Meizu has grown up, but the market has no place.
Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “wired Insight” (ID: lxinsight), Author: Wang Gu Feng, editor: Li Xin.
“The company’s future prosperity and brilliance are not far away from us. It is in every bit of Meizu’s struggle from early morning to sunset.” In February of this year, Huang Zhipan took over as CEO of Meizu. And published an internal letter, the letter said so.
Recently, according to the company’s information, the legal representative of Meizu Technology has also changed from Huang Xiuzhang (Huang Zhang’s real name) to Huang Zhipan, which triggered discussions that Huang Zhang completely retreated behind the scenes.
Meizu Industry and Commerce changes, please check the source and enterprise
Recalling the growth experience of Meizu in the past 18 years, Meizu mobile phones have gone through several twists and turns. In the past, blue ocean competition in the mobile phone market has also turned into red sea competition. However, as the earliest smartphone brand in China, Meizu mobile phones have been making decisions in recent years. It is an indisputable fact that there are fewer detours, sales decline and brand power decline.
According to data from Meizu official and third-party testing agencies, the sales volume of Meizu mobile phones was 22 million in 2016, 20 million in 2017, and less than 2 million in 2020.
Meizu has also become a fringe brand in the mobile phone market from the original mobile phone brand with a strong momentum.
The past few years have been missed by Meizu. In Huang Zhang’s own words, it is “self-expansion”. This has led to confusion in the product line, problems with quality control, the closure of offline channels and the closure of online markets. Mobile phone brands share food.
For many Meizu users, Meizu is the earliest smart phone in China. Many “magic friends” told the online Insight that Meizu was its first smart phone during the replacement wave more than ten years ago. Cell phone.
Among the first batch of users who started with Meizu, Lin Ze always thought: “The stunning appearance and detailed design of Meizu mobile phones are what impresses me the most.”
Marui, who has used Meizu for a long time, believes that the details of the Flyme system and the design of the floating window are still the best mobile phone system compared to the bloated MIUI and the old-fashioned Huawei.
Looking at the current decline of Meizu, fans who loved it in the past and claimed to be “kerosene” are in a mixed mood. “During the years when the brand has been declining, fans who really love Meizu love and hate Meizu. It’s a pity. , Meizu has not changed more in terms of performance and price.” Ma Rui told Online Insight.
As early as 2018, Meizu had already proposed a comprehensive high-end plan, but this strategy was not successful.
At the beginning of March this year, Meizu released its new mobile phone, Meizu 18. The starting price reached 4399 yuan in terms of comprehensive software and hardware configuration and performance, which was commented by the outside world as high price and low price.
Monthly sales data on the Tmall platform shows that after the launch on March 8, the monthly transaction volume of this phone in the Meizu flagship store was only 5334.
Now it is the 18th anniversary of Meizu. After the wave of 5G replacement, chip shortage, and machine sea wars, Meizu’s noise in Android phones has become smaller and smaller.
Compared with other mobile phone brands’ fanfare development conferences, setting goals, and grabbing the market, Meizu’s coming-of-age ceremony does not have chants and praises, and the attention is not high. Only some “kerosene” is still discussing it.
“I am a little bit unwilling to hate it now. Although Meizu is my first smart phone and has accompanied me through my youth, if one day Meizu disappears, I will feel very sorry.” Lin Ze said.
Become “kerosene”
With Meizu’s 18th anniversary promotional film “These Eighteen Years”, the process of Meizu’s development gradually became clear, and the flames in the hearts of “kerosene” suddenly ignited.
As a loyal fan of Meizu, they love Meizu products, always follow the latest information of Meizu, and call themselves “kerosene” to show their love for Meizu.
Lin Ze is a “kerosene”, he is one of the earliest people who started with Meizu mobile phones. As early as 2013, Lin Ze, who was still a student, bought the first Meizu mobile phone. “At that time, there were many mobile phone brands on the market, but I fell in love with Meizu as soon as possible.”
At that time, the domestic mobile phone market not only included Meizu, Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, VIVO, but also Lenovo, ZTE and other mobile phone brands, which once evolved into a war of heroes.
