7 years sold 120 million, this domestic explosive product, why is it so hot?

No one expected that this product could be so hot, in July 2014 released a generation of products, in the past 7 years, the product updated to 5 generations, the cumulative sales reached 120 million.

At that time, when the product just came out, Liu De (co-founder of Xiaomi) asked Huang Wang (founder of Xiaomi ecological chain enterprise Huami Technology), how much do you think you can sell, Huang Wang felt that it was very good to sell 200,000 pieces a year, and did not expect that the shipment volume in the first year reached 14 million pieces, Liu De later laughed and said that God did not expect to sell so much.

This super explosive product is the Xiaomi bracelet, every time a new product is released, sales can break through one million in a few days, and almost every time can break the record.

From left to right are the Xiaomi Bracelet 1-6

How did Xiaomi make this super explosive product, and what is the inspiration of this product for 3C digital and smart hardware products?

01, go to the fake and the real, find the real needs

Before Xiaomi did the smart bracelet, smart watches have appeared for more than ten years, but they have been tepid, the core reason is that the price is expensive, and there are too few people who can afford to consume and are willing to consume, because everyone does not know whether this thing is good or not, what to do if it is not easy to use, the cost of trial and error is too high.

At that time, the price of domestic smart bracelets was about 500-800 yuan, and the price of imported smart bracelets was about 800-1500 yuan, don't look at the price is very expensive, but the cost is only more than 100 yuan, the quality is also general, so why sell so expensive? A business executive who makes smart bracelets said that when sold to rich people, the brand tone is very important, and it is naturally more expensive.

Expensive is more expensive, wear for a period of time either broken, or out of electricity, throw it aside and forget.

How does the Xiaomi Bracelet do it?

First, you have to find the needs of the user. Different users have different needs, all statistics down, hundreds of thousands of them, but in the end can achieve the demand can probably have dozens of needs, so many needs to do?

Many products have many functions, as long as the technology can be realized, they are all done, it looks very powerful, full of sense of technology, but the more functions, the more bugs, the higher the cost, spend a lot of money to buy back, it doesn't take long to be broken, good multi-functional is not used.

To meet the needs of 80% of users, this is the only rule for Xiaomi to determine the function of the product.

After research, only three functions were left: step counting, sleep measurement, and call reminder. With these three functions, as long as you buy them back, you can use them.

Do smart hardware, many brands will be confused by pseudo-demand, always want to function more users like and more willing to pay, in fact, not so, the basic functions can meet the basic needs, other non-core functions of complex operation, high learning costs Negative reasons do not bring convenience to consumers at the same time, may also bring consumers a bad experience.

Moreover, the more intelligent hardware functions, the higher the cost of the module required, the higher the cost, the higher the price, and if it is a new product, the higher the cost of educating users. Therefore, if you can do subtraction, you will never do addition.

The pseudo-demand characteristics of smart hardware products are mainly manifested in four aspects:

There is no point to the core requirements, which can be used or not;

The practicality is not strong, the stability is insufficient, and the sense of experience is poor;

Hype the concept, force "intelligence", increase unnecessary networking and operation;

The use threshold is too high, the audience is only a small number of enthusiasts, and the market space is small.

In contrast to pseudo-demand, true demand has the opposite characteristics:

Grasp the user's just needs, strong practicality;

Mature technology, stable performance, good sense of experience, strong user stickiness;

Low threshold of use, facing mass consumers, the market is vast;

The supply chain is mature, cost-effective and can be accepted by most consumers.

Entering the era of the Internet of Things, smart products are popular, intelligent hardware has a broad market, but it is not a product that can be intelligent, we must go to the fake and store the truth, find the core needs, and reduce the threshold. Smart hardware is designed to bring convenience to users, not to bring annoyance to users.

02, people-oriented, solve real problems

After the function is determined, it is not easy to make a blockbuster.

How can you make users think your product is good and willing to buy it? The simplest way is to solve the user's pain points, but also has a super cost performance, so that users can not buy it.

The first pain point of the smart bracelet is the short standby time, most of the bracelet standby time is a week, the bracelet is not the same as the mobile phone, the mobile phone charging every day you feel nothing, very normal, because you can not leave the mobile phone, but the bracelet is not the same, not a necessity, take down the charge will often forget to wear, if you forget three or four times, you may throw it aside without using it.

Therefore, the Millet bracelet will take standby time as the core pain point to solve, Huami has set up 5 teams internally, using the form of competition to design different chips to see which chips are more power-efficient. Two schemes were eliminated after one month, and one scheme was eliminated two months later, and the remaining two schemes continued to be optimized.

The Xiaomi bracelet will be smaller in size, small in size means that the parts are also small, and the battery also needs to be smaller in size, but the standby time of the small battery is not good at that time. Huami used Xiaomi to endorse the factory to cooperate, the big factory either offered high, or was unwilling to develop, and finally there was no way, Huami found a medium-sized factory, two together to develop small batteries, transform the production line. For both sides, this is a win-win thing, Huami finally got a small volume battery that meets the requirements, the factory has a production line for research and development and production of small batteries, and got a lot of orders.

