This article is from the public number: bullet FINANCE (ID: wwwhygc) , author: Yang Yang, title FIG. From: Vision China
Before the storm came, no one smelled a strange smell.
On October 24, the Beijing News reported that the “Gekman Repair” was investigated for fake Huawei parts. The service platform of the mobile phone repair industry, which is known as the O2O model, was arrested in the special enforcement action against the infringement of Huawei’s trademark exclusive rights by the Shenzhen Market Supervision Administration.
The official report stated that the action was seizedThere were more than 120,000 mobile phone accessories such as Huawei and Apple, and 31 people were criminally detained. According to preliminary calculations, since 2017, the total amount involved has reached 300 million yuan.
Today, mobile phones are almost part of the human body. Mobile phone repair also occupies an important part of the entire industry chain. Compared with the high-profile high-profile of manufacturers when they release new products, the mobile phone repairer behind them is silent.
But it is undeniable that these “artisans” who made a living made the entire electronic product repair market change. It is also these that have made third-party repairers based on the Internet O2O model.
The protagonist of today’s story comes from Beijing, which is more than 2,000 kilometers away from Shenzhen. The vibrations caused by the storm also inevitably affected them.
After 2000, they gathered in Zhongguancun, headed by the northern part of Beijing, (Dinghao Electronics City, Hailong Electronics City, eWorld, Science and Trade), the western-led Princess Tomb (Longze Mobile Plaza) and the southern-led Muxiyuan (Fang Shi Tong Technology Plaza) .
After 19 years, in addition to the large number of electronic products wholesaled in the Muxiyuan area, the momentum of Zhongguancun is gradually shrinking, leaving only the Science and Trade Center, and the Longze Mobile Square of Gongzhufen has long ceased to exist.
(Former Longze Mobile Square. Photo / Bullet Finance)
The ups and downs of the past two decades have created their unique atmosphere. Maybe you have heard of these landmark names more or less, maybe you have bought and repaired electronic products there, maybe you have been pitted by the merchants there…
With the gradual rise of “Internet + maintenance”, the O2O model represented by Flash Repairman, geek repair, Hi repair, and Qianji.com has caused the business of traditional repairers to be affected. Some merchants have to change their business ideas, and these “positions” are experiencing pain.
Someone left and someone stayed behind. In this ever-changing maintenance of the rivers and lakes, there are both intrigues and consciences. All humanity is magnified in this industry.
This is a story about mobile phone repairers and a story about the changing times.
From Dinghao to Longze to Fangshitong
At 7:30 in the evening, Fangshitong Square in Muxiyuan began to close the door. Chen Xudong picked up his backpack as usual and took away the unfinished machine. He has been insisting on this habit for ten years.
He often said that these machines are the expectations of customers. Bringing him home to work, he will be able to deliver it to customers on time.
“It’s been almost 13 years, I feel that I will only deal with mobile phones in my life.” Chen Xudong’s personality is so optimistic that our conversations are often carried out in laughter.
Chen Xudong is from Anyang, Henan Province. He is the leader of his family. His younger brother was admitted to college last year. In order to train his younger brother, Chen Xudong can only pay more attention to the business in Beijing.
In his early years, he had three stores in Beijing, namely Dinghao Electronics City, Longze Mobile Plaza and Fangshitong. This is the earliest maintenance “triangulation” in Beijing.
With the implementation of Beijing’s strategic positioning of non-capital functions, the Zhongguancun area is almost difficult to trace these businesses except for the Electronics City, and the Longze Mobile Plaza in Gongzhufen was completely closed in 2018.
“It’s very helpless, but there is no way.” Chen Xudong said with a blank expression. From Dinghao to Longze Square to Fang Shitong, he is like a migratory bird, and he is able to provide space for survival.
“It is estimated that it will be retired in a few years. I can only go to the store after I retired.” Chen Xudong knows very well that there are only two kinds of results in the end: one is to withdraw from the market to open a store separately, and the other is to directly Going home. But his choice must be to stay in Beijing, because his brother’s annual tuition needs to be supported by him.
In 2010, Apple introduced the iPhone 4 smartphone, and it was from this time that the electronics repair industry was really awakened.
(Photo / Bullet Finance)
“Before you repaired Nokia and Motorola, the rest is basically a cottage.” Shi Mingwei told reporters that the maintenance market ten years ago was only dependent on the Nokia brand, but ten years later, in addition to Apple, domestic mobile phone brands have successively Rise, “The plate in this market suddenly became bigger.”
