If the time goes back to 2019, someone tells you that in three years there will be a mobile phone brand that focuses on "performance" and becomes the top 2 in the Android industry, you will definitely shake your head when you listen. The reason is very simple, at that time, the Chinese mobile phone market, basically no new brand or anything. Huami OV Apple, the five major brands occupy more than 92% of china's market share, the industry concentration is high, the head effect is obvious, the competition has entered the Red Sea, leaving the opportunity for new brands is really small.
In the face of an unfriendly environment, the new brand iQOO has killed a bloody road with a dark horse posture, breaking the general recognition of the industry that "new brands have no way to live".
Founded in 2019, iQOO is now celebrating its third anniversary. Looking back at the achievements of this cutting-edge brand in the past three years, we will find that this "rising star" is really too good. According to the data released by Rising Sun Big Data, in the fourth quarter of 2021, iQOO's model, iQOO 8 Pro, squeezed into the list of best-selling models in the price segment of $600-799 (about 3800-5000 yuan) with sales of 100,000 units of a single mobile phone. In view of the fierce competition in the high-end market today, combined with last year's double 11, iQOO 8 Pro has achieved the result of Tmall 4.5K+ price segment sales TOP1, which means that iQOO has initially gained a foothold in the high-end market.
Not only that, from its birth to becoming the TOP7 of China's mobile phone brand sales, iQOO only took 4 months, and when Double Eleven became the Top 2 of the Android industry, it took only more than two years. In the fierce inner-roll competition of the smartphone market, why can iQOO grow so fast?
Aim for performance flagships and achieve industry benchmarks
If I want to summarize the rapid development of iQOO in the past three years, the first reason is that it has chosen the right track, and has always maintained its strategic focus and continued to cultivate on this track.
Choice is greater than effort, and this is a well-known saying of personal development, not only for individuals, but also for businesses. In the history of the development of smart phones, there is no shortage of successful companies that choose the right track and bet on the right outlet. Since Jobs released the original iPhone in 2007, Apple has grown rapidly. Microsoft and Samsung both value this outlet, but Microsoft focused on learning apple to develop its own operating system, and eventually did not cultivate an ecology, and the mobile phone business also died early.
Although Samsung also wanted to build its own operating system in the early days, it finally chose the fast-growing Android, which has achieved the status of the world's first smartphone manufacturer today.
Standing at this time node in 2019, when everyone looks at the upcoming 5G replacement tide, iQOO has chosen a more vertical track: performance, and e-sports, as the application scenario that can best express the performance of mobile phones, has naturally become the main attack point of iQOO mobile phones.
2019 is also the starting point for e-sports to take off. This year, the State General Administration of Sport officially classified e-sports as a professional sports competition, and e-sports cultures such as "eating chicken" and "opening black" were gradually accepted by the mainstream population. In fact, e-sports can be said to have developed rapidly with 5G technology. The high-speed network guarantee brought by 5G is the key to the real-time online and rapid operation of e-sports. In other words, 5G has helped e-sports take off.
However, at that time, the young people's demand for strong performance and extreme competitive gaming experience was not met. Although there were gaming phones before 2019, due to their unusual appearance, heavy fuselage, expensive price, and the crotch of daily experiences such as images and systems, the gaming phones at that time were only suitable for playing games. Just as no one buys a music phone to listen to a song, no one buys a phone to play a game.
The emergence of iQOO mobile phones has filled the gap in the demand of this industry, especially in the construction of high-performance mobile phones, iQOO is committed to achieving breakthroughs in performance. In the past three years, iQOO has accumulated three core technical advantages: performance iron triangle, heat dissipation technology, and Multi-Turbo technology.
Anyone who knows a phone should know that the three most critical configurations that determine the performance of a phone are: processor, memory, and flash memory. Around these three key configurations, iQOO also specifically proposed a concept: the performance triangle, that is, each generation of flagships is equipped with the strongest processor, memory and flash memory of the same period, and even became the first brand of the latest processors in the past.
If you observe the configuration of iQOO mobile phones in previous generations, you will find that in the same price range of mobile phones, the three major configurations of iQOO mobile phones are often the strongest. For example, the UFS3.1 technology launched by iQOO 3 and the Snapdragon 888 Plus flagship processing platform launched by iQOO 8 can bring users a top performance experience in the first time. It can be said that today's "performance triangle" has become a major symbol that distinguishes iQOO phones from other mobile phones.
In addition to the "iron triangle", heat dissipation is also a key factor affecting the performance of mobile phones. Due to the poor heat dissipation caused by the CPU frequency reduction, game frame drop and other issues, I believe that people who have experienced it understand. To this end, iQOO has always regarded technology as the core focus area, and each generation strives to improve by 50%, keeping pace with the times to solve the heat dissipation problems of current chips.
From the super liquid cooling technology equipped with iQOO Neo in 2019, the carbon fiber VC liquid cooling cooling system used in iQOO 3 in 2020 to the first 4K power pump liquid cooling cooling system in the iQOO 7 industry, iQOO has always insisted on the strongest heat dissipation performance in the same price segment, escorting its top performance.
In the face of the "slow, stuck, and ton" phenomenon that Android mobile phones are often easily criticized, compared with the small repairs of many manufacturers, iQOO directly optimizes the underlying algorithm from the software level, and comprehensively accelerates the optimization of processors, networks, heat dissipation, games, etc., ensuring the overall stable acceleration of mobile phone performance.
