春节档鏖战:OPPO焦虑,华为满血下攻,vivo迎开门红

【Abstract】The Spring Festival is a critical transition period for mobile phone manufacturers, and they are in full swing of preparation.

In this Spring Festival, which is not worried about the market, a practitioner close to OPPO told Xinliu Think Tank that OPPO is "very anxious".

Not long ago, after the channel reform of Huawei was stranded, OPPO also frequently encountered the squeeze of Glory's county and municipal markets.

More immediate pressure comes from Huawei. According to people familiar with the matter, as of February 18, Huawei's market share ranked first with 18.7%, and it is about to make a big move in the P70. In the new year, Huawei has formulated a market plan for the 2k-5k price segment, which is the basic market of OPPO and vivo.

However, in this Spring Festival, vivo ushered in its own good start. According to Wall Street news, vivo (including iQ00) won the first market share of China's smartphone market during the W4-W6 period.

With March approaching, vivo will further promote the X100 Ultra product, and has basically completed the learning of Huawei's direct sales model.

The following is the main text:

The Spring Festival is a critical transition period for mobile phone manufacturers. On the one hand, the return of population in some cities has made the role of the sinking market more obvious. On the other hand, each company should also plan well in advance and set the product rhythm and strategic goals for the new year.

According to channel data, OPPO's most outstanding performance is 1000-2500 price models, its workmanship quality is excellent, the after-sales return rate is the lowest, it is almost the best in the friends of the business, A series of mobile phones compared with the same gear of friends have obvious advantages.

OPPO A2 series phones

However, in this Spring Festival, which is not worried about the market, a practitioner close to OPPO told Xinliu Think Tank that OPPO is "very anxious".

According to its disclosure, first of all, Honor is rapidly eroding OPPO's offline low-end market, sinking to municipal cities and some head counties, and further penetrating into towns and towns through the distribution model of large customers in counties and cities.

The large customers who have obtained a large number of supplies themselves have some township dealers who frequently cooperate, and they will further distribute according to the needs of these township dealers, and these dealers will radiate the surrounding stores on demand, and Glory's products will snowball.

In this way, the competition of mobile phones in small towns is no longer just the home of OPPO and vivo. According to the channel data surveyed by Xinliu Think Tank, OPPO's market share in the Spring Festival stalls in a certain province fell by about 5%.

According to people familiar with the matter, in a provincial market, the model subsidy of gloryx50 can still reach 100 yuan per unit, using the method of direct rebate to the store, this subsidy is the same as vivo, and it is twice as much as OPPO's model in the same price range50 yuan per unit. At the same time, Honor is also actively preparing for overseas markets in preparation for listing.

A person close to OPPO told Xinliu Think Tank that with the channel reform stranded, OPPO currently urgently needs to adjust the rhythm of its products to find the market.

At first, in order to integrate its huge sinking market, OPPO benchmarked Huawei for a period of time to learn digitalization and provincial company systems.

According to industry insiders, Huawei has adopted a representative office model in its organizational structure, which is composed of several full-time employees, local store operation employees recruited by Smartcom's wholly-owned subsidiary (full name is "Shenzhen Smartcom Business Co., Ltd."), and outsourced shopping guide employees.

Smaller cities and counties set up offices with neighboring cities, effectively forming branches sent by the main company.

These branches are responsible for the development of large customers in various places, and the centralized purchase of large customers and the unified pricing of the whole country.

After the launch of the Mate60 series, the distribution of goods will be handled by Huawei in China, and the distribution of goods will be carried out according to the past mobile phone sales, proportion and contribution of each dealer and each city and county.

In terms of the configuration of goods, Huawei has one national contractor and two provincial contractors, and the supply categories are strictly differentiated. The Mate series and P series are allocated by the state-owned contractors, while the Nova series, Changxiang, and Maimang are allocated by the provincial contractors, and Huawei plays the role of a capital logistics platform.

However, OPPO does not have Huawei's super audit team and a high degree of implementation of the will of the decision-making level, but a game between dealers with high voice and the main company.

If you want to benchmark the Huawei model, OPPO needs to cancel the distribution capacity of city and county middle-tier dealers, but the manufacturer sends a representative office to strongly control the source of goods, and directly ships from provincial contractors to large customers.

As a result, the main sources of goods are distributed to large customers, and the interests of city and county dealers decline, and then they will be dissatisfied.

Not only that, according to channel practitioners close to OPPO, OPPO's municipal distributors generally own shares in provincial companies, and in some provinces have the right to "shoot" at those who implement channel reforms. Under the fierce conflict of interests, the resistance to reform can be imagined.

In the previous series of articles, we mentioned that strong binding with channels is the way for OPPO to survive, and dealers are the core components of OPPO.

This "princely system" channel system means that dealers have a very high right to speak, both as referees and as players. Based on this, a reform that has been invested for a long time but does not generate profits often does not live long within OPPO, as is the case with channel reform and high-end strategy.

Regarding the channel reform of the OPPO system, please refer to the new stream research article "Market Shrinkage, OPPO Fights Against the Water". Search and add Xinliu WeChat Aristodemus0403 to exchange more information about OPPO's channel reform.

In terms of the positioning of high-end models, some industry insiders believe that OPPO's high-end flagship should not only focus on the image, but also on commercial functions and some "hard" functions that highlight technical strength.

According to people familiar with the matter, the satellite communication function was actually first approached by the relevant departments of telecommunications and OPPO wanted to entrust it to develop, but OPPO chose to give up after trying.

Eventually, Huawei successfully developed the satellite communication function and installed it in its mobile phone products.

And in this regard, Xiaomi has been keeping up with Huawei's pace.

