Since 2020, Lei Jun has repeatedly publicly talked about "millet is not understood". The reason behind this is that in recent years, Xiaomi has been impacting high-end brands, which is basically an impossible task in the eyes of many people. A user who has been depowdered is that in fact, a large part of the understanding is concentrated on one problem - the "high-end" of Xiaomi hardware parameters, and the software experience is still at a relatively low-end level. "Relying solely on the black technology taken from suppliers, it can't be high-end."
Fang Yuming no longer loves Xiaomi as much as before. After 00, who has been a fan of Xiaomi for 5 years, the WeChat avatar is Lei Jun with a thick smile.
In the past, the identity of "rice noodles" was able to allow him to find a sense of belonging. He is happy to make other rice noodle friends from the Internet and keep dating. In his impression, in 2019, the atmosphere of "rational discussion of problems" in the rice powder circle is still there. But now, when it comes to this group environment, his answer is, "Very disgusted."
"The most annoying thing is the rice monkey, and the kind of brainless rice black." Fang Yuming told the "Finance and Economics" weekly that this is the name of extreme rice noodles in the circle, the former can't hear Xiaomi's not, and the latter can't see Xiaomi's good. Since 2020, on some important occasions in Xiaomi, the two forces have erupted into a full-scale "war".
And this year, it happens to be the official announcement of Xiaomi, a particularly critical turning point in high-end strategy.
Xiaomi's success has benefited from the fan economy. In 2011, Xiaomi released its first smartphone, and Lei Jun proudly wrote "weekly iterative upgrades, 500,000 fans to participate in the development" into the PPT of his speech. This is the beginning of Xiaomi and rice noodles hand in hand.
According to Lei Jun, there are tens of millions of rice noodles in China, and so many people have joined forces to send Xiaomi to the seat of the world's top 500. Xiaomi has created and led the Internet trend of the industry, forming a proud fan marketing philosophy. Xiaomi's concept of "being born for fever", "making friends with users" and "touching people's hearts" also created its most enthusiastic first decade.
In the early years, Lei Jun would also personally go to the forum and make friends with users. Xiaomi is a group of founding executives and vice presidents, and has been active in the front line of Weibo so far. The strategy of adopting the ultimate cost performance directly allows Limi flour, so that Xiaomi has gained a large number of fans. The close connection between Xiaomi and users has also been a good story that many companies envy.
But now, some cracks are quietly emerging. "The era of rice noodle faith has passed," an old rice noodle metaphor, "is like a relationship from beautiful to disillusioned." ”
Xiaomi has also long discovered this problem. In February 2021, Xiaomi specially held the "Lei Jun Dialogue Rice Noodles" event, for which Xiaomi collected 21128 rice noodle suggestions online through Weibo and the Xiaomi community. In the end, these suggestions landed at the Rice Noodle Festival gala two months later for Xiaomi's newly launched 19 user policies.
On April 6 this year, the 12th birthday of Xiaomi, founder Lei Jun posted a group photo of Xiaomi executives on Weibo, which is also the annual "Rice Noodle Festival". But to some fans, the carnival party that was originally set up for rice noodles has evolved over the past 11 years, and the line used to maintain it seems to be only shopping coupons. And some of the initial hot blood and tears are gradually fading with this process.
At the end of last year, at the Xiaomi 12 mobile phone conference, Lei Jun admitted that the past year was the year in which Xiaomi encountered the most criticism from rice noodles.
Image source/Visual China
Rice noodles break through the defense instantly
"Now I just think of Xiaomi as an OEM." When it comes to the gas, Liu Songyan has no good evaluation of Xiaomi.
Engaged in field errands, he first bought a Redmi K50 in March this year. One of his favorite Xiaomi mobile phones before was the "Xiaomi Mi 9", in addition to the battery life is a bit of a gap, he feels that the machine does not have too many problems in other aspects.
The newly launched Redmi K50 once again gave him a similar feeling, "This configuration is at this price, and what kind of bicycle do you want." This statement that xiaomi products are cost-effective is very popular in the rice noodle group. The higher configuration of the Redmi K50 and the pricing of the early 2000 yuan are quite attractive. On March 22, Redmi also announced its first sales record - in the first five minutes, it sold more than 330,000 units. "With the same configuration, Xiaomi's products have the lowest price, and I think it is the most conscientious." Liu Songyan said.
On the first day of the arrival of the mobile phone, there was not much time to experience it, and he took this Redmi K50 out of the field. What happened afterwards made him angry when he remembered it.
