Author: Wang Xin Source: IT Times
On April 26, ZTE Terminal issued a letter to its partners, "Breaking Through the Stronghold, Gathering Momentum for ZTE", in which the strategic route and achievements of ZTE Terminal were reviewed, reviewed and prospected.
In recent years, ZTE terminals have adhered to the road of "product + brand + channel" in the development of consumer business, and in the spring of 2022, the chemical reaction on the product and brand began to conduct to the channel side, and urged the ecological chain system to continue to grow.
Ni Fei, senior vice president of ZTE and president of the terminal business unit, said in mid-2021: "Products, brands and channels, these three things must go hand in hand, biting in one direction, the middle action is not deformed, and after a variety of factors are formed, they will erupt at a certain point." ”
The data shows that by the end of 2021, ZTE terminals have built more than 6,000 sales positions, and it is expected to reach 10,000 in 2022.
In the letter written by ZTE Terminal to partners, it sees the message conveyed: from the end of November 2020, after ZTE announced that the terminal business was reloaded, ZTE Terminal is gradually looking forward to the "three leading" of brand leadership, ecological leadership and product leadership from the "three returns" of concept return, communication return and value return, and quietly waiting for the emergence of "flashpoint" with channel partners.
"X variable" of the "second curve"
On the evening of March 8, 2022, ZTE officially announced its 2021 annual financial report. According to the report, in 2021, ZTE achieved operating income of 114.52 billion yuan, an increase of 12.9% year-on-year; achieved a net profit attributable to the mother of 6.81 billion yuan, an increase of 59.9% year-on-year.
Under the influence of comprehensive market factors such as the shortage of the chip market, the new crown epidemic and the weakness of the global consumer market, ZTE still handed over a beautiful report card. The consumer business, one of the three main business revenues, continued to maintain a good development trend, and the consumer business contributed 25.73 billion yuan in revenue in 2021, an increase of 59.22% year-on-year.
For ZTE, 2022 will enter a period of strategic transcendence and accelerate the creation of a second growth curve. According to the strategic plan, the communication technology CT business is the first curve, maintaining an annual growth rate of more than 10%, and the single market share exceeds 40%; while the growth and emerging businesses such as terminals, IT, and digital energy are the second curve, with an annual compound growth rate of more than 40%, and the proportion of revenue in the next 5 years will increase from about 10% to more than 30%.
Obviously, the strategic goal of ZTE's second growth curve is achieved, and ZTE terminal will play an important role. The rapid development of terminal business can play a significant role in promoting revenue, ecology and other momentum, and is conducive to helping ZTE to realize its deep technology accumulation on the product side.
According to the 2021 financial report data, in addition to the nearly 40% growth in the revenue of mobile phone products, ZTE terminal revenue increased by more than 80% year-on-year, ranking first in the global share; in the 5G CPE market for the next generation of home terminals, it also maintained the first global share, showing a positive growth trend.
The accelerator of ZTE terminal development seems to be being stepped on, and in 2021, ZTE terminal shipments exceeded 100 million units, and the cumulative shipment of household terminal products reached 580 million units. The superposition effect of "mobile phone + ecology" has brought great impetus to the development of ZTE terminals, and ZTE terminals are an important "X variable" for the sustained and rapid development of ZTE's second growth curve.
From "Return of Ideas" to "Brand Leadership"
What kind of company is ZTE? This is a national technology enterprise, similarly, for ZTE mobile phones and ZTE terminals that have gone through 24 years, the core of the brand concept it carries cannot escape the category of "national technology".
The topic returns to how Do Chinese Consumers Know ZTE Mobile Phones? ZTE mobile phone has a wide range of influence in China and even the world, ZTE mobile phone has created many firsts in the history of mobile phones, ZTE mobile phone is the first to go abroad Chinese mobile phone manufacturers, as early as 2006, ZTE mobile phone sold to more than 50 countries and regions around the world, this achievement, until now most mobile phone manufacturers are difficult to reach. For ZTE mobile phones, the connotation of "national technology" has always run through the development history of the brand.