Shi Mingwei, like Chen Xudong, is also from Henan, but his career time is longer. The reporter found that Henan is responsible for repairing the mobile phone industry, accounting for about one-third of Henan nationality, and others are from Jiangsu and Zhejiang.
From a single brand and a few models to the dazzling brand models, Apple has played a pivotal role in this less than a decade.
“In fact, the maintenance system is the same. Apple just came out with only Apple’s accessories, and later came to Huawei, Xiaomi, OV and even some mobile phone models available on the market.” Shi Mingwei said that the development of mobile phones brings maintenance The development of technology, the need to do this must keep up with the changes of the times. “I study every day, can’t fall behind.”
Shi Mingwei’s work is mainly on the motherboard-level maintenance of mobile phones, which is much more complicated than the maintenance of peripheral components such as screens, batteries, and cameras. This is a test of endurance, eyesight, and hand strength. If you are not careful, you will lose all.
Shi Mingwei clearly remembers that when he started from a small work, he also repaired the customer’s machine. “That’s just been learned for more than a year. Repairing the motherboard is not like repairing, temperature and speed should be controlled.” His master did not blame him too much, but he said to him with great enthusiasm, this and The other parts are different, and every detail of the start directly determines success or failure.
Five years have passed, and the old apprentices have becomeToday’s Master. But he still remembers Master’s words and reminds himself. Of course, he also trained his apprentices more rigorously.
“Doing a good job with both hands and a conscience.” Shi Mingwei often mentioned the word “conscience.” Because there is no standard in the maintenance industry, many markets are not easy to touch.
“Whoever will be pitted, including myself.” The name of the person who called this sentence is Li Nan. He worked in Fang Shitong for six years. Now he has moved to the largest electronic distribution center in Shijiazhuang – Taihe. square. This is also his hometown.
In 2012, Li Nan and several fellow villagers opened their northern life. At that time, the iPhone 4S was selling hot, and Li Nan secretly lamented when he could buy one. What he didn’t think of was that he had dealt with mobile phone repairs a year later.
“At that time, I bought a second-hand iPhone 3GS from the Internet. When I suddenly couldn’t open the machine, I took it for repair. I found that the price of the repair was too high.” Li Nan told us that just one colleague said before It’s not bad to go to Muxiyuan to repair the mobile phone, and I introduced it to him.
“It’s really shocked to get there! A lot of mobile phone accessories, basically two layers are doing this.” Since then, Li Nan decided to step into the industry. “There is almost no threshold, just open the upstream channel to solve the supply problem.”
“In the past few years, it was generally ok. Now it is more strict. The industry and industry will check it every few days. Several of them are closed. I am forced to retreat.” Li Nan said helplessly.
The secret behind the phone screen
One of the first problems to be solved in the repair industry is the accessories. At present, most mobile phone accessories rely on some small foundries and processing plants in Shenzhen, and the other part is reprocessed with original accessories.
Chen Xudong knows the control of the accessories. He spent almost a week in Shenzhen for a week. Different from others, Chen Xudong’s customers come from all over the country, including the Northeast and North China.
“The basic products produced by the foundry will be infringed. These are mostly imitations. The processing is made by processing the original parts.” Chen Xudong explained that most screen accessories will be processed.
In the repair parts, the screen is generally divided into external screen (glass) and internal screen (LCD and touch layer). For machines with broken external screens, the replacement of the outer glass is basically used for processing; for the internal screen to be broken or faulty, the recycling parts are generally replaced.
The so-called recirculating parts, that is, some screens that are disassembled from the recycling machine or the main board scrapping machine. Most of these screens have more scratches or broken parts, and they can be put on the market by directly replacing the new glass.
“Main board maintenance is basically the same, some such as CPU or hard disk damage, you can use some broken boards to move the board.” Shi Mingwei said that these broken boards are basically broken machines, because the motherboard is from the top or bottom Direct fractures are not repairable, but some major components are not damaged, so they can be used directly for repairs.
In fact, Huawei’s investigation is mainly for accessories with high frequency of repairs such as screens and batteries. Zhou said.
Zhouyuan was also a member of Fang Shitong at the earliest, and later joined Huawei authorized repair center. He told us that because screens and batteries are parts with high maintenance frequency, unauthorised third-party maintenance organizations directly suppressed Huawei’s revenue sources for these accessories.
Huawei is currently more rigorous in terms of after-sales work. “Every time you have handled the fault for the customer, you should remind them to give a five-star rating. Try to give a positive answer when you call back. Otherwise, you will be deducted 200 yuan.”