"It shuts down automatically 3 times on the first day I buy it." Liu Songyan told the "Finance and Economics World" weekly that the first time was within 5 minutes after unpacking, the automatic shutdown without warning, "I thought I pressed the wrong button." ”
The thing that really annoyed him happened at lunchtime when he was out of work. "Because the work is mainly to run foreign affairs, I can't eat at the company at noon," Liu Songyan said, the fast food restaurant he often goes to is also the lunch base for a large number of migrant workers around, "the team to buy food is particularly long, wait for my turn, I open Alipay to scan the code to prepare for payment, the mobile phone automatically shut down, the first time to sweep off, the second time to sweep and shut down." ”
"Can you imagine," he added, "there's a bunch of people waiting for me to pay." In the end, after inquiring about the situation, the colleagues who came together helped him break the siege, and did not forget to sneer: "Isn't Xiaomi's system very smooth to advertise?" ”
The bad experience made him can't help but send a video complaining about the K50's gratuitous shutdown. "It turns out that I always felt that there was a problem with the product, and the first time should be to find after-sales, rather than posting a video in public." Liu Songyan felt that now he could understand, and some bugs were intolerable.
Regarding the breaking of the defense of rice noodles, there is a video that has been sung in the rice noodle circle and become a must-see "classic" in the circle. The video originated from a loyal rice noodle's fatal complaint about the Xiaomi forum revision, internal test clearing and other incomprehensible operations.
In June 2021, the Xiaomi forum underwent a major revision, increasing the difficulty of obtaining the internal test qualification of the MIUI (Xiaomi's Android system custom UI) development version, and increasing the mandatory task mechanism, that is, the rice noodles that want to obtain the internal test qualification need to complete the task indicators set by Xiaomi. This change has also led to the disqualification of many old rice noodles in the past. The rice noodles could not bear it, and in August, he posted a video accusing Xiaomi of "internal testing and kicking people" on the B station.
In the video, the rice powder burst into tears, and in addition to the complaining and laughing tone of Xiaomi, there were frequent golden sentences. However, this original video did not "survive" for too long.
Netizens with fast eyes have forwarded the recorded version and named it "Xiaomi Bible". Among them, the cry from the video author tearing his heart and lungs, "Lei Jun! Jin Fan! The latter is the xiaomi product director and the general manager of the MIUI experience, revealing a sense of sadness that the sky should not be called the earth, but also reveals disappointment and helplessness, and then becomes the most widely spread meme. The overwhelming criticism also forced the Xiaomi community to issue an emergency apology announcement and adjust the internal testing mechanism again.
A rice noodle commented on the weekly magazine "Finance and Economics", "To a large extent, the 'Xiaomi Bible' can be said to be a classic that is difficult to surpass in the field of fan defense. ”
In the face of the rapid decline in word of mouth this year, Xiaomi has not done no remedy. In August of the same year, the Xiaomi community launched a new column called "Live Meet and Greet", the original intention was to synchronize the dynamics of Xiaomi with rice noodles and strengthen communication and interaction with rice noodles. However, because the final form of presentation is "recording and broadcasting", and the content is mostly with goods, the results are not satisfactory. At the Xiaomi press conference held in the same month, Lei Junhao threw heavy money and gave 1999 yuan of Xiaomi mall "thanksgiving red envelopes" to the original rice noodle group.
To some extent, "saving the trust of rice noodles" is urgent for Xiaomi.
Image source/Visual China
Split rice noodles
Like many rice noodles, Fang Yuming also feels that the current millet has changed its taste.
The most impressive thing for him was that in August 2021, a B station UP owner, who was also a user who purchased a Xiaomi 11 mobile phone, sent a video to complain about "Xiaomi 11 burning motherboard". In its work, because xiaomi 11 burned the motherboard, it indirectly led to the loss of potential customers tracked on the same day, and voluntarily resigned under pressure. The user posted the video in exasperation, winning a lot of sympathy, and some of the details of the controversy told in it also raised many questions.
Eventually, the video was complained about by Xiaomi. However, before this, Xiaomi customer service has contacted the UP owner to help him expedite the return.
In fact, "Xiaomi 11 burns the motherboard" is not an isolated case, in February of the same year, there was user feedback that "Xiaomi 11 will burn Wi-Fi", resulting in a sudden failure of the Wi-Fi function can not be opened, after-sales explanation is that the motherboard is damaged. In the summer, as the temperature rises, the situation of "burning Wi-Fi" is more and more, and there are rice noodles that have the same experience pouring into the millet community feedback, but Xiaomi's initial deletion of posts and inaction has caused great dissatisfaction and negative emotions in the rice noodle group.