On April 16, the Shenzhou 13 astronauts "went home" after 6 months, and the return module of the Shenzhou 13 manned spacecraft landed smoothly. Xinhuanet used the ZTE Axon 40 mobile phone to convey the historic picture of the return of space warriors to the people of the whole country, which is a beneficial resonance between the ZTE mobile phone brand and the development of aerospace science and technology in the motherland.
Looking back, in recent years, ZTE Terminal's position in the brand image seems to be more and more returning to the original intention, firmly standing on the heel of "national science and technology brand".
In February 2021, ZTE Mobile and Zhang Yimou filmed the MV "Going Forward, All The Way", in which ZTE used such lines to interpret ZTE's feelings as the world's top communication company - when people chat about WeChat, brush vibrato, and watch live broadcasts, they will not care about the base stations, optical fibers and servers quietly working around them, which is the way ZTE empowers society.
In January 2022, ZTE mobile phone officially announced a new spokesperson Wu Jing. Wu Jing's deeply rooted screen image naturally interprets the brand concept of ZTE mobile phones. Wu Jing is ordinary, but he is a real "brave person", and on top of the gentle and thick background of ZTE mobile phone, he has now added a new connotation of cutting-edge bravery, and the cooperation between the two is very tacit and expected.
In March 2022, ZTE Mobile was certified by CCTV CCTV as "Domestic Excellent Products", and the impression of its new image of domestic products was further deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.
At present, ZTE mobile phone business has formed a group army combat posture of ZTE, Nubia and Red Devil at the strategic level, and ZTE Terminal will unify the three major brands of ZTE, Nubia and Red Devil, so that they can coordinate with each other in products, technology, supply chain, brand strategy and channel strategy, and exert force on the domestic To C market. Although the three major brands each have a brand tonal focus, or focus on screen, photography, or focus on games, tide play, the concept of "national technology brand" will run through it, and become a solid brand base for ZTE terminal products, whether it is for channel providers or consumers, this is a very important message.
From "Communication Return" to "Ecological Leadership"
As one of the major communication equipment suppliers in the global 5G field, ZTE is one of the few mobile phone manufacturers in China with integrated communication capabilities of cloud, pipe, terminal and core. If ZTE terminal products are a big tree with branches and leaves, then the communication gene is the hardest trunk of this big tree.
With communication-related technologies as the core, ZTE's patented technologies are worth tens of billions of yuan, ranking first in the global patent layout. At the same time, in the field of chips with communication as the core, ZTE is also one of the earliest communication manufacturers in China to lay out semiconductor research and development, at present, ZTE is involved in 5G multi-mode baseband chips, intermediate frequency chips, terminal chips, Internet of Things chips and other fields, and is at the forefront of the world in 5G base station equipment chips, 5G optical communication equipment chips and 5G core network equipment chips.
It is the extensive penetration of communication technology in the field of ZTE pan-terminals that makes ZTE terminals maintain their core competitive advantages in the intelligent terminal market. For example, among the 100 million ZTE terminals sold in 2021, the use rate of self-developed chips has exceeded 50%, which is very rare among domestic terminal manufacturers.
With the expansion of 5G applications, ZTE Terminal will rely on the "1+2+N" ("1" refers to mobile phones, "2" refers to two major types of terminal products of personal data and family data, and "N" represents peripheral ecological products) on the basis of the Group's 5G technology advantages, and establish a distributed architecture of multi-screen device connection and collaboration with MyOS as the underlying layer, and serve the circulation of applications, hardware and files through near-field communication capabilities. The experience of advanced communication technologies such as 5G will run through popular application fields such as mobile office, e-sports, and live broadcasting, and form intelligent and professional terminal network solutions.
In terms of ecological product lines, mobile Internet products such as 5G mobile phones and 5G CPE will still be the fist product lines of ZTE terminals, forming a strong traction force for the ecological chain of ZTE terminal products.
