Recently, Nut Projection officially released an open letter to the intelligent projection industry. In the open letter, Nut Projection said that Nut advocates creating the future of three-color lasers, and looks forward to all colleagues in the industry to deeply understand and develop three-color laser technology, and join the ranks of popularizing three-color lasers and benefiting the majority of users.
This "sudden" open letter is more like the end of the "tearing each other" incident between nuts and Jimi. And the origin of everything must start with a video released by the B station UP master "yes, yes, yes".
It is understood that the UP master selected three projectors of "Jimi rs pro3", "Nut N1U" and "BenQ new machine i780" in the video for comparison, and concluded that Jimi "contrast and color accuracy algorithms are very general". After the video was released, it was quickly forwarded to the circle of friends by the nut projection CPO Will.
Will said in the circle of friends: "If the so-called 'industry boss' does not use the real money given by users to promote industry innovation and progress after earning the most profits in the industry, but uses shoddy cheap technology and upside-down black-and-white money-burning marketing to suppress innovators and reverse the industry, then the industry is not far from death." ”
Pictured: Nut projection CPO Will Circle of Friends
Will's statement was also quickly responded by Jimi Technology: "I feel strange when I see the screenshots and links sent by everyone. What age is this, and there is still brand PR to touch porcelain marketing? ”
The air response from both sides was eventually brought to the table. On the evening of May 30, invited by Phoenix Technology, Nut Projection CPO Will, Jimi Public Relations Head Guo Xueqing and the UP owner involved launched a "-for-tat" live broadcast debate online.
Different technical routes: who wins?
From a technical point of view, the mainstream projectors on the market are currently divided into three types, lamp light source, LED light source, laser light source.
The traditional bulb light source has high brightness, and the projected picture is relatively bright and transparent, but the body is large, the lamp life is short, and it often needs to be replaced every five to seven years. At the same time, lamp projection is generally noisier, requiring higher heat dissipation capacity, which is not suitable for households.
LED light source brightness is slightly lower, the upper limit is 4000ANSI lumens, but small size, long life, price is relatively approachable, so in recent years it has been quite popular with consumers. At present, most of the mainstream projection products are LED light sources, such as Jimi, Dangbei, etc. are taking this technical route.
Laser light source brightness is extremely high, chromaticity purity and performance stability performance is also better, but the production cost is also high, resulting in the price is often more expensive, the current mainstream laser projector for three-color laser projection, and nuts are the representative manufacturers of this route.
Different positions, different understandings. In Jimi's view, the technical route of a single laser light source has too many "shortcomings".
At the 2023 spring new product launch of Jimi, the product manager of Jimi said that everyone thought that the three-color laser brought ultra-high brightness and super good color, but as early as five years ago, Jimi made a prototype of the three-color laser and found some unsolvable problems, such as severe speckles, and the viewing was like a veil; It will also bring serious color edge problems, easy to fatigue and dizziness.
According to the introduction of Jimi, its latest super mixing technology is to combine laser and LED light sources into one, make up for the LED short board with pure red laser, and bring ultra-high color gamut and ultra-high brightness through the improvement of red color gamut and the gain of laser brightness; And use full-color LED to make up for the laser short board, so that the natural spectrum does not get tired for a long time.
It is not uncommon in business competition to openly respect oneself and inferiority to others, but it is also necessary to be prepared to be "counterattacked". Especially for nuts that rely on three-color laser technology to survive, the reaction will only be stronger under the "fact" of high cost and higher measured effect by UP master. This is also the core reason why Nut Will will publicly "bombard".
Looking back at the entire live broadcast, the core dispute between the two sides still lies in the technical route. The view of JIMI PR is not much different from that of the "Spring Conference".
Will believes that three-color laser technology is the development direction of the industry and is a more advanced next-generation home projection light source. Nuts, Hisense, and Barco, an American visual display technology company, all choose three-color laser technology.
Will also cited data to show that mixing technology is inferior to three-color lasers in terms of picture contrast, and the brightness of products using this technology is higher, and it is also stacked up by volume and power. Light mixing technology is "shoddy" from the parameter point of view; Implemented in the cost of the light source, the mixing technology is to add a red laser to the technology of the panchromatic LED, which is much cheaper than the three-color laser.
Of course, Will also admits that Jimi's speckle defect mentioned by the three-color laser technology does affect the user experience, but the nut has also been optimized.
In addition to the nut projection, Hisense also joined the debate. Zhu Shuqin, Hisense's chief brand officer, posted on social media questioning a brand's technical level and the concept of stealth in public speeches, pointing out that the brand chose to give up in the initial development of three-color laser technology because technical problems could not be overcome.
It is a fact that products with different light source technologies, including lasers, LED lamps, mercury lamps and hybrid light sources, have their own advantages and disadvantages and therefore coexist for a long time. No matter how much the manufacturers argue with each other, for consumers, they don't care what kind of technology is used, only the final picture effect.
Modern Real Business War: Brush Bad Reviews?
In film and television dramas, business wars are always turbulent, decisive and pressing step by step. However, in reality, the business war is to exchange the god of wealth offered by the other party for Ultraman to block the way of wealth, or to water the opponent's fortune tree with boiling water, as well as the "official seal in the crotch"...
In addition to the dispute on the technical route, the "mutual tearing" live broadcast of Jimi and nuts also allows people to see another form of business war.
During the live broadcast, Will mentioned that there are many "consumers" on Jingdong who buy the nut N1 series and return it to leave bad reviews, and the delivery address is displayed as "Jimi Technology". In this regard, Jimi PR said: "I don't know the specific content, and the personal behavior of employees cannot be commented." We also have a lot of invoice orders from Shenzhen Huole Technology (Nut Projection Main Company) in the background of Jingdong, and Mr. Wang can also check internally whether it is a company or an individual behavior, after all, the invoice was issued. ”
For JIMI PR's "dumping pot" response, some netizens said: "What is the personal behavior of employees? Employees will not be fed enough to do this kind of thing, and doing this kind of thing does not benefit the employee. Now many companies do things, accidents are pushed to the individual employees, isn't it a little disgusting? ”
No matter what the outside world thinks. It has to be said that compared with business tactics such as "boiling water to make a fortune tree", the "mutual brushing bad evaluation" of Jimi and nuts seems to be more "simple".
For a long time, in the projection industry, Jimi has sat in the position of "industry boss" for a long time. According to IDC statistics, from 2018 to 2021, JIMI Technology continued to rank first in China's projection equipment market, and its market share steadily increased from 13.2% to 21.2%.
By 2022, according to data released by IDC, the total shipment volume of China's projector market that year was 5.05 million units, a year-on-year increase of 7.4%. The top manufacturers in terms of shipment volume are still Jimi, followed by Epson, Nut Nut, Fengmi and Dangbei, with a combined market share of more than 45%.
For the "old three" nuts, they think that they have paid higher technical costs and presented better picture effects, but they have not received the desired sales, which is "unacceptable". In the view of Nut Will, the reason why Jimi can maintain the position of "industry leader" relies more on money-burning marketing that reverses black and white.
As a listed company, Jimi's marketing expenses are very clearly displayed in the financial report. In terms of sales expenses, JIMI grew rapidly in 2020 and 2021, with double-digit ranges, sales expenses in 2022 were 598 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 3.95%, and the sales expense ratio was 14.16%, a slight decrease year-on-year.
