Wen | Zhang Shule (Columnist of People's Daily And People's Post and Telegraph, Observer of Internet and Game Industry)
A few days ago, there is news suggesting that a new generation of Xiaomi Tablet 6 is about to be launched.
However, the new tablet can only be regarded as promised at best, and many of Xiaomi's own problems have unexpectedly exploded.
A tablet, still can not support a few collapsed ecological chains...
Li Weixing, a founding employee of Xiaomi 12 and vice chairman of the Xiaomi Technical Committee, was exposed by the media to leave the news.
Prior to this, Xiaomi's two co-founders Huang Jiangji (Employee No. 4) and Li Wanqiang (Employee No. 3) also left Xiaomi.
The 13 people who once drank millet porridge with Lei Jun are still 10 people left.
In addition to the founding team, those who are gradually "abandoning" Xiaomi are also the ecological chain enterprises behind Xiaomi. The launch of its own brand, opening up marketing channels and suppliers, and the drama of "escaping millet" are being staged in xiaomi to varying degrees, as well as in the xiaomi ecological chain.
In this regard, Su Shu, a reporter from Phoenix WEEKLY Finance, had an exchange with Shule, and poor Dao thought:
If you are inseparable, it is difficult to give up, and the faces of Xiaomi, founding employees and ecological chain companies are all written with unwilling chicken rib labels.
Xiaomi and ecological chain companies are pushing each other forward in the game.
From the mobile phone peripherals such as charging treasures and headphones, to household hardware such as plug-in panels, smart lamps, air purifiers, sweeping robots, etc., the more and more products enter the market with the "Xiaomi" or "Mijia" brand, and those companies that oem for Xiaomi or Mijia brands have a common name: Xiaomi ecological chain enterprises.
But this is bound to produce a lot of follow-up problems, including homogeneous competition of products, difficult to produce explosive models, and even due to excessive dependence on millet, including patent research and development, technology sources, etc., it will also be criticized for the company's science and technology board attributes.
"Is 'ecological chain head enterprise' a good word or a bad word?" In the second half of 2020, at an annual meeting of the Xiaomi ecological chain, Qu Heng, the current head of the ecological chain, threw questions to the ecological chain CEO present at the opening.
"According to the revenue ranking of seniors, tear each other down, beware, this is not what we want." Qu Heng said.
This is the current situation of the Xiaomi ecological chain, an embarrassing inner volume.
The data is more convincing, according to Xiaomi's third quarter 2021 financial report, Xiaomi invested in more than 300 IoT ecological chain companies. In 2020, the growth rate of Xiaomi IoT and consumer goods fell sharply to 8.57%.
The expansion is too wide, and it has become sanda, so it is either a scattered soldier who has left the line, or a left and right fight between the millet ecological chain enterprises in the small circle.
Detachment becomes a rhythm.
For example, in 2017, Stone Technology launched its first private brand product - Stone Sweeping Robot. From 2017 to 2020, the proportion of revenue received by Stone Technology for Xiaomi's foundry business has shrunk from more than 90% to less than 10%.
The most typical is Huami, which created the "commercial special case" of the Xiaomi bracelet.
In July 2014, Xiaomi and Huami jointly launched the 1st generation of The Xiaomi Bracelet. In 2015, Huami Technology released its own brand Amazfit, and in 2018, it acquired the core assets of the smart wearable brand Zepp.
Huami Technology's third-quarter 2021 financial report shows that its own brand shipments increased by 89% year-on-year, and the shipments of wearable products such as Xiaomi bracelets for OEM were down 45.3% year-on-year.
The ninth company that landed on the science and technology innovation board in 2020 clearly mentioned in the prospectus that "the company does not belong to the typical ecological chain enterprise defined by Xiaomi." ”
In fact, when the star millet ecological chain enterprises began to milletize that year, millet was actually "tightening" its own ecological chain.
Previously, it was reported that Lei Jun had put forward a new problem for Xiaomi: how to build an ecological chain centered on car manufacturing.
However, the ecological chain of car manufacturing is already very different from the mobile phone ecological chain, xiaomi's previous "supplier + Internet" method copied to the car-making plan is obviously not possible, and car-making is a huge challenge for Xiaomi in terms of cost and technology.