ZTE terminal takes "communication" as the clue, gradually integrates mobile phones, broadband interconnection, terminal chip modules and ecological capabilities to form a "big terminal", so that the "1+2+N" strategy covers the all-scenario smart ecology, that is, the integration of smart phones, personal and family data, around the four major scenarios of sports and health, business travel, family education, audio-visual entertainment, with a wealth of 5G intelligent ecological products, so that the full-scenario 5G intelligent lifestyle becomes a reality.
Even in the hottest connected car market at present, ZTE terminals have also entered the game from communications and have long been planned. According to reports, ZTE terminal will explore in the field of vehicle networking, focus on C-V2X and intelligent transportation construction, and use 5G and C-V2X to form an all-round collaborative system of people, vehicles, roads, networks and clouds to achieve a more efficient, intelligent and safer intelligent transportation network. At present, ZTE Terminal has shipped millions of chips and modules in this field, and has made significant efforts in the industry and industrial terminals. Recently, Huawei has also renamed its consumer business as "terminal business", officially announcing that it has fully entered the commercial field, and both have seen the broad prospects of commercial terminals.
Supporting such a huge ecological product line of ZTE terminal, it must be major operators, channel providers and partners, in the letter to partners, ZTE terminal revealed that it will actively build and expand the two sales channel teams of the open market and the government and enterprise markets, and is expected to complete 10,000 retail positions within the year.
If the communication gene is the inherent strength, technology and confidence of ZTE terminals, then it will also be one of the confidences and important differentiated competitiveness of all ZTE channel providers.
From "Value Return" to "Product Leadership"
In the extremely competitive global and domestic mobile phone terminal market, how does ZTE mobile phone stand out? The answer given by ZTE Terminal is to do the ultimate innovation, take "user value" as the goal and direction of product development, and through the iterative evolution of a variety of products, and finally achieve a nearly perfect user-side mobile phone form.
The information revealed by ZTE terminal shows that in the era of ubiquitous intelligent terminals, ZTE terminals will continue to anchor mobile phones as core products, further strengthen their independent capabilities in the field of underlying core technologies such as chips, and continue to maintain the first market share in the field of mobile Internet products such as 5G CPE, becoming the world's first mobile Internet brand.
In a letter to partners, ZTE Terminal said that in recent years, ZTE mobile phones have insisted on creating features from the two most important aspects of display and video.
In 2020 and 2021, ZTE mobile phones launched the first and second generation of mass-produced under-screen camera phones Axon 20 and Axon 30 in the world, of which the Axon 30 series also took the lead in the industry to launch three main camera computational photography. Each ZTE Axon series 5G mobile phone embodies hundreds of patent reserves owned by ZTE and industry chain partners, covering the whole machine design and screen design, and is at the leading level in the industry in terms of the number of patents and patent research and development time.
In February 2022, nubia Z40 Pro launched the world's first exclusive custom optics 35mm humanistic imaging master lens, which won the sales championship of JD.com, Tmall and Android mobile phones on the first day of listing.
In the past two years of ZTE's financial report communication meeting, star terminals such as the ZTE Axon series are often mentioned, and the resulting good user reputation and sales growth have a positive impact on the development of consumer business.
Ni Fei stressed that ZTE mobile phones have been gradually strengthening a better user experience and exploring the ultimate form of extreme mobile phones.
At the end of the letter to partners, the new generation of flagship Axon 40 series mobile phones was called "the ultimate form of the straight flagship" by ZTE Terminal. It is not difficult to guess that this will be the third ultimate iteration of the Axon 5G series of under-screen camera mobile phones, and the under-screen camera will be able to bring users a near-perfect screen and photo "true full screen" experience, which is also one of the important research and development directions identified by ZTE Mobile for a long time.
Whether ZTE Axon 40 series mobile phones can show convincing "ultimate" black technology is the ultimate pursuit of user value resonance of this flagship product, and it is also the touchstone of whether it can achieve an absolute breakthrough in the industry in terms of dedicated technology, and it is also a blockbuster appearance that all channel providers and consumers are waiting to see.