High-end seems to have become the main tone of domestic brands in the past two years.
Author/Ketchup
Produced/Newly Excerpted Business Review
The domestic mobile phone consumer market has entered the stock.
According to data from the research institute Canalys, the annual shipment of domestic smartphones in 2021 increased by only 1% year-on-year, shrinking by more than 10% compared with before the epidemic. The market is saturated, the "replacement tide" dividend has peaked, and the profit model of mobile phone manufacturers relying on the high shipments of low-end models in the past is difficult to run through, and it has become a new direction for players to pull up ASP (average sales price) with high-end models.
Looking back at a number of domestic brands towards the high-end, both veteran players have reached the top and new troops have entered the game, among them, the relatively young iQOO has developed rapidly, and since its establishment three years ago, iQOO has climbed upward from the rookie brand and become the number one representative of the "new army".
According to the "2021 Q4 Global Best-Selling Mobile Phone Market Analysis Report", iQOO 8 Pro debuted on the list of 600-799 US dollars in the price segment with a single product of 100,000 sales, which can be seen that iQOO's brand upgrade strategy has paid off.
So why does iQOO stand out from the fiercely competitive Red Sea market, and how to achieve high-end "upgrading"? The answers are written in the precipitation of iQOO for three years.
First, with the door of "ascending dimensions" to enter the high-end
Born in March 2019, iQOO's brand name is derived from "I Quest On and On", and "Born Strong" has become its brand slogan.
Standing at the time node at that time, iQOO took the lead in jumping out of the vortex of homogenization in the low-end market, locking core users into Internet cool customers, focusing on industry-leading technology configuration.
Following this logic, the original iQOO model is not only sincere in terms of hardware specifications, but also captures the hearts of many Internet coolers through the unique side game button design.
According to public data, in the month of the first model's listing, iQOO won the first place in the sales volume of the 3000-4000 price segment of the three major e-commerce platforms of JD.com, Tmall and Suning.
The success of iQOO's first products has made it firm in its determination to take the high-performance route, and since then, iQOO has regarded performance as the core pursuit and sought breakthroughs in technology.
Taking the iQOO 5 released in August 2020 as an example, as the first 120W fast charging mobile phone to pass the security fast charging certification of Germany's Rheinland TV, it more than doubled the charging speed of the world's fastest mobile phone at that time. It is also from the iQOO 5 series that the iQOO digital series holds high the banner of "future e-sports flagship" and officially enters the high-end market.
Of course, the domestic brands that rushed to the high-end in the same period are far more than iQOO, but a number of brands that have won with cost performance, in the face of the sudden opening of the gap in the high-end market, most of them have chosen to exert efforts at the hardware configuration end, trying to enter the high-end through processors, imaging systems, endurance and other aspects.
However, in the mobile phone track where supply chain technology is fully utilized, manufacturers blindly pile up materials, but they have never been able to get rid of the vortex of homogenization, thus getting lost in high-end.
Obviously, the pure cost-effective route is not conducive to the brand's "upgrading", in contrast, iQOO, which relied on high-performance play in the past, is easier to tell the story of high-end.
From the perspective of product positioning, although iQOO takes "performance- e-sports" as the long-term main track, the previous models do not have the "cumbersome" design of the so-called e-sports mobile phone. Compared with pure e-sports mobile phones, iQOO seems to want to create a flagship product with "no shortcomings".
Based on this, iQOO has not accepted the logic of excessive segmentation of traditional e-sports mobile phones, nor has it followed the inertia of domestic brands that only value for money, but has superimposed technological breakthroughs on each generation of products, thus forming a "technology stack" in the field of mobile phones.
Therefore, iQOO's high-end road does not rely on hardware stacking, but on polishing products, which has also become the key to its "upgrading".
Taking the e-sports scene loved by the cool customer group as an example, in the early mobile e-sports competition, Apple almost monopolized the competition machine. Until the birth of iQOO in 2019, the designated machine for KPL competitions has changed, and the Android mobile phone has become the top mobile e-sports machine for the first time.
