The mobile phone industry is like a siege, some people want to come in, and some people have to quit. For example, Geely recently announced that it will enter the mobile phone market, and Coolpad, a member of the "China Cool Alliance", announced not long ago that it would take 3 years to return to the front line, but at the same time, the once famous hammer mobile phone has also reached the moment of "ending". Just a few days ago, when major mobile phone manufacturers were working intensively to prepare for double 11, some netizens found that the Jingdong self-operated flagship store of nut mobile phones has removed products such as nut mobile phones and chargers, and only the suitcase is still on sale.
Almost at the same time, the official Weibo of Smartisan OS announced that the Hammer Forum will stop operating and shut down services from 0:00 on November 15, 2021. And after the Hammer forum goes offline, users will not be able to log in, publish, and view content, which also means that as a key channel for Hammer mobile phone users to communicate with the official, it is about to complete its historical mission.
Of course, some users are not willing to let the garden of hammer mobile phone users communicate. When the Hammer Forum is about to go offline, there is news that the Hammer Friends Forum APP has been launched, but the forum is not official, but the result of fans "generating electricity with love", and there are currently more than 1200 registered users.
As the soul of the hammer mobile phone, after seeing that there are still users who do not abandon it, Luo Yonghao, who has transformed into a cargo anchor, also occupied it, and said, "Look at it lightly." Well, the flames are always there... I'll be back in tech next spring." And he also stressed that he would go back on the same day that he had paid off his debts.
As early as the beginning of this year, ByteDance, which acquired most of the assets of Hammer Technology, has announced its withdrawal from this field after briefly testing the waters of the mobile phone industry. And the New Stone Laboratory, which is responsible for nut mobile phones, was merged into the education hardware team, and the follow-up will no longer develop smart phone products, which also means that Luo Yonghao's dream of being the "best mobile phone in the Eastern Hemisphere" has come to an abrupt end.
Although ByteDance announced at that time that the relevant services of Nut mobile phone users will not be affected, after-sales and system maintenance will continue, and will continue to explore the innovation opportunities of Smartisan OS. However, in the absence of the most basic hardware platform as a support, the subsequent after-sales, maintenance, and even smartisan OS updates will be reduced to pure consumption departments, so it is inevitable to close the official forum and remove the invalid SKU as it is now.
In the eyes of the outside world, the reason why ByteDance chose to withdraw from the mobile phone circle is actually very simple, the lack of hardware genes is the root cause, and as a non-core and relatively low profit margin business line, the resources that nut mobile phones can get can be imagined. Since the more resource-rich ByteDance has chosen not to play, can Luo Yonghao, who "works" for ByteDance's Douyin, still "kill a horse gun"?
As a brother of douyin live broadcasting today, Luo Yonghao's make a friend live broadcast room announced the report card of the first year of broadcasting on April 1 this year. In the course of the year, it sold more than 18 million items and sold 3 billion yuan. According to the information revealed by Luo Yonghao in a variety show last fall, the 600 million yuan of debt owed during the hammer technology period has been repaid 400 million, and the original plan will pay off all the debts at the end of this year, and the team also said that the repayment speed was greater than expected.
On the other hand, Luo Yonghao has actually begun to show signs of fading out of live streaming with goods. Now that a friend has begun to dabble in MCN, in its live broadcast room, in addition to Luo Yonghao himself, his many years of hardcore Zhu Xiaomu, Huang He, new anchor Li Zheng, and a large number of signed star anchors are frequent appearances, and even he does not appear in every live broadcast.
However, even if Luo Yonghao is ready to return to the technology industry, it may not be easy to achieve the "return of the king", but what awaits him may be a thorny road. Where you fall, you get up from where you fall, which is obviously a normal thing for people like Luo Yonghao, who believe that "a tough life does not need to be explained" or "a boy's heart is like iron". But the problem is that next year is 2022, not 2012, almost 10 years have passed since he founded Hammer Technology, and now the market environment of the mobile phone industry has changed dramatically.
On May 15, 2012, when Luo Yonghao created Hammer Technology, Xiaomi had just launched the Xiaomi Mobile Phone Youth Edition, which was the period of rapid development of China's mobile Internet and the blue ocean period of smart phones. The current situation is that the 5G replacement tide that the industry has high hopes for has not arrived, the entire market has fallen into a state of high internal volume, the first-line large manufacturers have divided most of the market, and even small and medium-sized mobile phone manufacturers are more difficult to survive than when Hammer Technology went bankrupt.
More importantly, it is said that hammer technology's biggest problem that year was in the supply chain, and until now, the lawsuits between it and its suppliers have not been completely closed, nor have they paid off the arrears of suppliers. For such an industry as a highly dependent supply chain on smart phones, Luo Yonghao has lost his goodwill at the supplier because of the bankruptcy of Hammer Technology that year, and if it comes back in the future, the supplier will inevitably compress the account period to the greatest extent, and may even require instant payment.
This raises a new question, where does Luo Yonghao want to get the money? Serial entrepreneurs can continue to get money from VCs because they always have successful examples, and counting his entrepreneurial history since leaving New Oriental, from NiuBo Network to English training schools to Hammer Technology, it can be said that it has been repeatedly defeated. Of course, considering that the profitability of the live streaming industry is relatively considerable today, it is not excluded that he can rely on this to return to the technology industry.
As for the so-called "hammer powder", although this group of users still have thoughts about hammer technology, they may only pursue the spirit of craftsmanship shaped by hammer technology and the feelings brought by the pursuit of extreme design, and favoring hammer mobile phones may also be a tool for them to achieve mavericks. Otherwise, why did the mobile phone circle even have the ridicule of hammer powder "I must buy it next time"?
Although fans have now made things like the Hammer Friends Forum, the relationship between Hammer Technology and Hammer Fans was essentially in a very delicate state. When Lao Luo founded Hammer Technology, he raised the "tone door" too high, and also raised the threshold of fans, so the result was that although he hoped that users would first pay for immature mobile phones to pay for their various attempts, and then make "the best mobile phone in the eastern hemisphere" to give back to fans after having the capital and technical foundation; and what fans hoped for was that Lao Luo could directly give them a perfect mobile phone, which undoubtedly fell into a paradox.
Today, the more than 1,200 users who joined the Hammer Friends Forum may really support Lao Luo, but such a die-hard fan scale obviously cannot support a mobile phone manufacturer. Jun, there is a larger scale of Meizu support meizu, have begun to warm up with sony mobile phones, no technology, no goodwill, no funds, no days, only rely on the mouth to say "always young, always tearful", but the action is "next time must buy" hammer powder and their own enthusiasm, Luo Yonghao to return to the science and technology circle may face a difficult situation.