Alliance of the Frustrated Domestic Mobile Phones: From the Boom to the Lack of Attention, What Did You Do Wrong?

Time Weekly

2024-05-17 08:33Published on the official account of Guangdong Times Weekly

Source of this article: Times Weekly Author: Yang Lingling

Recently, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the release of the Nokia 3210 feature phone, HMD launched a new replica mobile phone - Nokia 3210 4G, priced at 379 yuan.

This brand, which once dominated the mobile phone industry, has returned to calm again after triggering a wave of memories to kill. Throughout the history of global mobile phone development, Nokia, Motorola and other old mobile phones have gradually drifted away from us.

Source: Nokia Mobile Official Weibo

In the latest global smartphone rankings, Apple, Samsung and many domestic mobile phone brands show a three-legged trend. Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo, Honor and other domestic manufacturers have become familiar faces in the global Top 5 list. But more than a decade ago, it was a different story.

Looking back at the development process of domestic mobile phones, from the 2G, 3G era to the 4G, 5G era and leading, after many rounds of reshuffle, only a few manufacturers can maintain evergreen, Bird, Gionee, Tianyu, Nietzsche, LeTV, hammer and other mobile phone brands abound. What are these fallen mobile phone brands doing wrong? What kind of inspiration does it leave for the industry?

waveguide

Gionee

and other traditional bigwigs

Fall off the throne

Wu Di (pseudonym) has been in the mobile phone industry for more than 20 years, according to his recollection, at the turn of the century, the advertising slogan of "Bird mobile phone, fighter in mobile phone" became popular all over the country, making Bird mobile phone a domestic mobile phone brother.

In 2000, Bird was listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, raising 640 million yuan. From 2000 to 2005, Bird mobile phone won the sales championship of domestic mobile phone brands for 6 consecutive years.

In 2006, the waveguide mobile phone, which is good at marketing and lacks technical accumulation, began to decline. By 2007, the annual loss of Bird had reached 593 million yuan, and the domestic market share of Bird mobile phones fell to less than 1%.

Nowadays, the business of mobile phone motherboards and complete machines of Bird Co., Ltd. is sluggish, and the business model has changed to simple commissioned processing, and the former domestic first brother has gradually become a foundry. According to the 2023 annual report, Bird's operating income was 417 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 21.90%, which is far from the annual revenue of 10.841 billion yuan in its heyday (2003).

Source: Picture Worm Creative

Bird lived a nourishing life in the era of feature phones, and was completely unaware that the wind direction had changed. This is also the epitome of the fate of most mobile phone manufacturers at that time, including Gionee.

Founded in 2002, Gionee is in the golden age of feature machines, and invited Andy Lau and Feng Xiaogang to endorse it, and the advertising slogan of "gold quality, establishing the world" is popular on the streets and alleys. By 2008, its sales volume was second only to Samsung and Nokia, and it has become a giant in the domestic mobile phone industry.

However, as feature phones enter a period of decline, smartphones are in the ascendant. "China Cool Union" relied on the rapid rise of operator channels, OPPO, vivo reluctantly cut hundreds of millions of dollars worth of inventory, a comprehensive transformation of smart phones, Xiaomi is through the "fever", cost-effective Internet model, only two years to successfully rank among the top three ranks of Chinese mobile phones.

Looking around, when Jin Liwan woke up, he had missed the best opportunity for development. In an interview, Liu Lirong, founder and chairman of Gionee, said bluntly: "From 2013 to 2015, Gionee lost no less than 100 million yuan per month on average, and lost no less than 200 million yuan per month in 2016 and 2017. ”

When asked about the reason for the loss, Liu Lirong blamed the high marketing and investment expenses. Problems are piling up and difficult to move forward to this day, Gionee mobile phones have not completely disappeared, but they are no longer among the mainstream mobile phones.

Celestial language, Nietzsche, etc

“

Copycats

”

Downs

As the former hegemon of the mobile phone market, Bird and Gionee carry the youthful memories of countless people, and also arouse people's enthusiasm for entrepreneurship.

In 2002, Rong Xiuli, chairman of Tianyu mobile phone, gave up the mobile phone agency business that had been deeply cultivated for 7 years, and began to make her own mobile phone brand, and took out all her belongings to establish Tianyu Langtong Company.

Tianyu aims at the low-end customer group. According to the data, in 2007, Tianyu mobile phone shipments were 17 million, becoming the annual sales champion of domestic mobile phones; In 2008, its sales soared further to 21 million units, accounting for more than 6% of the market share, and its sales once exceeded 8 billion yuan. Rong Xiuli also appeared on the Hurun IT rich list with assets of 4.2 billion yuan.

The lightning rise of Tianyu surprised everyone, it did not have a deep brand background and technical accumulation, and it did not even create a popular model. Industry insiders attribute Tianyu's success to Rong Xiuli's "savage innovation": the channel adopts a unique "buyout" model, selling out mobile phones to agents, and the agents set their own prices.

Relying on this kind of interest bundling, Tianyu stood out without advertising and endorsement, and spread the product from the countryside to the city, becoming the first mobile phone for many people.

However, subsequent strategic mistakes also caused its fortunes to be reversed sharply. With the advent of the 3G era, Tianyu chose the Microsoft system, which led to a poor user experience. Then he switched to Android, but failed to deepen his cultivation.

