Author: Chu Wenlong
Source: Insights New Research Agency
"We want to really change the situation of Apple's dominance in the high-end market."
At the new product launch on the evening of March 17, Honor completed the dual flagship product layout of the folding screen Magic V series and the Magic digital series, of which the Glory Magic4 to the best version was priced at 7999 yuan, and the price was directly benchmarked against the Apple 13 pro. Honor CEO Zhao Ming also showdown, "2022 will be Glory's innovative breakthrough journey that continues to break the ceiling of science and technology." ”
If the market development of Honor after the birth of the Huawei era is the first entrepreneurship of the brand, from Huawei's divestiture, the brand independence after the hard work is the second entrepreneurship, then this time wants to impact the high-end market, as a representative of the Android camp to become the "Huawei successor", and compete head-on with Apple, it can be regarded as the third entrepreneurship of Glory.
The times make heroes, and it is difficult to return
Honor was originally born as Huawei's "spare tire" role, in Huawei's transformation of the middle and high-end, Glory undertook the heavy responsibility of conquering the low-end market and competing with brands such as Xiaomi, ZTE and OV. From 2014 to 2018, it was a five-year period of rapid development of Glory. Honor has not only topped the domestic mobile phone sales list for many times, but also attacked the city in more than 60 overseas markets, and swept the world with Huawei brand groups. However, just when Glory is full of spirit and ready to show greater ambitions, the rest of the story does not need to be repeated.
In November 2020, Honor officially stripped from the Huawei brand, but lost Huawei's "shelter", glory's initial independent development is not smooth, the first flagship model V40 series released in January 2021, although the use of a new design language, but the market response is flat, in an e-commerce platform, the new machine was released about a month later, its sales are still only at the level of more than 10,000 units.
Just like dominoes, poor sales of new machines have triggered a series of chain reactions, and Glory's share in the domestic mobile phone market has also shrunk rapidly, according to third-party agency data, in February 2021, Glory's share of the domestic mobile phone market is only 3%, far lower than xiaomi, OPPO, vivo and other brands.
From the perspective of the external environment, Glory was almost "on the line of life" at that time, on the verge of being out at any time, but the innovative genes inherited from Huawei became the capital of Glory's "turnover".
First of all, Honor has the original team and R&D team from Huawei, who inherit Huawei's core capabilities in chips, communications and imaging, and the DNA of the organization has not changed. In addition, Honor has also inherited 5 R&D centers and more than 100 first-class laboratories from Huawei, building a strong R&D foundation. All these show that honor's core personnel and research and development technology have a solid guarantee.
After leaving Huawei, Honor has accelerated its progress in technology. In the case of obtaining chip information 45 days later than the industry, the Honor R&D team continued to accelerate until the release of the Honor 50 series equipped with Snapdragon 778G 30 days earlier than the industry. This not only won the honor team an advantage in time, but also won a product advantage for the honor 50 series.
Sure enough, on June 25, 2021, as soon as the Honor 50 series was released, a new record was set online and offline on the day of its first sale. Marketing has always been the core competitiveness of Glory, the glory of online starting is naturally familiar with the operation rules of online e-commerce, and more than 30 offline dealers have become the new shareholders of Glory after the independence of New Glory on the basis of years of cooperation. This interest model of joint ownership by dealers has bundled Glory and channels into a community of interests, further enhancing Glory's channel advantages.
Since the release of the Honor 50 series, honor Jedi counterattacked, climbing all the way from the trough period, and finally at the end of 2021, it regained its market-leading position - according to Counterpoint data, in the fourth quarter of 2021, Honor's Chinese market shipments rose to second, ranking first in the Android camp, second only to Apple, ranking first in domestic mobile phone brands.
After the beginning of 2022, Honor continued to maintain a strong growth trend, reaching a weekly sales share of 17% at the end of January, a record high.
Yes, glory, it's killing again!