As we all know, in addition to excellent performance, the event machine has strict requirements for parameters such as the number of catons, the average delay of Wi-Fi, the average power consumption per minute, and the average FPS, which not only requires the hardware specification level to meet the standard, but also requires the mobile phone to be tuned at the design level.
Especially for the flagship processor with strong performance, the heat problem under the high-voltage use scenario is inevitable, if it is only blindly stacked and the tuning is ignored, it is likely to lead to its overheating and frequency reduction, which in turn makes the performance decrease.
Apparently, iQOO has noticed this as well. In terms of heat dissipation, from "large-area liquid-cooled heat dissipation", "graphene heat dissipation", "VC vapor plate heat dissipation" to "VC power pump liquid cooling" process to the latest "high thermal conductivity rare earth alloy heat dissipation material", each scheme has been significantly improved compared with the previous generation.
If the iterative cooling system aims to alleviate the performance shackles caused by processor overheating at the hardware level, the emergence of Multi-Turbo technology is to achieve intelligent scheduling and acceleration of mobile phones from the system level.
The AITurbo included in Multi-Turbo can greatly improve the opening speed of users' common applications; Center Turbo can ensure the smoothness of hardware resources and improve the anti-frame rate in the case of crowded background; ART++ Turbo optimizes the resource call mode from the system framework layer to enhance the execution efficiency of the compilation system and the speed of APP response...
The above-mentioned iQOO software and hardware level tuning and polishing not only makes it a KPL designated machine, but also allows iQOO to go beyond the scope of "stacking" and complete the high coupling of technology, scenarios and users.
Second, break through the mind, based on the high-end
The story of iQOO's "upgrading dimension" shows that in the high-end battlefield where competition tends to be white-hot, the model of raising ASP through superimposed supply chain technology in the past has become difficult to run through, and the meticulous polishing at the product level has become the key to breaking the game.
However, nowadays, there are many high-end battlefield giants, a number of high-end brands that sprint to the high-end with the stacking route have encountered Waterloo, and the high-end market has also been accepted by Apple, how to give up the stacking and polish the product has become the core proposition of the second half of the high-end war.
Under this trend, the "moat" of iQOO's previous building is bound to be impacted by various ambitious "players", so in addition to deeply cultivating the origin of technology, the user's mind has also become the second trump card for iQOO's high-end breakthrough.
In fact, the user's mind has always been the top priority of the brand competition, but in the past two years of high-end competition, the upgrade of the technical level has occupied too much resource investment by many manufacturers, compared with the construction of brand tonality has become a short board.
If domestic brands cannot establish high-end tonality, even if they are the top in the industry in the fields of imaging, endurance, screen and so on, they cannot continue to explore the price naturally, and the era of "fighting for the mind" has arrived.
As a new brand, iQOO has developed at a speed that far exceeds the industry benchmark in the three years since its birth, which is closely related to the brand's insight into the user's mind.
Among the iQOO user groups, the Kuke group is the majority, and The Kuke is composed of game enthusiasts and young Internet users.
Because high-quality games have high performance requirements on mobile phones and are also important scenes for performance release, game enthusiasts are already high-end customers. For this group, iQOO links to a wide-area esports ecosystem.
Since 2017, iQOO has worked with KPL and King glory to formulate competition machine standards, promoting mobile e-sports equipment standards to specialization from the industry height.
If it is said that participating in the construction of e-sports industry standards does not have too strong user perception, then the "Born to Win" e-sports documentary created with KPL has attracted great attention from the C-end market.
All along, domestic public opinion seems to be biased against the video game industry, and the dazzling players on the e-sports stage, the coaches and even the staff of each team, as an individual in the context of the times, the honor is more than sweat and bitterness.
Telling the ups and downs behind the e-sports industry, as well as everyone's pride and expectation for e-sports to rise to a competitive sport, will undoubtedly make players who love games and e-sports highly empathize, thus establishing a sense of brand identity.
However, the e-sports ecology is not the only way to play iQOO, for the pan-Internet young customers who are not interested in e-sports, iQOO co-branded BMW M Motorsport and became its top partner in the world, integrating the sense of speed and handling of racing cars into product design, strengthening the brand tone of "born strong", and establishing a connection between iQOO mobile phones and supercars, thereby breaking through the minds of young users.