Zhou Yuan said that he did not expect this time Huawei was the first to start with an unauthorized maintenance organization, not Apple. However, now Apple is gradually strengthening its control over unauthorized parts.
In the iOS 13 system, starting with the iPhone XS series, if you use a regular accessory that is not authorized by Apple, it will directly issue a pop-up window, stating “The accessory is not authorized by Apple and cannot prove that it is genuine.”
Chen Xudong said that although Apple joined the pop-up window, it is currently limited to the iPhone XS series, and the mainstream maintenance models are temporarily unaffected.
“Huawei has now introduced an ex-gratia screen change. I think it is necessary to suppress the price of the regular after-sales, so I will check these unauthorized dealers.” Zhou Yuan said.
The reporter saw in the introduction of Huawei’s official website that the preferential screen refers to the Huawei authorized service provider to reuse the replaced mobile phone screen and pass Huawei.Level maintenance factory to test qualified products after repair. The price of the service is significantly lower than the new product, but the price is still higher than the third-party repairer.
It is reported that Huawei authorized repair center will not pay for the recovery of the original screen, and the third-party maintenance organization will evaluate the old screen to pay the corresponding recycling fee.
“People still like to change the screen of Huawei, because the basic is (except the back shell and the motherboard) plus Battery.” Li Nan said that his business now also includes screen recycling, such as a Magic 2 old screen from the sale can be discounted about 300 yuan, but the premise is that the internal screen must be displayed intact.
“There will be a special person to go to a Huawei authorized repair center to collect these old screens. The customer pays for the screen is basically the old ones can be taken away, but most people will not take the old screen.” /p>
Li Nan told us that in Muxiyuan or Zhongguancun, some merchants have formed a linkage relationship with Huawei authorized repair centers. Some old screens will be notified of recycling. “There are a few pieces in a day, too much is easy to be perceived by Huawei.”
Zhou Yuan said that in some Huawei Huawei authorized repair centers, Huawei has taken the practice of cutting the screen cable for customers who want to take the screen to ensure that the accessories are not infringed. “There are many areas in Guangzhou, and there are still very few such policies in other regions.”
Generally, these screens recovered from Huawei authorized repair centers will be sorted centrally, and the batteries will be split for secondary sales, and the screen will go directly to each workshop for processing.
It is understood that for recycling accessories, they usually give the authorized center staff a labor cost of about 150 yuan per screen.
“I don’t understand why Huawei doesn’t catch the source, but starts with a third party.” Zhang Yue said that the recent winds in Huaqiang North are also very tight, and many shops that do Huawei’s parts processing are no longer blatant.I am afraid that I am involved in this storm.
“In fact, not only the guest, Xiu Xiu Xia, but also some well-known O2O repairers will come to Huaqiang North to take accessories.” Zhang Yue analysis said that this time Huawei did not target the Flashman, but for the Geek Repair, there is probably some kind of game or contest in the middle.
Li Nan thinks that because of the relatively large volume of geeks, the issue of infringement is a major problem that cannot be solved in this industry.
After the spectator repair was checked, Flash Xia Xia repaired the Huawei brand in the official website. At present, only seven brands such as Apple, Xiaomi, OV and Samsung can be seen. It is understood that geek repair and flash repair man can be placed normally.
The geek repair issued a statement after the incident that the investigation and investigation of the accessory problem has been fully completed. In particular, “The accessories that have doubts about the quality used in the ergonomic platform have been centrally sealed and arranged for destruction.”
The game between “guerrillas” and “regular army”
“It’s hard to understand that Apple is not suing, but Huawei is suing, and Huawei intends to collect all kinds of unfavorable evidence against geeks.” Zhang Yue said that although Apple is also investigating such infringements, it is generally one. Only one eye is closed and no large-scale investigation will be taken.
“Repair or not the repair parts is judged by the manufacturer.” Zhou Yuan said, “If this accessory can be found in the system of the mobile phone manufacturer, it is true, otherwise it is fake. So now many repairers are right. The customer needs to repair the screen to directly change the glass.”
“The advantage of direct repair and replacement is that it is not a fake screen, and the motherboard is coded.” Chen Xudong said that some mobile phone screens will not lose function if they do not match the motherboard. For example, iPhone 8 and newer models, such as the original screen and the motherboard are not right, the original color function can not be used.
After 2015, for some iPhones that are not booting, Apple will adopt a warranty policy to replace the new ones. As a result, many mobile phone repair practitioners have used this vulnerability to change machines.