But the glory of re-killing has already had different strategic choices. Different from the previous cost-effective strategic route, Glory is running to hit the high-end posture this time. Taking stock of the entire mobile phone industry, after the basic disk is stable, the impact on the high end is the "prescribed action" of each brand. Only some successes, such as Huawei, once became a global high-end mobile phone brand alongside Apple and Samsung; some failed, such as Motorola, which was acquired by Lenovo, focusing on "modular" smart phones, blindly impacting the high-end market and ending in failure; some are still wandering, such as Xiaomi, which is intensively declaring to transform into high-end, but still subject to the stereotype of low prices.
Decisively win the high-end, the main battlefield is still the basic plate
The opening of high-end must start from the superior battlefield.
Judging from the current competitive landscape, domestic is undoubtedly the battlefield where Glory currently occupies an advantage.
First, in terms of price, Honor has an advantage in the price range of 2000 ~ 4000 yuan, and the popularity of the Honor 50 series is proof. Not only did the first sales day create new records online and offline, but also the first three days created a sales record of 3,000 to 4,000 yuan price segment, and the entire July also occupied the first place in the 2,000 to 4,000 yuan price segment. From this point of view, in the price segment, glory still has a certain degree of recognition and the basis for climbing upwards.
Second, in terms of shipments, Honor bottomed out and rebounded, and at the beginning of Q3 2021, when the new machine was re-released, the market share continued to increase. By Q4, Honor's market share had surpassed vivo, OPPO and Xiaomi, second only to Apple. All of this reflects Honor's strong consumer base and strong resilience.
Especially in the process of domestic mobile phone manufacturers moving towards high-end, the national self-confidence of domestic consumers superimposed on the market education of mobile phone brand owners, and the high-end of glory is undoubtedly easier to start from the domestic market.
In foreign markets, the market share once fell to the glory of 0, and it is still in the restart period.
Like a wolf-like competitor, after the stagnation of glory quickly divided its market share, if you want to win the high-end, glory must first recover the "lost ground" and re-enter the low-end market entrenched by Xiaomi OV.
The good news is that Honor has fully resumed cooperation with global suppliers such as AMD, Intel, Micron, Samsung, and Microsoft, and the channel and retail systems in more than 40 countries around the world have also been initially completed, and more than 200 operators and distributors such as Vodafone, Telefonica, Fnac, Orange, Esprinet and Amazon have established cooperation.
Zhao Ming also revealed that since March, Honor will have a number of products released globally. Probably in the next 3-4 months, Honor will release a product almost every month.
With the help of a fully restarted channel deployment and "machine sea" tactics, Honor is expected to regain its original position in the low-end market.
The second step is to focus on the overseas markets where Honor and Huawei have previous roots. For example, finland, the Czech Republic, Saudi Arabia and other countries, Honor once ranked in the top five sales, and Huawei also topped the sales list in 2019 and 2020. Therefore, honor can also continue the brand potential on the basis of its own brand foundation and the historical brand dividend of Huawei in the past. Moreover, huawei's previous high-end brand genes and brand image can be more or less extended to glory, which is also a brand borrowing for glory.
As we can see, in 2022, Glory also began to make high-end efforts from this direction. In February, at the MWC Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Honor officially released a new generation of flagship Honor Magic4 series, opening the process of overseas high-end, and will continue to break through key markets such as France, Finland, the Czech Republic, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, and Mexico. It can be seen that Honor is using Huawei's foundation to hit the European market upwards, thus forming a strategic encirclement.
Of course, in the long run, Honor also needs to continue to consolidate product technology capabilities and brand building capabilities. As Zhao Ming said: "When you continue to consolidate product capabilities and technical solutions, channels and partners are naturally willing to grow with you." "In terms of brand building, when overseas consumers are still stuck in the stage of cost performance for glory, high-end glory also needs to continue to invest in the brand."
Glory layout high-end, and Apple's hard battle how to fight?
