Text | Rust-free bowl
Fast forward to 2015, when some media filmed Cook and Duan Yongping meeting for the first time at a charity dinner.
Afterwards, in the face of the reporter's interview, Duan Yongping appeared quite frank, as the founder of OPPO and Vivo, he did not hide his admiration for Cook and Apple in his words: "I talked to him, he may not know who I am, but I like him." ”
The same phone call to Apple's headquarters was met with a response: "We cannot confirm the existence of this meeting." ”
This low-key "cold treatment" did not set off any waves at the time, and no one thought that the "proud son of heaven" Apple would intersect with the Chinese mobile phone brands that rose in the third and fourth tier cities.
Until the third quarter of 2016, after the two OV companies relied on the advantages of offline channels to counterattack in one fell swoop and squeeze Apple out of the top three sales, people suddenly found that domestic mobile phone manufacturers have invisibly accumulated the potential to challenge world-class brands.
At the end of the story, at the visit to China six months later, when Cook was asked about his evaluation of the helmsmen of several major domestic mobile phone brands, he said: "I met Duan Yongping at a charity event, and he was a very good person. ”
Cook and Apple executives may not have imagined that in just a few years, the Chinese mobile phone that was once branded with the label of "copycat machine" would pose a substantial threat to their brands.
In fact, in the current Chinese mobile phone market, a "three British war Apple" drama has begun, whether it is the OV series or the glory of the rebirth and millet, the iPhone as their goal.
Jobs's Chinese students couldn't hold back.
Benchmarking Apple is just a "spiritual victory"?
At the Xiaomi press conference three months ago, Lei Jun, who was dressed in a blue formal suit, held his hands together, looked at the front with a calm face, and the focus of the whole audience's eyes made the big characters of "officially benchmarking apples and learning from Apples" on the PPT behind him, which was particularly eye-catching.
"We have 16,000 engineers and plan to invest 100 billion yuan in research and development in the next five years, and we must surpass it step by step."
At the same time, there are not a few brands with similar goals.
On the road of transformation of high-end, compared with Xiaomi's high-profile, OPPO and vivo have chosen to "catch up", focusing on the traditional strength of the iPhone - imaging capabilities, trying to rely on hardware, algorithms and the blessing of well-known manufacturers to achieve cornering overtaking.
Whether active or passive, high-profile or low-key, an unavoidable fact is that only by "taking down Apple" can we truly open the door to high-end.
At the moment when the overall shipment of smart phones is declining, the desire of users to change machines is sluggish, and the competition in the industry is intensifying, the meaning behind this initiative does not need to be said.
On the other hand, the strong strength of the opponent who has been deeply involved in the global high-end market for many years has also cast a layer of fog on the prospects of this competition.
At the end of last year, Apple announced its results for the first fiscal quarter of fiscal 2022. According to the data, Apple's iPhone business revenue in the quarter was $71.628 billion, an increase of 9.2% over the same period last year, a record high.
At the same time, a report released by third-party market research agency Canalys showed that in the fourth quarter of 2021, Apple surpassed Samsung with a market share of 22% and won the first place in the world.
In a sense, challenging such a strong opponent requires not a simple "spiritual victory method", but a strong advantage, as Glory CEO Zhao Ming said: "If you want to surpass your opponent, you can't do it without core competitiveness." ”
Apple's core competitiveness
Frankly speaking, in addition to Huawei, domestic Android manufacturers, so far no two can leave a high-end impression in the minds of consumers.
Some users once lamented: "Since Huawei passively withdrew from the high-end competition battlefield with Apple, the monthly analysis of the mobile phone industry has only left the low-end inner volume." ”
While Android mobile phone manufacturers continue to break through the price range upwards, the product experience has remained in place for a long time.
Countless people have dismantled Apple as a company, if there is a formula that can sum up Apple's core competitiveness, we believe that Apple's invincible core competitiveness = (hardware + design) × ecology.
The first is excellent chip technology.
In 2008, Apple invested heavily in bringing together a full 250 hardware engineers from P.A semi and Intrinsty. On the first day that these "silicon immortals" with different dresses, shapes, and accents were recruited into Apple, they made a promise to Jobs:
"The best CPU you've ever used, we must have designed it."
Since then, Apple's self-developed chip performance has been riding the dust, and today, the A chip applied on the iPhone series, even the flagship mobile chips of Qualcomm and other companies, can not compete with it.