"If there is a problem with the quality of the mobile phone, it should be borne, rather than trying to reduce the after-sales loss, this behavior will only hurt the trust of existing users." Fang Yuming said that as a bystander, he is also extremely dissatisfied with Xiaomi's handling attitude.
Fang Yuming is a "standard" rice noodle, he has used no less than 8 Xiaomi mobile phones, including but not limited to Redmi 1S, Xiaomi 4, Redmi 4, Redmi Note4X, Redmi 5, Xiaomi 11Pro. Of the phones he's used, the one that impressed him the most was the Redmi 4.
"Redmi 4 is my favorite." He told the "Finance world" weekly, "I dare to say that the experience of the new Redmi 4 machine is better than my current Xiaomi 11Pro, I can scan the code on the line, the games I played at that time were running smoothly, the system was not as bad as it is now, if the evaluation is 10 points, I give it 9.5 points." ”
The machine from 6 years ago has been used by him until today. During the period, the tail plug in 2020 broke once, could not be charged, and was still used as a backup machine by him after repairing.
In 2017, his mother gave the eliminated Redmi 1S to Fang Yuming, which was his first contact with Xiaomi. In 2020, Fang Yuming purchased the Redmi 10X, and the experience of "MediaTek processor + MIUI" made him feel a mess, which can be said to be the beginning of his disappointment with Xiaomi. Starting with MIUI 12, the feeling of use he gets has dropped considerably. "It used to work so well, but now it's extremely bloated." Fang Yuming explained that he has been adding functions and not doing a good job of optimization, "The mouth is compared with Apple every day, but many functions are actually flashy, and frame drops often occur." ”
Returning to the issue of burning the motherboard, Fang Yuming is difficult to say whether he is lucky or unlucky. His Xiaomi Mi 11 Pro did not encounter a motherboard burning situation. But he later told Caijing Weekly: "I actually always hoped that I could also meet it, because I could get a refund if I burned it twice." ”
I can hear from his words that he is not as fond of Xiaomi as before, but the feelings are still there.
In the rice noodles, Sun Anqi is the kind that will rush out to maintain millet.
"I think they're all squirting." 17-year-old Sun Anqi can't understand how Xiaomi's reputation fell. Although he also perceives that the number of user-contributed videos on Xiaomi's mobile phones is "more than ever". Since he learned about the Xiaomi brand in elementary school, it is now the first time that he has felt such a surge of negative emotions about Xiaomi products.
"Take MIUI, there are a lot of boring people looking for BUGs there, if it is replaced by a friendly business, it may be more than MIUI BUGS." He added, "There is no perfect software or hardware in the world. ”
In Sun Anqi's cognition, spitting on Xiaomi seems to have become some kind of "traffic password".
This post-00 who likes Yang Chaoyue and Gu Ailing, here in Xiaomi and Lei Jun, feels the same inspirational attributes as their idols. He took some of the scenes that made him feel empathy in Xiaomi's tenth anniversary biography "Moving Forward" and stored them in the red rice K30 mobile phone album he was using.
He casually sent two pictures and said, "This is exactly what I wrote." ”
In fact, the subtle influence of family members is a factor that cannot be ignored. He has a pair of parents who are also considered "rice noodles", and the purchase of the family is as large as the TV and the paper pump, all of which are products of the Xiaomi Mall. Both parents also use Xiaomi mobile phones, one is using the mid-range machine Xiaomi 10 Youth Edition released in 2020, and the other is using an older model Of Mi 8.
Obviously, compared to Sun Anqi, his "rice noodle" parents have long been not the age of fetish fever.
"In order to support Lei Zong's (Lei Jun)'s high-end dream," Sun Anqi told Caijing Weekly that he originally wanted to ask his parents to buy him another Xiaomi Civi, a trendy model released by Xiaomi in the fall of 2021. "But my dad didn't agree." He said.
Whether to continue to "fever" for xiaomi, Fang Yuming and Sun Anqi have different attitudes, but they are the most authentic portrayals of rice noodles today.
"As long as you dive a few rice noodle groups slightly, you will find a split within the rice noodles." A xiaomi mobile phone user for many years told the weekly magazine "Finance world".
Maybe it's the price of rushing up
Sun Anqi, who is underage, can't think of any reason to replace Xiaomi. "If you really try other brands, the mobile phone will not be changed, and other products can be considered." In a recent rice noodle group exchange, Sun Anqi still expressed his firm support for Xiaomi mobile phones.