With the rise of emerging brands such as Xiaomi and Meizu, Tianyu has gradually been marginalized.

Source: Picture Worm Creative

In the mobile phone market, Tianyu's rapid ups and downs are by no means an isolated case. At the end of 2010, Lu Hongbo, who was in the coal business, and Jiang Decai, who was engaged in mobile TV shopping, hit it off and established Nicai Technology Co., Ltd. separately to create the "Nicai" mobile phone brand.

With the "mobile phone price butcher" known as Nicai,At the beginning of the listing, it played the slogan of "only 10 yuan per mobile phone",Unlike other mobile phone brands,Nietzsche focuses on imitating well-known mobile phone brands in the industry,In 2011, it was with the lowest price of 399 yuan、The shape is almost exactly the same as Apple's iPhone 4Nicai i8 to kill a bloody road。

According to the advertisement placed by Nicai, its products have sold nearly one million units in less than a year, and more than 1,000 Nicai factory stores have been opened across the country. Relying on advertising bombardment, celebrity endorsements and other strategies, Nicai became a household name overnight.

However, the rapidly rising number of factories and stores and mobile phone sales have also caused Nicai's management, logistics, after-sales and other links to encounter unprecedented pressure, and it is quickly dying after a flash in the pan.

Emerging brands such as LeTV and Hammer were short-lived

On the battlefield of smart phones, the sense of smell is not sensitive enough will be eliminated, but even if the technology and model are unique, the funds cannot keep up, and the production capacity is not strong, it is difficult to escape the end of failure.

In May 2014, Luo Yonghao, who is good at speaking, released the first mobile phone of Hammer Technology, which set off a lot of noise in the industry. However, from the time the first mobile phone was released, the hammer was already in crisis.

When the T1 was released, the hammer had a problem with mass production. T2 was released, and Hammer once again encountered a delivery crisis. At that time, the foundry Matsuri was halfway done, and it was surrounded and suppressed by suppliers, and Hammer had to look for a second foundry, Zhongtianxin. Unexpectedly, a week before the T2 press conference, Zhongtianxin went bankrupt, and the boss Liu Chaoqiang lost contact, and the employees were owed 3 months of wages and were not paid. In the end, Hammer spent 3 million to pay the wages owed to the workers before he was allowed to salvage 6,000 T2 phones from the factory.

Delivery difficulties mean limited collections, and insufficient funding in turn stifles production. The accumulation of these problems finally broke out in 2016, and the net loss of Hammer Technology in that year reached 428 million yuan, and it faced the dilemma of not being able to pay wages twice.

Finally in 2019, Luo Yonghao had no choice but to sell the hammer mobile phone, and in 2021, the acquisition team gave up the inheritance of products derived from hammer technology, and the hammer mobile phone officially bid farewell to the mobile phone rivers and lakes.

Like the hammer phone, the LETV phone has also encountered a capacity crisis from the beginning. At the end of 2012, Jia Yueting, the founder of LeTV, set up a mobile phone research and development team with the help of Liang Jun, and Ma Lin, the former vice president of Meizu, and Feng Xing, a former Lenovo executive who was in charge of the mobile phone business, were all recruited by him.

LeTV's mobile phones developed rapidly in the early days, and their sales exceeded 10 million units in the first year. Jia Yueting said in the open letter,LETV mobile phone launched more than a year to achieve the sales of other manufacturers in a few years,The front-end is running wildly,LETV's back-end service can not provide sufficient support,In recent months,Supply chain pressure has increased sharply。

According to Jia Yueting's plan, in order to win market share, LETV Mobile adopts a more aggressive strategy than zero profit, and users will lose one or two hundred yuan for each mobile phone LETV buys, making sales cash flow unable to make up for costs, and there is a problem of arrears to upstream suppliers.

In 2016, LeTV's fate ushered in a turning point. The supplier could not receive the money, the stock was out to stop the bleeding, and the LeEco mobile phone debt crisis surfaced. To this day, LETV mobile phones are still alive, but it is difficult to make a splash in the industry.

Source: LETV Mall website

Postscript:

From the beginning to the beginning of the smile, today, domestic mobile phones have accounted for nearly eighty percent of the domestic market share. According to data from the Academy of Information and Communications Technology, in 2023, the domestic market shipments of domestic brand mobile phones will total 231 million units, accounting for 79.9% of mobile phone shipments in the same period.

Manufacturers are competing with each other, and every technological update will bring a major reshuffle, from 2G to 3G, giants such as Bird and Xia Xin have fallen; From 3G to 4G, brands such as Coolpad and Gionee are left behind; From 4G to 5G, LeTV, Hammer and other spoilers are out. During this period, a large number of Internet celebrity brands such as Duowei, Tianyu, Nietzsche, Big Cola, and Little Pepper were eliminated.

Source: Picture Worm Creative

Today, at the critical juncture from 5G to 6G, AI has become an important variable that stirs up the industry. Under the circumstance that the market pattern is still unclear, mobile phone manufacturers have once again come to the intersection of reshuffle, who can master more core technologies, who is more likely to take the lead in breaking the deadlock and grasp the right to speak in the next 5 or even 10 years.

China's smartphone race is far from the end.

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