In addition to excellent hardware strength, another key to capturing the hearts of consumers with iPhone series products is excellent product design aesthetics. Starting with the iPhone 4, each generation of Apple's flagship phones has tried to present an aesthetic "optimal solution."
In contrast, in the domestic Android camp, many digital bloggers of Station B mentioned that in the past year, the flagship machines of many Android manufacturers have not performed satisfactorily.
The first is the "caution" in the product configuration, the feedback of the market, so that major brands understand that relying on the lifting camera, fingerprints under the screen and other fancy technologies, completely unable to shake Apple's position in the high-end camp, many flagships have begun to take the initiative to "lie flat".
The configuration of the OnePlus 10 Pro is no longer aggressive at some levels, from the rear quad camera of the OnePlus 9Pro to the rear triple camera.
In addition, if you say, the outstanding software and hardware collaboration and product ecology constitute Apple's truly three-dimensional moat. It can be said that Apple's ecological power has expanded Apple's competitiveness multiplier.
And domestic Android mobile phones, in addition to the conservative configuration end, the poor performance of some domestic Android flagship machines in the privacy link has also deterred many users.
A widely circulated joke is, "I can't give you the storage junk unless you give me my current location, clipboard, recording permissions, self-start permissions, and camera on permissions." ”
What are the odds of Android winning?
Many times, when people lament the high price of the new iPhone, few people think that Apple's consumers are not paying for the hardware of the mobile phone, but paying a premium for Apple's iOS software ecology and software and hardware collaboration.
At the 2018 conference, as Apple broke through the "encirclement" of domestic brands, it was the set of jaw-dropping figures thrown by Cook at the conference:
"iOS has more than 20 million developers worldwide in 77 countries. They make more than $100 billion from the App Store, and now apple's App Store has 500 million visitors a week, making it the world's largest app market. ”
In this process, the massive number of iOS users has stimulated the enthusiasm of tens of millions of developers, and the creativity and technology contributed by developers have allowed Apple users to experience the coolest application software and continuously push up the conversion cost of the iOS system.
From this point of view, compared with the earth-shaking slogan, looking at the product dimension alone, there are actually very few brands that are really qualified to benchmark Apple.
Under the severe knot, the "double eleven" of the new iPhone listing, the price of the Android flagship machine plunged, and almost became the "fixed performance" of the digital circle every year.
In the face of the iPhone's demand in the high-end market, does the Android camp really not have the strength to fight?
The answer is of course no, in the eyes of the well-known media Reuters, there is a brand of Android, enough to "compete" with Apple, this brand is glory:
"The strong strength of the Honor Magic series not only has a strong impact on Apple in the high-end market, but also has the potential to challenge Apple's position as an industry leader."
Behind such a high evaluation, where is the confidence of glory and Apple breaking the wrist?
Challengers are just beginning to emerge
The answer may be found at the Honor Magic4 series China launch on March 17.
Compared with the flagship and the king of the machine, Magic4 has a more straightforward title - the "pain point terminator" in the Android camp.
Taking the industry's "chronic disease" for many years - privacy issues as an example, in order to protect the security of user information, Magic4 pioneered the intelligent privacy call technology, which can greatly gather the sound volume in the ear to prevent the leakage of call information.
Regarding the specific effect of this technology, the well-known digital agency ZEALER also made a test, they used the earpiece of the Honor Magic4 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max to play sound content, and then transcribed the sound content through the voice recorder, and finally saw who had a low voice-to-text success rate.
The results show that when the volume is 50%, the iPhone can basically be successfully recognized, while the Honor Magic4 Pro is directly unrecognizable, which means that when the Honor Magic4 Pro is on a close call, the people around them can't eavesdrop on the call content at all.
Similar innovation also occurs in the collaboration of software and hardware, has been the lack of supporting software of Android's machine emperor has been described by the media as a "big horse-drawn car", empty of a top configuration, lack of software and product ecology collaboration, the actual use experience is often not satisfactory.
As one of the few brands in Android manufacturers with excellent software and hardware strength, Honor Magic4's evolution and upgrade in software is also praised.
For example, the world's first LTPO+1920Hz PWM high-frequency dimming technology.
