Author | Reading the night
Produced by | Bullet money view
Recently, market research agency Counterpoint released the 2021 domestic market brand smartphone shipment data, not surprisingly, vivo with a market share of 22% to the top of the first, OPPO followed by the shipment accounted for 21%, at the same time, Apple slipped to the third place. In the list of "BrandZ China's Top 50 Global Brands" released in 2021, Vivo ranked 10th, 10 places higher than the previous year, and its brand power was recognized in overseas markets.
Excellent products and advanced technology are the fundamental reasons for vivo to achieve such results. Therefore, in the new round of the mobile phone industry's "chair grabbing" competition, vivo has undoubtedly become one of the most important players. Just as the so-called staring at the faucet is staring at the direction, vivo's every move will surely become the focus of attention in the industry.
1. "King Fried Combination" perfectly interprets the product strength and research and development power
In fact, among all mobile phone manufacturers, the dual priority of "product" and "research and development" is the consistent impression that vivo gives to the outside world. When other manufacturers continue to rush to issue new products, it can always hold its breath and launch "king fried products" at key nodes. Therefore, every time vivo "late arrival" of the new product release, while satisfying the public's appetite, but also let the outside world look forward to its new products more. So, this year's new product season, what kind of new products and new technologies will Vivo bring? Where will vivo lead the industry?
Recently, the news about the upcoming release of the vivo X series new machine has triggered a lot of discussion in the industry. Vivo also officially announced on Monday that the first folding screen mobile phone X Fold will be officially released on April 11.
Judging from the exposure chart currently circulating on the Internet, X Fold, as vivo's first folding screen flagship, its screen crease looks very shallow. It is revealed that the fingerprint module under the vivo X Fold screen will use a 3D ultrasonic fingerprint element, which is the first time that the technology has been applied to the folding screen mobile phone. Subsequently, many users called the vivo X Fold "the folding screen mobile phone worth looking forward to in the industry".
If you don't push it, one is the "King Fried Combination", which is confirmed to be very vivo.
"It's better to do it than to do it, to do it best!" For example, the lyrics in "Backgammon", after daring to fight for the world, the latter has become a corporate culture that permeates the blood of vivo.
Throughout the vivo X series, it is the image of vivo's "game breaker" at both the product and technical level. In November 2012, the pioneering X1 of the vivo X series was released in Beijing Water Cube, when the X series focused on Hi-Fi sound quality and took the light and thin flagship route. Since 2016, Vivo has taken selfies as the main selling point of its products, and since then it has made great strides forward on the road of imaging, launching a number of impressive products before and after.
After the professional recognition, product value and user reputation of the X series have been greatly improved, the market situation of the vivo X series has gradually increased. Counterpoint released the data, thanks to the strong market performance of vivo X70 Pro, at the end of 2021, in the price segment of 4000-5000 yuan in the Chinese market, vivo ranked first with a market share of 24.1%.
The success of the vivo X series also reflects vivo's insistence on long-termism in terms of development strategy - it is through continuous technical accumulation and product innovation that vivo has been able to create one hit after another.
2, user experience is the first, take the lead in gnawing down the "hard bones"
Nobel laureate economist Daniel Kahneman's final law of perilous peaks holds that consumers will recognize the "highest", "lowest" and "final" moments as experiences, and no one else will remember. Therefore, all experience design is about two things, one is to enter the consumer's mind at this moment, and the other is to produce behaviors with commercial value.
Similarly, Nicholas Weber's question in "Extreme User Experience" is also thought-provoking: "As a producer, how to fundamentally change consumer expectations, change the thinking of finding users for products, and design personalized extreme experiences for users, so as to be neutral in the industry." ”
Providing users with the ultimate experience has become the consensus of many enterprises - mainstream enterprises in the market have launched an offensive to help upgrade the sense of user experience, in addition to research and development of technological innovation, product iteration, but also the user's use of products to gradually improve the user's feelings of using products to a more important position. Facts have proved that the user experience improvement brought about by products and research and development is accurately driving the brand to the high ground.
In 2019, when the industry is still marching towards the full screen, Vivo, which has already opened the era of full screen with NEX, has sensed in advance that the development of the industry is about to face a bottleneck. After all, when all manufacturers are rushing up, it means that the ceiling of this market is coming at any time.
At that time, vivo clarified the concept of giving priority to the company's products and research and development through several strategic conferences, and worked several hard bones of user experience.
Subsequently, Vivo put forward the "image, design, system, performance" four major R & D long track, which means that Vivo to the above four levels at all costs to invest in research and development, the follow-up establishment of the Central Research Institute and R & D centers at all levels, enough to see vivo in order to make products can obtain sustainable competitiveness of the bold.
At the moment of the birth of X70 in 2021, the essence is a new generation of flagship mobile phones created by vivo with a stronger game-breaking posture after having a preliminary accumulation on the long track of research and development.
How does vivo create the ultimate user experience? Details see success or failure, perhaps we can examine vivo's determination to bite the "hard bone" of user experience from a few small details.