It is precisely because of the deep exploration in the performance triangle, the software bottom layer and heat dissipation that iQOO passed the "Glory of the King" KPL's rigorous competition machine test in the early years of its establishment, and since then, the new digital flagship machines of previous generations have been the official designated machines of the KPL. The original iQOO also became the first Android top esports machine.
With three years of in-depth cooperation with Tencent King Glory, iQOO has accumulated a large amount of data and experience in mobile e-sports competition machine standards. With iQOO's own exploration of mobile phone performance and e-sports game experience and experience as an event machine, iQOO participated in the discussion and formulation of the "Technical Requirements and Test Methods for Mobile E-sports Machines" in mainland China, which also highlighted the position of iQOO as a leader in the field of e-sports.
With the ultimate pursuit of powerful performance and e-sports game experience, iQOO won the sales championship of the vertical track of game phones from the second quarter of 2018 to the first quarter of 2021, with a market share of up to 23% (Canalys data), becoming a "new benchmark for industry performance flagships" that consumers "invested" with real money and silver.
Practice the spirit of 3Q and achieve a win-win situation of "brand, user and industry"
So, what is driving iQOO to quickly become the industry benchmark and is committed to driving the industry forward? I think this is not unrelated to the "3Q spirit" proposed by iQOO at its third anniversary.
"3Q" refers to: Question (curiosity), Quest (exploration) and Quick (speed), representing iQOO's curiosity and discovery of problems, the search and adherence to exploration, and the pursuit and pursuit of faster breakthroughs, while "3Q" and English "Thank you" are pronounced similarly, which further shows iQOO's desire to thank users.
The "3Q Spirit" describes the exploration and practice of iQOO over the past three years. Take Explore, for example. In an interview with Qualcomm, Cheng Gang, president of iQOO Global Market, once described the iQOO user group Kuke as follows: "The biggest difference of "Kuke" is that it must be cool, they have their own belief in science and technology, enjoy the fun of cutting-edge technology at the same time, uneasy about the status quo, full of exploration of the unknown digital world. So for mobile phones, they will always have a lot of "ahead" expectations.
Therefore, in order to meet The Corex's exploration of the ultimate experience, iQOO will continue to explore and think about the technical solutions behind them after accurately understanding their actual needs, so as to create innovative technologies and products that "exceed user expectations". For example, the original iQOO's "charging data line innovation L-shape + capsule shape design" is a product innovation made by iQOO in the insight that users like to charge while playing games.
For example, with the popularity of high-power applications such as large-scale mobile games and videos and the advent of the 5G era, new requirements have been put forward for the battery life and charging experience of mobile phones. Based on this insight, iQOO brings for the first time one of the fastest charging speeds in the industry, the 120W ultra-fast flash charge, on the iQOO 5 Pro, allowing Cool to improve charging efficiency in fragmented time, thus ensuring their use experience. This is also iQOO's exploration and "leapfrog" innovation in the field of fast charging.
The meaning conveyed by the pronunciation of "3Q" is exactly iQOO's gratitude to Kuke. For example, the "Cool E-sports Festival" held by iQOO, sprinkled 1 billion yuan, just to thank every cool customer with real money and silver. The iQOO 9 Pro Track Edition launched by iQOO for the third anniversary of the gift brand for the first time adopts a new aramid fiber material, which has military-grade impact resistance at the same time, but also brings users a more delicate feel and an extremely low-key and connotative appearance. This iQOO's most expensive process cost design to date has also become a way for iQOO to show its sincerity.
And these sincerity, but also touched a lot of consumers, take the iQOO released the anniversary of the war report, iQOO 9 series, iQOO 8, iQOO Neo5 vitality edition have won their respective price segments of sales & sales double champion, iQOO brand is the Tmall Android mobile phone brand sales champion.
It can be said that as a cutting-edge brand, iQOO not only promotes the progress of the industry with the spirit of 3Q, but also "intersects with sincerity" with users to achieve a win-win situation of "brand, user and industry".
Write at the end
In the past three years, iQOO has become a benchmark brand in the mobile phone industry with its hard work in performance and e-sports competitions, which has also laid a solid foundation for its future development.
First, according to iResearch's "2021 China E-sports Industry Research Report", the overall market size of e-sports will exceed 145 billion yuan in 2020, and as e-sports events gradually move towards sports, popularization and scientificization, the e-sports ecology will usher in high growth.
The development of iQOO is closely related to the prosperity of the e-sports ecosystem. In the future, iQOO will continue to deepen the e-sports track, such as close communication with the Asian Organizing Committee, providing iQOO's understanding of e-sports and the discussion of relevant standards for e-sports machines, and contributing its full strength to the e-sports events of the Asian Games and the booming e-sports industry.
Second, after the high-end market has initially gained a foothold, iQOO has greater ambitions: to further break through the high-end market. To this end, iQOO, on the basis of adhering to the "performance-e-sports" as a long-term track for product power, has added three auxiliary tracks of "scientific and technological innovation, design and image", forming a long-term layout of "1+3", that is, "a core main track + three auxiliary tracks".
Nowadays, the "1+3" layout of iQOO has achieved initial results in the iQOO 8 series and iQOO 9 series, and we have reason to believe that this manufacturer, which constantly aims to break through itself, is expected to take a larger market share in the high-end market.
Third, in terms of globalization, iQOO initially wants to take a younger and more international brand route. Last year was the first year for iQOO to go global and open overseas market exploration, and this year iQOO will increase the pace of expanding overseas markets to meet broader growth space.