In the early days, Meizu also competed fiercely with Xiaomi. The two parties established their respective sub-brands, Redmi and Meili Blue. In terms of price and performance, you come and I will be called the “red and blue cp” in the mobile phone market at that time.
Lin Ze still remembers the touch when he got the mobile phone box, and his surprise and curiosity enveloped him.
He bluntly said that he is a face control party, I chose Meizu mobile phone because “Compared with other mobile phones, Meizu is so beautiful. Whether it is the screen or the back design, many parts of Meizu suit my taste.”
Lin Ze believes that Meizu is unique in design, such as the smallest front camera, shield-like arrangement, and Meizu 5:5 frame design.
Meizu’s smallest camera design, sourced from Meizu’s official microblog
At the time when the design of domestic mobile phones was generally monotonous, Meizu mobile phones won the pursuit of many users with their unique design style.
Marui, who started Meizu in 2015, chose to buy it because he liked the design of Meizu mobile phones. “I prefer to buy mobile phones. I will buy several brands of mobile phones in a year, but Meizu still surprised me. When I opened the box and saw the metal frame design of Meizu mobile phones, I thought it was very beautiful.”
The unique design of Meizu mobile phones is related to Meizu’s philosophy of “products are greater than commerce”. Therefore, its appearance and operating system design can be described as exquisite compared to other mobile phones at the time.
Marui also said that when domestic smartphones emerged, many imitated Apple. Meizu’s first mobile phone was too similar to Apple, which caused a lawsuit to stop production. “In the later product reference, the Meizu mobile phone design is still relatively simple and powerful.”
At that time, Meizu was able to attract a lot of “kerosene” and also had its own arrogant capital. On the one hand, Meizu was really unique in product design, especially the Flyme system. In terms of the design concept of mobile phones, Luo Yonghao made a hammer mobile phone stand. The next goal is to defeat the Flyme system, and its strength is evident.
Meizu Flyme system display, picture source Meizu official micro
On the other hand, Meizu mobile phone reviews have always been goodIn the first few years when Meizu was born, it was also the stage of the rise of domestic mobile phones.
Lin Ze said, “Because the performance and design of Meizu mobile phones were quite good at the time, as a domestic mobile phone, Meizu was often compared to Apple and Samsung, and it was more proud.”
At that time, Meizu was in full swing. It had a strong internal team and was well received externally. It was once known as the “Chinese version of Apple”. Kerosene was also proud of owning a Meizu mobile phone. However, Meizu’s advanced concepts have also become a factor that impedes its development. With the passage of time, Meizu has become a fringe brand in the mobile phone market.
Why is “kerosene” unwilling to pay?
From the perspective of current market position, Meizu has become a niche brand from the pioneer of early smart phones.
“The reason why Meizu phones have fallen so badly is because they have a good hand, which is so thinly played.” Ma Rui told Wired Insight.
In Ma Rui’s view, the performance of Meizu mobile phones in recent years, “It can only be said to hate iron but not steel. In fact, many of Meizu’s concepts are too advanced, but in the end Meizu has not implemented it.”
For example, mback, fingerprint unlocking, “So when Huawei launched these functions later, many kerosene were biased against Huawei, believing that they copied Meizu’s philosophy.”
Meizu mback design, picture source Meizu official micro
2017-2019 can be called the lost three years of Meizu. In these three years, the mobile phone market has entered the Red Sea competition. Meizu has gone through many detours and is also “paying off debts” for past improper business strategies.
The first is the problem in the supply chain.
Meizu’s performance is going to “stretch”, and it is not unrelated to the choice of MediaTek on the chip. In 2014, the Meizu chip turned to MediaTek. The situation at that time was that Meizu and Qualcomm had a patent dispute, and Samsung’s “Orion” chip did not It supports full Netcom, and Meizu has no choice but to choose MediaTek.
But the long-term binding of mobile phone chips and MediaTek has become a fatal mistake for Meizu.
For MediaTek chips, “kerosene” has always been unacceptable. In the competition with other mobile phone brands, the label of “MediaTek” has also become a flaw in Meizu’s performance.
Ma Rui said that he still values the performance of mobile phones very much, but Meizu mobile phones not only used the MediaTek Heilo X25 processor when the Meizu 6pro was launched in 2016, but also half a year later, the Meizu 6pro s was installed in the low-end version of MediaTek Heilo X. .