With the advancement of 5G networks, vivo has systematically improved the call connection rate, dropped call rate, and Internet experience. Vivo also continues to build an automated road testing center that serves the world, which has now covered more than 100 cities in China, and overseas cities are gradually expanding their coverage.
Car-machine interconnection has become a trend, as early as 2018, many mobile phone manufacturers have targeted the Internet of Vehicles market. Vivo is naturally no exception, and it can even be said that vivo is the mobile phone brand with the most supported models in China. In 2020, vivo launched the intelligent vehicle networking brand Jovi InCar, and users introduced three core capabilities of Bluetooth car key, car machine projection screen and car control through jovi intelligent car application, covering different scenarios such as before, during, and after parking, and truly realized the full-scene vehicle networking experience of "inside and outside the car, Jovi is in". In addition, in terms of security and privacy, humanistic care, vivo has also made long-term investment.
"Vivo's innovative methodology is to seek technological breakthroughs from the actual use needs of consumers, what functions to develop, and how to achieve these functions to the extreme is what Vivo is most concerned about." Vivo's previous words in an interview with the media can quite represent Vivo's thinking on improving the user experience: "Products with high parameters are not necessarily good products. Consumers don't need a big battery, it's a long use time; what consumers need is not high pixels, but beautiful shooting. ”
3. Long slope thick snow identified by vivo
The way to fast and slow is not in marketing, not in slogans, but in product strength, in research and development investment and user reputation.
Shi Yujian, senior vice president of Vivo, emphasized in his speech at last year's Vivo Developer Conference that he pointed out that in the past Flywheel 1.0 era, Vivo gained recognition and growth by providing products and services to consumers. In 2021, which is regarded as the first year of vivo qualitative change, vivo officially entered the era of flywheel 2.0. The characteristic of this period is that "the product is the cause, the brand is the effect." ”
In his view, what Vivo has to do is to build a brand that consumers love through great products. Vivo's pursuit is not limited to creating high-quality products, but through design-driven, technological innovation, to create "great products", so that consumers from choice to love, from satisfaction to active recommendation.
The core of the mobile phone lies in the chip. In recent years, the "lack of core" has trapped the hands and feet of many mobile phone manufacturers. In the mobile phone market, "assembly" may be easier, but this runs counter to long-term value and doesn't really solve the problem. Therefore, including OPPO, vivo and other manufacturers, choose their own "core".
Last year, vivo X70 series imaging flagship mobile phone used its first professional image chip "V1" independently developed, which also made vivo another mobile phone manufacturer that launched a self-developed image chip after Huawei and Apple. Since then, Vivo has firmly taken the initiative into its own hands. Of course, it is not easy to build a core, according to vivo, this is a research and development team of more than 300 people, which took 2 years to deliver.
If you look further back, you will find that vivo has taken action at the image level in five years, aiming at the user's photo needs at the social level and building it into a core function.
Hu Baishan, executive vice president of vivo, once said: "The self-developed algorithm and the self-developed algorithm to IP (image processing) part need to be continuously accumulated, not to find a bunch of people to invest a bunch of money today can immediately produce results." The reason why we can produce V1 chips is strongly related to the fact that we invested in imaging algorithms five or six years ago. ”
In fact, vivo has a very clear definition of technology research and development, which is internally divided into long tracks and short tracks. In Hu Baishan's view, the technical threshold of the short track is low, and the natural ceiling is also low, which cannot form accumulation and differentiation, such as the off-screen camera. On the contrary, the threshold of the long track is very high, and the corresponding consumer attention is also very high and there are continuous high requirements, and the relevant technologies can be continuously iterated and have sufficient room for development. Therefore, mobile phone images are more in line with the definition of a long track.
For example, he said that each mobile phone company has a very different image style for the positioning of different user groups. Vivo is currently focusing on night scenes and portraits. In particular, people like vivo have been cultivating a sub-circuit for many years.
This also confirms what he said a few years ago, "The development logic of vivo is to start with the week, stand today to see tomorrow, stand the day after tomorrow to see tomorrow." "Standing today and looking back at Vivo's investment in the long track is enough to see the forward-looking nature of its strategy.
From 2019 to 2021, the 2 years allow vivo to achieve the first result in the Chinese market. Among them, the strategic adjustment in 2019 actually allowed vivo to open a racing mode that surpassed its peers. At the beginning of 2022, Vivo CEO Shen Wei revived the historical slogan of "embracing users, pursuing the ultimate, and creating surprises", which undoubtedly pushed Vivo into the racing mode.
4. Conclusion
Buffett once said: Life is like a snowball, the most important thing is to find wet snow and long slopes. He used the snowball metaphor for the accumulation of great wealth through the long-term effects of compound interest.
For vivo, the consistent focus on products and research and development double priority, is its development process of "wet and wet snow", when these two key factors continue to accumulate, and finally stand on the "long slope" with stronger consumer demand, its long slope thick snow effect will naturally appear.