In the case of the low-end market from the incremental market to the stock market, how to occupy a place in the high-end market? Xiaomi Group (01810. HK) is acting on it and is acting a little anxious.
On the second day of the start of the Year of the Tiger, Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun could not wait to publish the content of the relevant "high-end strategy seminar" on Weibo, pointing out that "the road to high-end is the only way for Xiaomi to grow, and it is also the life and death battle for Xiaomi's development", and then also put the top of the dynamic, which shows its extraordinary attention to the development of Xiaomi's high-end.
Specifically, Xiaomi has clearly defined the strategic goal of high-end this time: the product and experience should be fully benchmarked against the iPhone, and the market share of domestic high-end mobile phones will be the first in three years.
As soon as the news came out, the discussion on the road to high-end millet in the market rose and fell, and many of the discussants believed that just like "Beishang Guangdong does not believe in tears", the high-end market does not play the set of "cost performance is king", but can Xiaomi play the high-end market after putting down the strong advantage of "cost performance"?
"Open a new era of smartphones", this is the slogan of the launch of Xiaomi Mi 1, since the release of the first mobile phone in 2011, Xiaomi has created an era of affordable smartphones with ultra-cost performance and Internet marketing model.
In that era of high price of smart phones and rampant pirate machines, Xiaomi 1, which cost 1999 yuan, released a "sudden rise", which opened up brand awareness at a low price and high cost performance, and gained a large number of loyal "rice noodles".
In just two years, Xiaomi won the first place in the Chinese mobile phone market in Q3 2014, and at the same time entered the overseas market, and won the fifth place in the Indian smartphone market in Q4 2014 and the first place in the Indian smartphone market in Q3 2017.
"The comprehensive net profit margin of hardware will never exceed 5%", Xiaomi, has played the cost-effective advantage to the extreme. From the perspective of Q2 2021, which has the highest quarterly shipments, Xiaomi achieved mobile phone business revenue of 59.1 billion yuan and mobile phone shipments of 52.9 million units, so the average price of each mobile phone is only 1117.2 yuan.
But Xiaomi has to face the decline in market share, in 2021 Q3, Q4 shipment growth in the case of its market share of 13% and 12%, respectively, the status of the "king of cost performance" is being shaken.
Founded in 2018, OPPO sub-brand Realme has become a batch of "dark horses" in the low-end market, squeezing Xiaomi's original track. It is reported that during the 618 period in 2021, Realme sales have exceeded 1 million units, and among many brands, they have won the second place in Android mobile phone sales, an increase of 35 times year-on-year.
In the face of OPPO, vivo and other brands competing for the cost-effective market, Xiaomi chose to face the high-end market. In fact, Xiaomi's high-end road has been gone for two years.
Since the release of the Xiaomi Mi 10 in February 2020, Xiaomi mobile phones have officially entered the high-end market. In 2021, Xiaomi released a number of high-end flagship machines, showing the determination of the brand to high-end. However, it is worth noting that although the Xiaomi 10 series and Xiaomi 11 series previously launched by Xiaomi were very successful, there were frequent price reduction activities while the price was high-end, and the price of the mobile phone with a starting price of nearly 5,000 yuan fell to 3,000 yuan two or three months later, which caused consumers to question.
On December 28, 2021, Xiaomi 12 was officially released, and Lei Jun said that "Xiaomi high-end mobile phones are officially benchmarked against Apple".
However, from the previous data, the gap between the two is still more obvious. According to the Sainuo report, in October 2021, Apple's iPhone sales were 6.5 million units, an increase of 155% year-on-year; Xiaomi's sales were 2.8 million units, down 25.8% year-on-year.
Similarly, data from HCR Huichen shows that in 2021, the share of domestic high-end smartphones (more than 5,000 yuan of price models), Apple leads with 74.26%, Huawei still maintains a market share of 17.82% in the case of two consecutive years of shortages, while Xiaomi is only 2.97%.
On the other hand, there is a chip problem that cannot be avoided, and at present, most domestic mobile phone brands still rely on Qualcomm's high-end chips, and there is still a big gap in self-developed chips.
Although Xiaomi has a self-developed charging chip surging P1, it is often questioned that there is still a lack of performance in the chip, and the messages of netizens are also "no mouth soft".
On July 9, 2018, Xiaomi Group was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange at an issue price of HK$17 per share, corresponding to a market value of HK$380.394 billion, equivalent to US$48.47 billion. Today, Xiaomi's stock price is back below the issue price, closing at HK$16.60 on February 11, with a total market value shrinking by more than HK$400 billion.
With one year left before xiaomi's three-year high-end target, how big are the opportunities for xiaomi?