During the double 11 period last year, iQOO 8 Pro won the sales crown of Tmall Android mobile phone 4.5K+ price segment, which confirmed that the cool customer tone that iQOO has been building has achieved stage success.
It is worth noting that iQOO's "attacking the heart" road did not choose the "one-way street", but has always maintained two-way communication with users.
In March 2020, iQOO celebrated its first birthday, during which it held the "Hack in future" concept mobile creation contest to establish communication with the cool customer group. On the second birthday, iQOO held a special "Cool Guest Birthday Banquet" in Shenzhen, inviting many user representatives to gather together and communicate with the iQOO product manager at close range.
Obviously, this two-way interaction between brands and users has given a sense of attention to The Cooler Network, and has also created conditions for iQOO to "attack the heart".
Third, the "3Q spirit", decisive victory in the future
Standing at the current time node, any domestic brand seems to have a heart hanging over it.
After all, Apple, which occupies most of the high-end market share, has marched down with the iPhone SE3, even if the iPhone SE3 is still ridiculed as "clearing inventory", but the persuasiveness of the iOS ecology and the A15 processor cannot be underestimated, and the Android camp is facing the battle head-on, obviously need to deepen the moat, and the same is true for iQOO.
At the product level, the "born and strong" iQOO naturally dominates the right to speak, while the task of optimizing the high-end layout is more placed at a deeper "attacking" level.
The celebration of the third anniversary of iQOO is the best opportunity for the brand to reach users deeply. This year, iQOO seized The Cooler's favor for virtual people and metaversities, and strengthened user links with the "Endless Exploration, 3Q Has You" avatar creation contest.
In the past year, the meta-universe is undoubtedly the most talked about topic among the cool customer community, and the "gel" created based on the avatar has also exploded among young people. Behind this, it reflects the expression of contemporary young people's desire to create, which coincides with the virtual image creation competition held by iQOO this time.
If the avatar creation contest is another peak of two-way interaction, then iQOO's iQOO 9 Pro Track Edition tailored for the third anniversary can be called iQOO's accurate communication of the ultimate.
iQOO 9 Pro Track Edition for the first time uses a new aramid fiber material 3D back cover, pure hardware research and development costs alone up to one million yuan, is also iQOO's most expensive process cost so far.
In the eyes of the outside world, in the era when performance and parameters are king, it is not easy to throw money into the field of process design, but this is actually catering to the higher-level personalized needs of the cool customer group.
In addition, in order to give back to the Cooler group, iQOO held the "Cool E-sports Festival" on the occasion of the third anniversary, and issued benefits to Coolers in the form of real money and silver such as discounts, seconds, and free single activities.
From the iQOO 9 Pro Track Edition to the "Kuke E-sports Festival", iQOO continues to polish its products upwards and deeply reach the minds of users, which is revealing the "3Q spirit" promoted by the brand.
Cheng Gang, president of iQOO Global Markets, interpreted the "3Q spirit" in this way: "3Q is composed of Quest, Quest and Quick, which is curious and discovery of problems, searching and abiding by exploration, and following and practicing rapid breakthroughs. And this is the spiritual pillar of the Cooler community. Therefore, through the interpretation of the "3Q spirit" in various fields, iQOO has undoubtedly built a high-end foundation.
On the other hand, in the era when "no short board" products gradually began to pick up the beams, iQOO also entered the global consumer market in the cluster of cool customers. Standing at the moment of market tightening, iQOO's vision is not only invested in China, but also to the broader market.
As early as 2020, iQOO 3 was released in the Indian market at the same time, and iQOO, which carries the attributes of the global brand, opened the road to overseas layout. Last year, iQOO clarified the path to the sea and set the strategic goal of "focusing on the Southeast Asian market first, and then expanding outward".
This year, standing at the crossroads of e-sports and high-end, iQOO will accelerate its expansion into overseas markets in the next trip, explore a broader universe and sky, and advance to a higher and farther road.