Someone replied in the tone of a person who came over: "It's just that Xiaomi compares your current appetite, but people will always change, and when you graduate and have your own income, there will be more choices." ”
Rice noodles change, and Xiaomi is no exception.
Since 2020, Lei Jun has repeatedly publicly talked about "millet is not understood". Lei Jun wants to build Xiaomi into a high-end brand, which is basically an impossible task in the eyes of many people. There is a lot of discussion about this on the Internet.
At the Xiaomi Mi 12 conference at the end of 2021, Lei Jun once again said, "Some users who do not understand us have made overwhelming criticism of us, which puts a lot of pressure on me and the team." ”
The view of a user who has been depowdered is that in fact, a large part of the understanding is concentrated on one problem - the "high-end" of Xiaomi's hardware parameters, and the software experience is still at a relatively low-end level. "Relying solely on the black technology taken from suppliers, it can't be high-end."
In the rice noodle group, if you throw out the statement that "the biggest obstacle to Xiaomi's high-end road is MIUI", it will definitely get a lot of approval. Especially in recent generations, MIUI has not allowed people to get the corresponding experience improvement in the continuous update and upgrade of the version. Since the first version of MIUI 12, the stability of multiple consecutive versions is not ideal, and it is often joked by "rice noodles": "Rice rush high, key years, bugs, restart solutions." ”
"BUG continuously" will push MIUI to the cusp of the storm, during which Lei Jun also said through Weibo that he will re-optimize MIUI and will not disappoint the rice noodles. Recently, MIUI launched a new 13th generation version, after learning the "lessons" of the previous generation version, from the current user feedback, stability and fluency have been greatly improved.
The heavy responsibility of supporting Xiaomi's high-end road, which once belonged to MIUI 12, fell back to MIUI 13.
Xiaomi has always expected to improve hardware profits through a rush-up strategy. According to the financial report, in the fourth quarter of last year, Xiaomi's mobile phone business achieved revenue of 50.5 billion yuan, an increase of 18.4% year-on-year, and IoT business revenue of 25.1 billion yuan, an increase of 19.1% year-on-year, and the weight of the two in total revenue was as high as 88.3%, accounting for 89.2% of the annual revenue. In terms of profit performance, mobile phones are far inferior to Internet services.
In fact, the high-end strategy can also bring more growth to Xiaomi. The data shows that in 2021, Xiaomi's shipments of high-end smartphones in the overseas high-end market increased by more than 160% year-on-year.
Image source/Visual China
At the beginning of 2022, Xiaomi officially set up a high-end strategy working group and put forward the lofty goal of "winning the first place in the market share of domestic high-end mobile phones within three years". In fact, Xiaomi's high-end strategy has also begun to bear fruit, and the proportion of high-end mobile phones priced at more than 3,000 yuan in Xiaomi in 2021 will increase from 7% in 2020 to 13% in 2021.
However, now a challenge for Xiaomi is how to transform its own willingness to rush into the expectations of rice noodles. Most of them love the Xiaomi brand because of the cost performance.
After releasing the spit video against the Redmi K50, Liu Songyan received a lot of questions and even insults in the background. Many people accused him of deliberately smearing Xiaomi. He had to send another video to prove himself.
On the evening of April 15, after several days of waiting, Liu Songyan finally received a new K50. He deliberately fed this message back and sent an unboxed photo. He told Caijing Weekly that if he had known this, he would never have bought this Redmi K50.
He will not easily try Xiaomi's "high-end" model, in his understanding, "Xiaomi does not have the gene of a high-end brand, at least the current vision and strength are not worthy." ”
A brand strategist expressed his views to the "Finance and Economics" weekly, "Millet is already a deep-rooted cost-effective brand, for consumers, if a certain electronic product does not know what brand to buy, and is too lazy to spend time to study, then it is generally not wrong to close your eyes to buy millet products, because Xiaomi's things are more cost-effective, and many times a little bug is not painful." ”
In its view, the original cost-effective route determined that Xiaomi's own products can only provide a similar "cost-effective experience". "What a great effort, what a reward." According to the person, pain often stems from the desire to take more from the other person. "Xiaomi wants to abandon the impression of cost performance and take the high-end route instead, and the rice noodles will have higher requirements for you."
Accept more criticism, which may also be the price of Xiaomi's strategy.
(Chinese Yuming and Sun Anqi are pseudonyms)
Author/ Author of "Finance and Economics" Weekly Wu Di
Editor/ Dong Yuqing
This article is originally produced by AI Finance and Economics, an account of Caijing Tianxia Weekly, without permission, please do not reprint it on any channel or platform. Violators will be prosecuted.