer the incremental market of the "China Cool Union" era, this point ZTE is naturally very clear, Ni Fei also said that ZTE is not in a hurry, they hope to achieve steady market growth in the next few years, through the coordination of intelligent hardware ecology, to regain the right to speak in the mobile phone market.
Walk on three legs, deeply cultivate offline channels, and ask Wu Jing to serve as a spokesperson
Of course, this is not a slogan, and ZTE needs to act on it. After Ni Fei returned to ZTE in 2020 and became the president of ZTE Terminal Division, he re-integrated the mobile phone brands of ZTE and Nubia, and established a market strategy with ZTE, Nubia and Red Devil as the core and three legs to walk.
ZTE's positioning is a creator, with the concept of innovation and action; Nubia is creating a new image of a younger personality; the Red Devils are clearer, facing the gaming crowd, paying more attention to the ultimate performance and cooler brand label. Ni Fei introduced these three brands in this way in the interview.
The purpose of this is undoubtedly to open up the differentiation of its own brand in the current stock market of smart phones to cover more users. The advantage of resource integration is that the three brands can share the upstream supply chain and R & D team, which maximizes the cost savings, but at the same time, the three brands will have different differentiation in product positioning, product characteristics and market promotion.
At the same time, ZTE, an old mobile phone manufacturer, also knows the importance of channel sinking, in the face of such a huge Chinese market, it is difficult to cover more markets and regions by relying on online channels alone, so for ZTE who wants to revitalize the smart phone business, channel construction has become a topic they cannot avoid.
Ni Fei said that ZTE has launched a large-scale construction of offline channels in 2021, and nearly 7,000 self-operated stores and cooperative stores will be built offline at the end of 2021, including related on-the-counter actions, which will be done faster in 2022.
At the same time, he also revealed in the interview that in 2022, ZTE invited Wu Jing as the spokesperson of ZTE mobile phones, hoping to let more people understand ZTE's products through such a well-known actor as Wu Jing.
Small target for 2022: domestic revenue growth 2 times
Ni Fei clearly gave the goal of ZTE terminal in 2022 in the interview, they hope that in 2022, the domestic market revenue growth will increase by 200%, and the international market revenue growth will increase by 50%, which also means that the domestic growth rate will be 3 times per year, and the international annual growth rate will be 1.5 times.
Ni Fei is very realistic, he said that only in this way can we have the opportunity to close the gap with the head manufacturers in smart phones as soon as possible.
For the goal of channel construction, Ni Fei also said that in 2022, ZTE's goal is to expand at least 20,000 cooperative stores and related partners, and this number will be more and more in the next few years, which will become ZTE's long-term strategy in the future for a period of time, and continue to increase investment in both brands and channels.
ZTE's three-legged market strategy, whether it can change ZTE's current market pattern, needs to be left to time to verify, but it is undeniable that ZTE is ready to fight a protracted war when it announced the integration of mobile phone resources in 2020 and let Nubia and Red Devils return to the large system of ZTE terminals. From the words and phrases of Ni Fei's interview, you can also feel it.
Integrating resources, controlling costs, channel rollout, market publicity to keep up, it is obvious that the second return of ZTE mobile phones is not an impulsive decision, they have been prepared both internally and externally. The first task in front of ZTE now is to achieve the "small goal" of 2022 that Ni Fei said.