Author: Jialin
Logically, without Huawei, a strong opponent, the leaders of domestic mobile phones should be like fish, but in fact, it is not the same.
Recently, market research agency CINNO Research released a report that the sales of smartphones in the Chinese market in February were about 23.48 million units, down 20.5% year-on-year, down 24.0% month-on-month, and contracted year-on-year.
In this report, in the domestic smart phone sales ranking in February, OPPO ranked first in the list with a performance of about 4 million units, glory replaced vivo as the second, and vivo fell to the fourth place in the list, with sales down 38.6% year-on-year.
On the other hand, according to the information of Tianyancha, Vivo disclosed patents on autonomous driving methods, on-board devices, mobile devices and on-board electronic devices on April 1. After Xiaomi and OPPO went down and Huawei "helped car companies build cars", does Vivo's move mean that it also wants to join the car-making army? Is this a compromise on reality after the decline in sales?
1
Old-fashioned vivo
In the past many years, domestic mobile phones have developed barbarically with low-end products, channels and cost performance, and marketing advantages, in exchange for very beautiful performance. Vivo is a typical example.
But this "machine sea tactic" that relies heavily on marketing is not invincible. On the one hand, the profits of low-end smart phones are extremely low, and they also have to go through layers of distribution; on the other hand, the cost of domestic mobile phone endorsement and release remains high, which further compresses the profit margin.
Therefore, with the gradual maturity of the smart phone industry, major manufacturers have begun to change their strategies, reduce the release of models, and abandon this "labor and money" tactics of machine sea.
After all, the most important purpose of business is to make money.
And what about vivo at this time? According to last year's situation, it is not difficult to find that Vivo is still adhering to this ancient tactic.
According to public information, in 2021, Xiaomi, Redmi and Black Shark released a total of 25 mobile phones, OPPO released 21, Huawei and Honor released 12 and 23 respectively, and Vivo has 36 listed models, not including its iQOO 13 models, which is a huge momentum.
Although this ancient tactic has allowed vivo to sit on the throne of the 2021 domestic mobile phone sales champion with sales of 71.5 million units, behind the impact on sales is vivo's sacrifice of profits.
According to the 2021 smartphone revenue data released by Counterpoint, the top 5 smartphones in 2021 have a total revenue of $448 billion, among domestic mobile phones, Xiaomi increased by 49%, OPPO increased by 47%, and vivo ranked at the bottom with a growth rate of 43%.
It is worth mentioning that the first place in the price increase of mobile phones in 2021 is vivo, which is lower than the growth rate of peers or based on frequent price increases.
Insisting on "backstroke" in the sea of machines, for now, vivo's conservative choice is really unwise.
2
Take care of the dilemma of losing one or the other
Strategically conservative and slow, vivo is also tired in terms of product layout.
On March 3, Jia Jingdong, vice president of Vivo, said on Weibo that in the future, "any expectations that everyone has for NEX can be answered on the new X series." This means that the nex series, which once undertook the mission of vivo's high-end, has been permanently pressed the pause button.
This example of a direct announcement of a layoff is rarely heard in the mobile phone industry, but when placed on nex, everything seems to be justified again.
In 2018, the nex series turned out to be industry-leading with more than 90% of the front screen, but from the perspective of market performance, nex obviously failed to successfully dialogue with high-consumption groups. The lifting camera that it has been adhering to not only affects the thickness of the mobile phone, but also weakens the waterproof function of the mobile phone, which runs counter to the "sense of technology and futurism" advocated by vivo. In addition, the waterfall screen design with large curvature has also been complained about as "flashy" due to incomplete display, side color casts and other issues.
After the failure to impact the high-end market, Vivo launched a sub-brand iQOO, aimed at e-sports and young people.
However, the pursuit of performance in stacking materials will inevitably raise costs, so high prices are also prohibitive for young people. iQOO 3 released at the beginning of 2020, only a few months later, 618 on the range of more than 1,000 yuan sharply reduced in price, clearance treatment, iQOO9 at a price of 3999 yuan also did not stir up too much splash, iQOO sales can only stay at about 3 million units. The vivo X70 series equipped with vivo's first self-developed professional image chip V1, the high-end version is even close to 7,000 yuan, which is also collectively considered by netizens to be the high price brought by the blind stacking, so few people buy it.
What's more fatal is that vivo simply does not have high enough technical barriers at the product and technical level, so it is difficult to achieve high worry-free.
Whether it is chip technology such as processors, or core technologies and components such as lenses, cameras, screen displays, etc., vivo relies heavily on external supply, and its lack of original technology and research and development capabilities not only hinders the development of the brand, but also profoundly affects the entire ecological layout of vivo.
Today, Huawei MatePad Pro, Honor Tablet V7 have been listed, Xiaomi Tablet has launched the fifth generation, OPPO's first tablet OPPO Pad was also released on February 24 this year. Vivo only proposed the "1+3+N" strategy in August last year, of which "3" is the tablet product to be released. At present, Huawei, Apple, and Xiaomi have begun to take shape in ecological construction, and have launched laptop wearable watches, smart speakers, smart homes, etc., while there are only four smart hardware on vivo's official website, which is far from the various categories and quantities of competitors.
Admittedly, the smartphone market in the past was a tempting cake, but with the passage of time, this cake has long lost its original deliciousness. If you can't open up a new battlefield, the end of vivo falling behind will soon be staged.
3
Car breaker?
The future is coming, and Vivo may be trying to change.
At a time when automakers and mobile phone giants are crossing borders with each other, Vivo has also made new moves.
As early as the middle of last year, the news about vivo entering the market to build cars was very loud. At that time, the automotive-related talent recruitment information on OPPO's official website also added some credibility to this news. But then oppo and vivo's denials lowered the market's expectations. Until recently, Vivo's public patent has pulled everyone's attention back.
In fact, as early as 2019, vivo had a layout in the automotive field, establishing cooperation with Baidu, Great Wall and other enterprises; at the developer conference at the end of 2020, vivo also released the Internet of Vehicles brand - Jovi InCar; a few months ago, vivo, together with OPPO and Xiaomi, Led by Changan Automobile, Geely Holdings, SAIC Group, Yuanfeng Technology, Zhongke Chuangda, China Automobile Academy Intelligent Networking and other joint participation of the smart car open alliance ICCOA was officially established.
In today's declining global shipments of mobile phones, it is indeed a good business to create a perfect ecology for cars and machines. For vivo, it is better to take the initiative to defend the deficiencies and seek greater growth space through car building, which may be able to break the game. But in the face of too late start and slow reaction, Vivo can only run wildly.