“In fact, it’s all fake, including the motherboard.” Shi Mingwei said, the cost of such a machine is only a few hundred dollars, and the machine can be sold for three or four thousand yuan or even higher. The profits are too impressive. “Almost became an industrial chain, now it has been AppleBlocked.
Why not let go of third-party repair authorizations has always been one of the hot topics in the mobile phone repair industry. In the United States, there have been a number of third-party repairers co-branded Apple, asking them to release the authorization for third-party authorization. Apple has also stated that the machine warranty can still be performed for the disassemble caused by the replacement of the battery by a third party.
Although third-party repairers and regular authorized after-sales belong to the “guerrillas” and one belongs to the “regular army”, most consumers are still willing to choose third-party repairers.
Price and efficiency factors are one of the reasons consumers choose third-party repairs. It is reported that Apple iPhone X mobile phone screen in the official after-sales maintenance needs 2169 yuan, and need to wait for half a day (about 4 hours ~ 5 hours) can be repaired Finished, and the external screen fragmentation of the third-party repairer can only be solved by about 300-400 yuan, and only about 20 minutes.
“Official after-sales is expensive, and second is long waiting time.” Chen Xudong said that most of the customers who went to his store for repairs were due to screen fragmentation or short battery standby time, and the brands he currently serves mainly Apple, Huawei, Xiaomi, OV.
(图 / hippopx)
Chen Xudong said that the quality of the screen accessories is basically the same as the original factory. “It is generally necessary to directly replace the outer glass with the customer’s screen. Actually, it is still the original screen. If there is a battery, there are brand batteries, such as Pinsheng, Green Alliance, Noshi, etc.”
In the entire repair market, in addition to the brand battery, there are imitation apple batteries, but Chen Xudong does not dare to use these accessories. “I am afraid that there will be problems after repairing. This is related to safety. The battery explosion has not happened.”
At present, the industry is responsible for third-party maintenance.The business is still in a state of suppression.
Industry observers believe that Huawei’s prosecution of geeks is only the beginning, and the management of third-party infringement repairs by major manufacturers will be more stringent.
For Chen Xu, life is vacillating. Whether he insisted on or retreating for a long time, he chose the former. “It is getting harder and harder to make money by maintenance. In the future, the workmanship of mobile phones will become more and more exquisite. The maintenance skills will no longer be simple for ordinary people to repair. What is needed is a certain amount of technical accumulation.”
At present, Apple upgraded the encryption chip T2 on Mac computers, and third parties other than direct stores or licensees will not be able to repair their computer motherboards. In addition, Apple has added encryption chips to the iPhone and iPad to ensure that the repairer uses original accessories from Apple.
“If this is the case, Apple motherboard repair can hardly do it!” Shi Mingwei said helplessly. This is undoubtedly a fatal blow to those who are engaged in mobile phone repair, because the most profitable business is basically from the motherboard level maintenance, and this is his strength.
“I don’t know if domestic manufacturers will also take encryption measures on accessories, but I think we should give third-party maintenance a way to stay.” Shi Mingwei finally sighed.
For the quality problems that more people care about, the maintainer’s position is almost the same: everyone wants to do this well, but the electronic products are different from other products, and the failure occurs. “The problem often encountered when repairing the motherboard is that one place has been repaired, and another place has gone wrong. Sometimes the customer does not understand, it will be considered that you deliberately broke.” For this misunderstanding, Shi Mingwei is quite helpless. .
Chen Xudong said that during his time when he was doing mobile phone repairs, the only thing he could say was “integrity”. “The maintenance system was originally very opaque. You don’t know it if you want to be a customer, but I don’t feel conscience.”
In the face of the status of this group being stigmatized, Chen Xudong still has his defense. “I believe that more people are following the rules of the game. Tuli is only a small group of people. Just like Zhongguancun selling computer pit people, you can’t say that they are all mercenary businesses.”
The times are still moving forward, and change is happening inadvertently. In the raging tides, they are both predators and may be photographed on the beach. Maybe one day, you can no longer see the roadside “mobile phone repair” signboard, replaced by the mobile phone manufacturer’s service center.
This is a contest between the “guerrillas” and the “regular army.” Even if it ends up failing, peopleThey should also remember their names.
(At the request of the respondent, Zhang Yue, Chen Xudong, Shi Mingwei, Li Nan, Zhou Yuan are all pseudonyms)
This article is from the public number: bullet FINANCE (ID: wwwhygc) , author: Yang Yang