Death or survival: the fate of a small smartphone label.
Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “intellectual stuff” (ID: zhidxcom), Author: Yunpeng, Editor: Desert shadow.
When it comes to the mobile phone brands of Nuts, Meizu, and OnePlus, what do you think of?
Geek, persistence, death? System, design, feelings?
The use of “small and beautiful” may sum up their common characteristics.
Some of these players retired sadly, some started to make smart homes, and some gave up the pursuit of “extreme” and compromised in order to survive.
The pure pursuit of “small and beautiful” does not seem to work in today’s smart phone industry.
JMGO R2 may become the swan song of JMGO mobile phones; Meizu has transformed into AIoT, and the new flagship has no news; once insisted on not leaving, now the R&D team is merged into OPPO, founder and CEO Liu Zuohu returns to OPPO, product line Also began to expand to the mid-range.
In an interview, when asked if Meizu 18 could meet with you before the Spring Festival in 2021, Meizu Marketing President Wan Zhiqiang said, “Look at how long this spring is.”
For these small mobile phone manufacturers, it may become a luxury to welcome “spring”, and the era of “small and beautiful” will soon come to an end. What did they do wrong, or are the times unsparing?
“My lord, times have changed.”
01 Nuts stand and starve to death, Meizu OnePlus compromises to “return to vulgarity”
There is a very interesting thing about Nuts, OnePlus, and Meizu, that is, their fans are often not their users.
Today’s Toutiao released a data in 2018. Regarding the proportion of actual users of brand fans, Nuts ranked at the bottom at about 5%, OnePlus was about 6%, and Meizu was about 15%.
Among domestic brands, these three brands rank the last three. In contrast, Xiaomi, OPPO,This proportion of vivo is above 35%.
How many users who pay attention to the mobile phone operating system and pay attention to OnePlus finally choose Xiaomi, and how many users who pay attention to the TNT multi-device collaboration of JMGO hold Apple and lament that the iOS ecosystem is really fragrant?
The former hammer phone lost to quality control, but today’s nut phone still falls in the same place.
In the second half of last year, eight months after the launch of the Snapdragon 865 flagship, the Nut R2 arrived late, but the price of 4,499 yuan was no “apology” for being late.
In terms of configuration, looking at the tail of 2020, the Snapdragon 865, 90Hz high refresh screen, 100 million pixel four-camera and 55W fast charge can only be said to make it a “bucket machine”. Too much regret.
However, the weight of 216g and the thickness of 9.5mm make the Nut R2 that is equipped with Smartisan OS not “bright” enough.
Subsequently, many users reported that there was a phenomenon of “huaping”, but JD’s evaluation rate was only 89%. You should know that in digital products, the product praise rate is generally above 98%, which is problematic The severity can be seen.
Later, a sales statistics platform provided data. Even if the Nut R2 is a low-volume version, the first month sales are only about 3,000.
On January 18, the Nuts team officially announced that Nuts mobile phone and TNT display business will stop research and development, the Nut R2 standard version directly plummeted by 1,500 yuan, from 4499 yuan all the way to 2,999 yuan.
In the future, Nuts may help BYTE to develop educational hardware products, such as educational tablets, early education machines, smart voice pens and even early education desk lamps.
The new crown pneumonia epidemic has driven online education and housingHome learning, it can be said that the education market is also a promising new journey for Nuts, but the era of Nuts mobile phones may be over.
On Meizu’s side, the situation is not optimistic. Although we have not yet reached the end of poverty and “marrying others’ wives”, the “dystocia” of the mobile phone business is indeed real.
In the last year’s launch of the Snapdragon 865 mobile phone, Meizu 17 got up early and rushed to the evening episode. Although the official warm-up started in mid-March, Meizu 17 was not officially released until the first day after the May Day holiday.
A total of 639 days have passed since the release of Meizu 17 from Meizu 16. Meizu’s marketing director Wan Zhiqiang said that the 17 series is also the second-longest product in Meizu’s history.
However, it now appears that the design time ranking of Meizu 17 may be back. At the end of 2020, Meizu suddenly hung up a giant “Lipro Welcome” poster on the headquarters building, and announced its entry into the smart home field the next day.
On January 5, when the Snapdragon 888 flagship had gathered for the first wave of “grab the first”, Meizu held its own smart home conference.
In a media interview, for the Meizu 18 series that everyone is most concerned about, Wan Zhiqiang said that its launch time should not be very early, “We need to take a good look at what we should do.”
If a product is still thinking about how to do it today, there is still a long way to go before it actually goes public.
At the interview site, Zhang Donghui, president of Meizu Lipro Smart Home, added that they will be satisfied only when the entire product experience is the best.
▲Left: Wan Zhiqiang, right: Zhang Donghui
Indeed, to make the product experience the best, this is what Meizu has always valued, but now, there is really not much time left for Meizu.
Every manufacturer is saying to make the product experience the best, but good product experience and product reputation are accumulated step by step through strong product power and a solid and large user group.
For Meizu, who prefers to be a “heterogeneous”, the difficulty in getting out of the quagmire of market sales has always been a big problem that plagues it.
Meizu, founded in 2003, has experienced the rise of smartphones, the era of China Cool Alliance, and the era of Huami OV. Every era has his figure, but in every era, the protagonist’s halo has never been favored To it.
At the peak of 2015, Meizu’s annual sales reached 20 million units. With Ali’s investment of US$590 million, Meizu held 6 conferences a year and launched 14 new models, Deng Ziqi, Wang Feng Successive platforms.
But this radical attempt ended in huge losses. Huang Zhang returned in 2017, but “that man” did not save Meizu either. Sometimes, opportunities are fleeting.