At the press conference, Lei Jun announced that the Xiaomi bracelet can not be charged for a month, whether it is a friend or a user, it is very shocking.

Xiaomi bracelet generation at that time there was a huge trade-off, that is, whether to screen, for hardware products, many brands even if the product is not smart, but also to add a screen to claim that they are smart, Millet bracelet actually cut the screen.

Is the screen just needed? For the Millet bracelet generation, the function is three points, step counting, sleep measurement and call reminders, if there is a screen, the appearance is a little better, but there is no screen at all, these data are seen on the phone, with the screen is more expensive, shortening the standby time.

Moreover, the positioning of the Mi bracelet is not a display, but a "human ID", as long as you wear the Mi bracelet, after setting it, close to the phone can unlock the screen, the bracelet as a mobile phone authentication tool to use, is a physical key.

Unlock the phone this thing looks cool, its role is not only the "key", the author opens the phone more than 60 times a day, the average number of times each person opens the phone more than 100 times a day, when a product will replace the 100 times to enter the password, you will feel super convenient. This invisibly increases the stickiness of the product and gives users a reason to use it.

Bracelet is worn for a month, if you use TPU / TPE and other materials to make a strap, there may be user skin allergies, if there is a user allergy in the tens of millions of sales of one in 100,000 users, it is a major medical accident, after repeated consideration and consideration, the material is finally locked into TPSiV (thermoplastic vulcanized glue), which is a material that can be used on the spoon that feeds babies to drink milk powder.

Of course, no matter how good the product is, before the formation of word of mouth, many users are holding a wait-and-see attitude, what if it is not good to buy back? At this time, the price is crucial, Xiaomi directly "hit" the price down, the previous 500 yuan from the product, now only 79 yuan, the price of two meals, can not buy a loss can not be deceived, after the use of more than expected.

To make new products, we must consider the price and reduce the cost of trial and error of users, so that it is possible to become a blockbuster. If your pricing is too high, everyone is afraid to buy, and even the best products will not become explosive.

03, technology is king, dig deep moat

Science and technology are the primary productive forces, as Comrade Deng Xiaoping, chief architect of reform and opening up, said.

In today's information age, the importance of science and technology is self-evident, and every excellent product is inseparable from technical support.

Although the smart bracelet does not have much complicated technology, the Xiaomi bracelet also extends the boundaries of several technologies from design to production.

As mentioned above, the size of the Xiaomi bracelet is small, the corresponding parts are small, and the previous batteries do not meet the demand, huami's team has found a factory to cooperate and manufactured a smaller and better performance battery.

In addition to the battery, there are also oscillators. Before the smart watch or smart bracelet, everyone did the vibration function, Huang Wang believes that whether it is getting up to vibrate the alarm clock, or the incoming call vibration reminder, it is necessary to vibrate the function. For example, when the mother gets up in the morning, the ringtone will wake up the baby, and it will be fine with the vibration; for example, when walking in the factory or walking on the road, the noisy environment cannot hear the ringtone, and the vibration function can remind the user.

The ideal is very plump, the reality is very bone, the vibrator used for smart phones has been very small, but for the millet bracelet, it is still too big, no way, Huami had to do the same as the small size of the battery, continue to do cooperation with the factory, build a production line, and create the smallest vibrator in the industry.

Got the hardware, the software is also facing the problem, step counting and sleep algorithm, is their own development or buy foreign mature technology, there are two different voices, some people think that we position the shipment of millions, in case there is a little problem how to do, the risk is too big. But Huang Wang believes that algorithms and big data services, pattern recognition and machine learning are the key to future business, and even the future of the company. If this core value depends on buying, then we don't have to do anything, wash and sleep. If you want the future, you must gamble on the present, not mix with the present.

Looking for the industry bull team, more than a dozen doctors, plus the company's employees who are good at algorithms, set up an algorithm development team, closed development for 3 months, and finally developed their own algorithm system.

Huami's official website shows:

As of March 31, 2021, Huami Technology's cumulative global shipments of smart health devices have exceeded 170 million units. As of February 2021, our smart wearables recorded a cumulative number of steps of 151 trillion steps, a cumulative sleep record of 12.8 billion nights, a total heart rate record of 120.8 billion hours, and ECG ecglyogram data also reached 15.87 million, and the initial screening of atrial fibrillation and suspected atrial fibrillation exceeded 110,000 times.

For Huami, these data are the real valuable assets, and its granularity, frequency and breadth of data updates are unmatched by traditional medical and physical examination institutions.

As long as it is to develop sports health products, as long as there is this data, you can accurately solve the user's pain points.

"The core technology that provides support for the basic business must always be controlled, digested and absorbed independently, and can be cooperated, but it cannot be pinned on the hands of others." Huang Wang said.

Here we should remind hardware product practitioners that technology is very important, but hardware products are innovative, and the increase in new functions must be limited to 30% to be safe. Otherwise, either it will be postponed or it will enter the market with a lot of bugs.

Any explosive product is to find the demand, solve the pain points, and develop the ultimate product.

The case of the Millet bracelet generation hopes to help those hardware manufacturing enterprises that have transformed.