According to Xiaomi's two-way satellite communication performance in the South China Sea uninhabited area, Xiaomi 14 Ultra has achieved a lead in star finding speed, connection speed, and connection speed. In addition, Xiaomi also has a built-in surging T1 chip for signal enhancement.

In the face of future competition, OPPO chose to deploy AI from the end of last year.

On February 20, OPPO held an AI strategy conference. Before the Chinese New Year's Eve of the Lunar Year of the Dragon, OPPO also officially released a 30-second ultra-short press conference, announcing the push of the ColorOS AI New Year Edition to users, covering nearly 20 models. After many actions, OPPO's purpose is obvious: to seize the next growth pole of the mobile phone market with AI.

Of course, the most direct impact on OPPO is Huawei.

According to a mobile phone channel practitioner, as of February 18, Huawei's market share in the Chinese market has reached 18.7%.

Although the standard version of the Mate60 series and the version below 512GB of the Pro are out of stock due to the impact of production capacity, the Nova12 series released at the end of December last year has sold well, according to public information, sales of more than 10 million units in just two months.

Moreover, according to people familiar with the chip industry chain, in order to solve the production capacity problem, Huawei will purchase Qualcomm chips to overcome the shortage of chips in the low-end market, which is expected to be used in the Nova series. In addition, there will be small iterations of the Nova, new product releases in the 2k range, major changes to the appearance, and the Mate 60 series may reduce the price after production keeps up.

In addition to this, Huawei is refining the P70 series internally.

The R&D team of the Mate60 series and P70 series has personally run the first-line terminals, "the R&D team boss and the project leader stand in the store to sell goods and listen to the voices of front-line customers". This part of the team first listened to the sales pain points, and then selected many representative stores in the country to experience.

It is reported that this part of the team rushes to the bus, stops the store, and discusses with consumers during the day, and holds internal meetings to discuss and summarize materials at night and upload them to the headquarters, sleeping an average of three or four hours a day.

Under the condition that the Mate60 has already been proven in the market as a pioneer project, Huawei may make further polishing on the P70 internally.

In fact, from the perspective of product features, the P series has never had a unified design language.

For example, from the lens, the P30 is rectangular, the P50 is double-ring, and the P60 is a three-ring pattern in a box. Compared to the symmetrical form of the Mate series, the design of the P-series may be uniform from the P70 onwards.

Online P70 rendering Source: Digital Chat Station

According to channel forecasts, after the P70 is launched, Huawei's market share in China may rise to 30%, and the pressure on other manufacturers will be even greater.

At the same time, the Xingyao series is in the pipeline, which is currently a highly confidential project within Huawei, and the only information is that it may adopt a model similar to TD Tech.

According to people familiar with the matter, Huawei's previous discussions on market share mainly focused on Apple and Honor, and recently began, with a certain focus on OPPO and vivo.

Judging from Huawei's product rhythm this year, Huawei has formulated a market development plan for the 2k-5k price range, and it is likely to be close to OPPO and vivo.

However, vivo performed well in this Spring Festival file.

In terms of market share, according to Wall Street, vivo won the first place in the domestic mobile phone market share during the Spring Festival. According to data obtained from multiple channels in the supply chain, vivo (including iQ00) will account for 16.5%, 17.6% and 17.7% of the Chinese smartphone market during the W4-W6 (1.22-2.11) period in 2024. Among them, W5 and W6 are the first in the market share of all brand activations, and W4 is the first in the market share of domestic brand activations.

Judging from the channel data surveyed by Xinliu Think Tank, vivo's Spring Festival shipments increased by about 2% year-on-year, and the momentum of the year was good.

With the help of the full sinking market, coupled with the warm-up of the vivo X100 series since November last year, it is not surprising that this Spring Festival file can achieve such results.

vivo X100 Pro 星际蓝

But for vivo, one of the most obvious achievements is that the model of direct sales across the country has been basically realized, and the goal that OPPO's channel reform has not achieved has actually been achieved.

The reason for this is that industry insiders believe that it is related to the determination to reform, vivo is relatively bold, and OPPO is strategically swinging.

A source commented that Huawei's style is legion-based operations, and through IPD management, everyone can play their role to a greater extent, and when they encounter reform bottlenecks, they can also quickly get help.

However, OPPO's reform is often alone, whether it is the introduction of Huawei employees or internal reformers, they have not formed a system, and an employee cannot "call for fire", but fight alone, and it cannot touch the company's genes.

On this basis, the courage and determination of the founders are crucial. It is reported that OPPO has achieved direct sales in a number of large provinces, including Shaanxi, Jiangsu, and Anhui, and it still needs to adhere to the determination of reform.

In the past four years that Huawei's market has been vacant, vivo has continued to reform its direct sales model to benchmark Honor and Huawei. The success of this reform, industry insiders believe that its organizational ability and execution will be greatly improved.

From the perspective of product rhythm, vivo's upcoming X100 Ultra in the first half of the year has a lot of fierce materials. According to people familiar with the matter, it may be equipped with Samsung2K E7 curved screen, the shape has not changed much, and the equivalent focal length of the 200 million pixel periscope telephoto that finally lands is less than 100mm. At present, the prototype is all made of glass and supports two-way satellite communication.

In addition, single-point ultrasonic fingerprints, USB 3.2, and other features that have attracted much attention before may also be arranged.

Standing at this node looking back at the past few months, Huawei's return is actually just the beginning, OPPO, vivo, Honor, Xiaomi and other manufacturers are in full swing to prepare their own products, the competition for the Spring Festival is already like this, and the fierce battle in the new year can be seen.