From 2017 to 2019, Bai Yongxiang ended, Yang Yan retired to the second line, and Li Nan left to start the geek peripheral business.
▲Left: Yang Yan, middle: Bai Yongxiang, right: Li Nan
Today, Meizu is vague about the release of the new flagship, talking about smart homes, but lacks the “core entrance” for mobile phones or smart speakers. Where should the smart home ecology start?
According to CINNO’s recently released fourth-quarter domestic mobile phone market sales, Meizu’s annual sales just exceeded one million units, accounting for less than 0.5% of the domestic market with more than 300 million shipments.
Compared to Nuts and Meizu, OnePlus should have a relatively better living environment among these three. Of course, OnePlus has a solid family and OPPO is behind it.
In fact, it is more independent than Redmi to Xiaomi and OnePlus to OPPO. In the North American market, OnePlus has always been in the first camp with Apple and Samsung in the high-end mobile phone market, and has even reached the top in the Indian high-end mobile phone market.
One technology media once described the OnePlus mobile phone as a “thin and tall man with glasses”. Geeks, stubbornness, and incompetence are all images that OnePlus has always created.
Once, OnePlus only had one flagship a year, and this one must be a boutique. In 2019, OnePlus spent 100 million U.S. dollars to customize a 2K 90Hz screen with Samsung, making OnePlus 7 Pro a “generation of magic machine”, and OnePlus “good screen” has also become the consensus in the industry.
But the highlight moment in 2019 is short. OnePlus will not be easy in 2020. According to CINNO statistics, its domestic market sales will not exceed 3 million in 2020. In order to survive better, OnePlus will do it. Out adjustment.
In July last year, OnePlus launched its first mid-range Android phone OnePlus Nord series, equipped with Snapdragon 765G, but it is only available in overseas markets. Also in July, OnePlus released its first smart TV, and won both 32-inch and 43-inch sales and sales champions on the Amazon platform that month.
In the fiercely competitive 2020, there are frequent new machines in the second half of the year. OnePlus is obviously unable to sit still. Although the OnePlus 8 series has been released, the OnePlus 8T series was released in the second half of the year, mainly in the processor and The charging has been slightly upgraded. On the whole, this is indeed a “bucket machine” with almost no dead ends.
However, the back and screen design of its “smooth people” can’t help but make people sigh. OnePlus, after all, is anxious to sell goods and survive.
Of course, this is understandable.
▲OnePlus 8T
From TWS smart earphones to smart TVs, to the expansion of the mid-range product line, from the ultimate flagship to the “bucket machine”As Liu Zuohu said in an internal letter issued at the end of last year, OnePlus will be more than “small and beautiful.”
This year, OnePlus will launch its own smart watch. Yes, OnePlus is also working on ecology, and it will also expand into more categories and more user groups. And behind this, there is no doubt that it relies on the big tree OPPO.
In terms of overall performance in 2020, OnePlus is slightly higher in sales than Meizu, but it is not in the same order of magnitude as mainstream manufacturers, and since the OnePlus 7 series “Fengshen”, its brand voice is getting smaller and smaller .
The R&D of OnePlus has been merged into OPPO in December last year. It is understood that the offers of new employees of OnePlus R&D positions are all issued by OPPO, and Liu Zuohu also returned to OPPO as the senior vice president and head of OPPO product line.
▲Liu Zuohu
OnePlus officially issued a special statement stating that Liu Zuohu’s identity as the founder and CEO of OnePlus remains unchanged.
OnePlus is still the same OnePlus, but the familiar taste seems to have faded a lot.
02In the era of oligarchs, “big brother and younger brother” break into the sky
The “small and beautiful” of Nuts, Meizu, and OnePlus seem to have nowhere to go, but on the other hand, today when giants are fighting for hegemony and oligarchs are in power, many “small factories” are still alive and well, and their sales have even soared.
Realme and iQOO are undoubtedly two very representative brands. Realme returned to the domestic market in May 2019, and iQOO was also established in February of the same year. It can be said that they are two sub-brands that are simultaneously working on the domestic mobile phone market.
For half a year since its establishment, iQOO achieved the top 7 position in the Chinese market in the third quarter of 2019, and realme, in the third quarter of 2020, ranked among the top 5 in China’s 5G mobile phone market.
Recently, Counterpoint has just released a report. According to data, realme’s shipments to the global market in the fourth quarter of 2020 soared by 80% year-on-year, and its volume has reached about 40% of Huawei’s.
One of the common characteristics of realme and iQOO is the price-performance ratio. To some extent, they have also become one of Redmi’s main competitors. Even before the release of this year’s iQOO 7 series flagship, Redmi head Lu Weibing directly announced the price of the unreleased Redmi K40 series 2999.
Lu Weibing’s meaning is not difficult to understand: “Don’t buy anything else, wait for the red rice steadily!”
In the mobile phone release wave of many mainstream mobile phone chips, such as Snapdragon 865, Dimensity 1000, Dimensity 800, Dimensity 1000 Plus, etc., the price wars of realme, iQOO and Redmi phones are mostly very anxious, and the price gap is average. Around one hundred yuan.
In the Snapdragon 865 flagship series, the starting prices of the three products are all around 2500 yuan. Realme once launched the realme V3 of 999 yuan in the 100 yuan machine market, and it also successfully pulled the entry price of 5G mobile phones to three digits.
Some people in the industry told Zhishi that many of Realme’s thousand-yuan mobile phones may not make money at all, or even sell at a loss. It can be seen how “relenting” they are.
03 Enter the “post-smartphone era”,small And the end of beauty is a foregone conclusion
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