Impacting the high-end market is destined to compete head-on with Apple, and objectively speaking, if Glory wants to gain something in this battle, it needs to solve at least 3 problems.
First, an operating system with brand-specific recognition. Just as MIUI is to Xiaomi, EMUI is to Huawei, and IOS is to Apple, the underlying operating system is the decisive factor for whether a mobile phone can create a good user experience. The glory impact on the high end, to a large extent, depends on the degree to which the operating system is accepted by users. The reason why Apple can lock the high-end threshold, the ecosystem with excellent user experience is the underlying support. If domestic mobile phone manufacturers are caught in a homogeneous inner volume, they have piled up hardware performance, spelled pixels, spelled memory, spelled configuration, but just caught in an endless Red Sea competition, no one can kill a road of differentiation.
The Magic UI, which is known as the dream of AI evolution, has high hopes for glory, and Zhao Ming also bluntly hopes that magic UI can become an experience and product that rivals and surpasses iOS. At present, Magic UI can be described as "enemies on all sides", in addition to directly benchmarking iOS, there are a number of UI systems around it that are the same as it, based on the underlying platform-level reconstruction and optimization of Android, as well as Huawei's Hongmeng system.
Magic UI to win, need to complete from the personalized basic OS to the intelligent collaborative OS, and then to the top level of active service scenario experience of the three-level evolution, in the underlying technology, glory problem is not big, the key lies in the different scenarios of various types of intelligent hardware data on the opening up and service ecology of the establishment.
Second, the black technology that has become a hit in the process of innovating the old. Although mobile phone products have similarities in overall functionality, many brands focus on their differentiated expertise. For example, OPPO's "charge for 5 minutes, talk for 2 hours", focusing on the advantages of fast mobile phone charging speed and long battery life; Huawei's "can shoot the moon", the super high pixel of the main lens, with many marketing has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. From this point of view, Honor also needs to launch its own differentiated black technology, use a certain specialty function to fix the user's mind, and change consumers' perception of the brand.
In this regard, the entry point of Honor is to take pictures and think more about how to make the imaging quality of mobile phones closer to DSLR.
In fact, Honor's exploration of imaging technology has never stopped, and thus formed a unique logo of the brand in technology.
For example, as early as the launch of the Honor 20 PRO in 2019, Honor adopted the AIS Super Night Scene Mode for the model, which improved the brightness and clarity of night scene shooting, while greatly reducing noise, bringing ultra-clear night view mode, and solving a major pain point for users to take pictures at night;
For example, the Honor V30 generation, based on MatrixCamera technology, innovation brought a multi-dimensional camera matrix, which became a major breakthrough in the smartphone market at that time;
For example, the Honor Magic 3 series uses innovative multi-camera fusion technology to achieve image re-jump.
Honor is constantly giving the same technology / function different connotations to continuously improve the user's experience and evaluation, but a temporary lead does not mean the final victory, Glory also needs to continue to tap the value intersection between technology and user experience needs in this endless endurance run.
Third, the shaping of high-end brand image. Apple's high-end brand image is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. Simplicity, differentiation, sense of technology, minimalism, "Think Different" and other brand cores have made Apple unique and become the most unique technology brand. What facts are is important, but how people perceive them is even more important. In this sense, brand image building is no less important than technology research and development.
Although Honor has also taken marketing activities such as co-branding, sponsorship of the Winter Olympics and China Short Track Speed Skating National Team to raise the brand image, for Honor, which started with cost performance, the consumer perception of cheap machines is relatively solidified, and reshaping the brand image is bound to be a big project. It is not easy to return to the peak of sales, but it is a long way to reverse consumers' existing brand perception and build a high-end brand image.
epilogue
High-end is an inevitable move for brand development. However, in the process of achieving high-end, it is full of accidents. However, the road is obstructed and long, and the line is coming. The new journey of glory has just begun. On this new journey, we will wait and see whether Honor can successfully take over Huawei's lead to the high-end market.