The release of Meizu 7pro in 2017 eventually became the fuse for the loss of control of Meizu’s wind reviews.
At that time, there were problems with the quality control of Meizu 7pro, a series of problems such as screen flickering, heat generation, lagging, poor battery life, etc. broke out. “Kerosene” also attributed a series of problems to MediaTek chips.
“The small and beautiful Flyme system is still very good, with excellent hand feeling and detailed control, but the performance of Meizu 7pro is too far, so that the sudden price reduction in the back makes many users who buy Meizu pro7 feel Especially embarrassing.” Marui mentioned.
At this time, Ma Rui chose to “abandon the pit” and no longer use Meizu mobile phones. Lin Ze’s confidence in Meizu mobile phones also began to waver.
In addition, some “kerosene” also blamed Meizu’s lack of marketing, behind closed doors.
In the early days, Xiaomi and Hammer launched large-scale marketing campaigns. Instead, Meizu chose to keep silent. This also led to the relatively weak presence of Meizu mobile phones and the long-term brand absence, which made Meizu gradually fade out of the public. Vision.
After 2017, the lack of Meizu in the mobile phone market has become more serious. Lin Ze complained: “At this time, Meizu should work hard to improve its image, spread more offline, and do more publicity, but Meizu has not done a good job. .”
In addition to products, Meizu has gone wrong, and Meizu has also made many mistakes in its business strategy.
At the beginning, Meizu was accustomed to fighting alone, and rejected Lei Jun’s shareholding, and the cooperation negotiations with 360 did not stop. However, this situation did not last long. After realizing the difficulty of fighting alone, in February 2015, Meizu, seeking to break the ecological situation, accepted Ali’s US$590 million investment. After the stake, Huang Zhang held 53.68% of the shares. Ali. Holds 29.34% of the shares.
According to Pinwan reports, it learned of a gambling agreement between Meizu and Ali, requiring Meizu to sell 20 million mobile phones in 2015. In addition to the sales pressure of the gambling agreement, manufacturers such as Huami OV are also forcing Meizu to impulse.
In 2016, Meizu’s Meizu’s Meizu Blue launched its “Machine Sea Tactics” and launched more than a dozen models in a row in a year.
Ma Rui mentioned, “At that time, there were too many news about Meizu mobile phones, and I couldn’t pay attention to it. Besides, there were more than a dozen mobile phones launched that year, each of which was bragging, but they all used MediaTek chips. , Has a great influence on the brand of mobile phones.”
When Li Nan, the former senior vice president of Meizu, was reflecting on Meizu’s business strategy, he also repeatedly mentioned his mistakes in “machine-sea tactics”.
In 2017, the sales of various Meizu models were bleak, and the “machine-sea tactics” also came to an end. It was also from this year that the sales of Meizu mobile phones continued to decline.
Sino mobile phone sales data in 2018 show that Meizu sold 9.48 million; in 2019, according to Counterpoint Reserch’s single-quarter data, Meizu’s market share fell from 2% in 2018 to 1%, and sales are expected to be around 5 million; in 2020 The domestic mobile phone sales monitoring data released by CINNO Research shows that Meizu’s single-quarter data is only about 300,000, and the annual sales are expected to be less than 2 million.
2020Q3 CINNO Research announced China’s mobile phone sales ranking
After the decline in the reputation of Meizu mobile phones, there have been substantial changes in the internal executives, including Yang Yan resigned as the president of Meizu Flyme business unit in 2018, Bai Yongxiang resigned as Meizu COO; in 2019, Li Nan announced that he would leave Meizu.
With the departure of Bai Yongxiang and Li Nan, the “Three Musketeers” who once formed the core executive team of Meizu also fell apart, and Meizu became Huang Zhang’s Meizu alone.
The last “kerosene”: only regrets
Meizu tried to reverse the situation, but it did not get much “kerosene” following.
Based on past experience and lessons, Meizu has begun to gradually shrink its business.
In 2018, Meizu cancelled its Charm Blue series and assigned Charm Blue to the V series. As the most high-end series, Meizu Digital Anniversary series opened Meizu’s comprehensive high-end route.