As the standard of the current flagship models of major mobile phone brands, LTPO this emerging backplane technology, under the same brightness, saves more than 15% of the power consumption of the OLED panel, while achieving a variable refresh rate, at the same time, as one of the most refined frequency conversion technologies in the industry, 1920Hz PWM high-frequency dimming, can intelligently adjust the optimal dynamic screen refresh rate in 1-120Hz according to the application and user operation habits, while reducing power consumption and achieving power saving effect. It also guarantees the smoothest app experience.
The first fusion of the two can be said to be a "match made in heaven" that takes into account energy consumption, texture and experience.
In the more than 1-hour-long conference, magic 4 carried a total of ten technology like this industry-leading technology. Compared with the "lying flat" of the same camp products, Magic4 has been designed to challenge the "strongest on the surface" mobile phone from the beginning of its birth, and Magic4 has brought great improvements in design, photography, screen, security and other aspects.
It can be said that when friends and businessmen are still focusing on accessories stacking and conference parameters, Glory has already taken the lead, starting from the needs and details of users, creating the best mobile phone experience under China's Internet ecology and realizing the leadership of the industry.
In addition to the strong performance of the mobile phone, at this conference, the Earbuds 3 Pro, which has three world-first technologies of ultra-broadband coaxial dual unit, scenario-based intelligent noise reduction and body temperature AI monitoring, also added a lot of color to the glory "family barrel".
More importantly, past history has proved that Honor's products do not exist in PPT and conferences, but have effectively won the recognition of the market and consumers.
Back in early 2021, when Glory's market share was only 3%, surviving was the biggest challenge. In January this year, Honor bucked the trend and achieved the top spot in domestic shipments, becoming the first in the Android camp that month.
From this point of view, the slogan of "HONOR CAN DO" may not really be empty, in a sense, Glory really has the ability and strength to compete with the world's top brands.
What is the real meaning of "Fighting Apple"
In the final analysis, glory is the one who killed the front of the current "three British war apples", and as an observer of the industry, we have to think about what is the ultimate purpose of "war apples"?
From the perspective of the market, it may be to truly create mobile phone products that represent China's intelligent manufacturing, bringing more and better choices to consumers.
To this end, in addition to relying on mature software and hardware and product ecology, with Apple's all-round three-dimensional benchmarking, in the face of competitors' price war, Honor Magic4 also released greater discounts on the basis of Magic3 to cope with Apple's dynamic competition.
Behind this, as Zhao Ming has said many times in public:
"Honor will no longer focus on short-term market share, but will focus more on technology research and development and product experience optimization."
Needless to say, Apple is indeed a respectable brand and rival, however, this does not mean that "beyond Apple" is a fantasy.
Objectively speaking, in recent years, with the step-by-step tightening of domestic brands, Apple's disadvantages have been gradually magnified by the market.
Compared with the "5 years ahead of the world" shouted by Jobs in front of the world in the past, today's iPhone has begun to slow down, and it is no longer a sharp product with the dream of "changing the world".
At the same time, Apple's lag in the face of cross-era technologies such as 5G and folding screens has also created a buffer for domestic brands and even the possibility of surpassing.
Since 2021, the folding screens successively released by Huawei, Xiaomi, Honor, OPPO, etc., have achieved different degrees of premium in the secondary market, and have made great contributions to the brand's high-end image. Among them, the Magic V launched by Honor in January is not only the thinnest folding screen mobile phone on the market, but also the main flagship of Glory's niche segment.
In this regard, Honor CEO Zhao Ming made no secret of the importance he attached to this field:
"In 2022, the folding screen market can grow 10 times, which will be a new growth area and we must invest for the future."
On this basis, this counterattack journey of domestic high-end mobile phone brands is still constantly washing away the magnificent statues left over from the Jobs era and reconstructing consumer cognition.
Compared to the advantages of technology, it conveys more profound significance:
"The future of the high-end mobile phone market, innovation and leading rights, is no longer exclusive to Apple."
From this perspective, looking at the global market, Honor has sat on Apple's rival seat and will represent China's high-end smartphone brands in the future to challenge the global market.
However, this process, for Zhao Ming, CEO of Glory, is more like a new beginning than the end:
"Creating value for the industry, creating value for end consumers, that's the most exciting thing for our team..."
"We are committed to building the ability and strength to compete with the world's top brands because we believe that market share is only a bonus to these efforts."