This product line intends to reorganize the past product line confusion and re-plan Meizu’s future development ideas.
Lin Ze felt a little pity about this: “For a long time in the past, Meizu Blue has supported Meizu’s sales, and its reputation in the Meizu circle is also good.”
Zhou Jin, who has purchased several Meizu mobile phones, has some concerns about Meizu’s high-end development: “Although Meizu has got rid of MediaTek chips in these years, all have turned to Qualcomm series. However, in terms of sales volume and brand awareness, Meizu is still small. Some, this volume is difficult to get the goods at the lowest price, which may make Meizu embark on a cycle of high prices and low prices.ring. “
Nowadays, this has indeed become a flaw in Meizu’s high-end route.
As a “kerosene” for many years, Lin Ze is still paying attention to Meizu’s press conference information. When Lin Ze watched the Meizu 18 press conference, he was very excited, “I think Meizu did a good job this time. , It’s a fight back, all the designs responded to the user’s complaints, and the performance shortcomings were made up.”
But he thinks the starting price of 4399 is a bit higher, so he would not choose to buy it.
In terms of cost performance, Meizu 18 does not have an advantage.
According to the Meizu 18 conference held on March 3 this year, referring to the configuration of Xiaomi Mi 11, the two also use Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 chip, with Samsung E4 AMOLED screen.
But the gap with Mi 11 is still in the camera. Mi 11 supports a 100-megapixel main camera, while Meizu 18 only has a 64-megapixel main camera; in terms of charging and battery life, Mi 11 is configured with 4600mAh and 55W fast charge, while Meizu 18 is 4000mAh and 33W fast charge.
Meizu 18 configuration and price, picture source Meizu official website
In terms of price, Mi 11 is priced at 3,999 yuan, while Meizu 18 is priced at 4,399 yuan. Meizu 18, which is not as good as Xiaomi in terms of configuration, is 400 yuan more expensive than Xiaomi 11.
Sun Yanbiao, chairman of Rising Sun Big Data, once told Connected Insight that for the mobile phone market that has now entered the second half, unless they have strong R&D capabilities, such as Apple, Huawei, and Samsung, they can follow the standards of high price and high configuration, and the remaining mobile phone manufacturers There are no more than two competition standards: one is the supply chain; the other is the channel.
The aspect of the supply chain lies in the bargaining power of mobile phone manufacturers with suppliers, such as chips, screens, and various sensors. The bargaining power of mobile phone manufacturers with the upstream supply chain determines the amount of cost.
In terms of channels, including online e-commerce platforms, offline stores and distributors, determine the sales of mobile phone brands.
In both aspects, Meizu has no advantage. At present, due to its small size, Meizu has weak bargaining power with upstream suppliers. In 2018-2020, when Meizu encountered a crisis of sales decline, there were also layoffs and large-scale offline store closures.
Maybe it will be difficult for Meizu to rise again. In this regard, many “kerosene” chose to remain silent.
Lin Ze said, “In the past few years, in the Meizu community and when chatting with some Meizu friends, most of them loved and hated Meizu. While cursing, they also hope that Meizu will develop better. Some, but now more people say “Meizu come on” and “Meizu hold on””.
In the Meizu community, a user named “Feng Ziyu” published an article “Youth is gone, without complaint…”, the article wrote:
“The fan group that has been silent for a long time. I suddenly realized that those who like Meizu may not be able to afford it, and they may not like it if they can afford it. Maybe, youth, when it comes to an end, don’t complain, goodbye.”
Meizu community related discussions, sourced from Meizu’s official website
Ma Rui has always had a good impression of the “kerosene” group. He saw that Meizu’s fans have a small group and high quality. “I miss the time when I discussed with my friends”, but now he has very few Contacted other charm friends.
Out of his affection for Meizu, Lin Ze still retains the prototype of the MX series.
“When you see Meizu’s decline, I really feel regretful. Just like the original HTC, some of its stunning details are still a bit memorable. But it’s not important anymore, there will be many new alternatives. “Zhou Jin said.
(The head picture of this article comes from Meizu official microblog. Lin Ze, Ma Rui, and Zhou Jin in the article are all pseudonyms.)