China Mobile "restart" its own brand of mobile phone success or failure?

Reporters learned from China Mobile, China Mobile's own brand of mobile phone M811 4G is about to be listed in June. Take Guangdong as an example, the product will be sold in 1,500 service halls throughout the province and all social channels in the province. Relevant person in charge of China Mobile Guangdong terminal company yesterday told the "First Financial Daily" that follow-up will be based on the company's plans to launch more own-brand, select the industry's influential foundries.

"Choosing to launch an independent brand will help operators more fully understand the needs of end users. However, from the perspective of the industry chain, the advantages of handset manufacturers who have been cultivating the market for many years are even more obvious. Mobile's own brands are not going to have any impact on these vendors Impact. "Telecommunications expert Fu Liang told reporters.

Not for money

To help China Mobile to create the future mobile Internet portal launched OPhone, through the depth of custom Android operating system in the mobile phone integration of its own business level, declared unsuccessful, the interpretation of the industry as the operator of the test water terminal failure and distress. However, recent moves by China Mobile seem to have the "reboot" momentum of own-brand mobile phones.

Guangdong mobile terminal manager told reporters that so far a total of China Mobile M601 and M701 two TD-SCDMA smart phone products to market in the future there will be a five-mode 4G smartphone M811, five-inch quad-core, support for global roaming, And with NFC function. The end of August there will be a higher configuration of 5.5-inch five-mode LTE smart phone market.

For such a dense release of own-brand mobile phones, the source said that in line with the company's development strategy. Xi Guohua, chairman of China Mobile earlier, said in an interview, pushing its own brand of 4G mobile phone is not to earn much money, just think of the market guide.

According to experts in the industry, China Mobile has been seeking comprehensive services for transformation, including opening up major Internet business bases and acquiring mobile application companies. Fu Liang told reporters that operators are selling network services, selling mobile phones just to network services to build a basic platform, application environment, value should not be sold how many mobile phones, how much money earned.

Among the two mobile phones previously released by mobile, the focus of the move is the integrated "cloud" and "consonance" services.

In April of this year, Xi Guohua said at the 2014 China TD-LTE Industry Development Symposium held in Chongqing that with the acceleration of 4G technology, China and the rest of the world entered the era of mobile Internet at the same basic start-up line. To this end, China Mobile Starting from this year, it will make full efforts from the three major fields of network, terminal and application to boost the development of self-owned 4G. In 2014, 500,000 4G base stations will be built in 329 cities nationwide to accelerate the nationwide coverage. In the meantime, 100% of 4G roaming will be launched in countries and regions with LTE international roaming opening conditions. At the same time, China Mobile will develop 200 million smart phone users, of which 4G users strive to exceed 100 million.

He specifically mentioned that in order to accelerate the application and popularization of 4G networks and guide the terminal market, China Mobile will also cooperate with some terminal manufacturers to build a number of its own brand 4G mobile phones, with a focus on mid and low priced models of around RMB1,000.

According to Xi Guohua's argument, 4G era, fast, the user's consumer demand will also change. For this opportunity, big manufacturers to grasp no problem, but small manufacturers estimated hard. "By building our own branded 4G handset, we not only explored how to make 4G terminals better, but also explored ways to minimize costs, which in turn led many smaller vendors."

In fact, the shortage of terminals was the biggest bottleneck that affected China Mobile's 3G users. Xi Guohua said that the user's consumption is hierarchical, both high-end market, but also mid-market, as well as low-end market. China Mobile's own brand of 4G mobile phone positioning is for the low-end market. The goal is to make the cheapest 4G phone, the price will be below 1,000 yuan.

"Now that the price of 4G handsets in the market is generally high, the average selling price of 4G handsets will be able to be lowered after China Mobile's own-brand 4G handsets are listed, which is a great benefit to consumers," said Xi Guohua.

"Private label" is not smooth

This is not the first time China Mobile has introduced its own brand of mobile phone.

As early as 2009, China Mobile began the exploration of autonomous mobile phones. The earliest was OMS of mobile phone system. On August 2 last year, China Mobile also released two self-branded smartphones such as M701 and M601, MIFI and mobile power supply Accessories accessories products.

At the time, however, the industry questioned the practice of China Mobile entering into the handset field by telecom operators, believing that this would form a positive competition with its handset makers and undermine the interests of its partners. The reason is that, although operators have more requirements for custom machines, manufacturers can take a slice of the custom machines from carriers and their own-brand mobile phones completely bypass the terminal manufacturers.

China Mobile CEO Li Yue used "primary school students" to describe the current state of mind and status of China Mobile in the mobile phone market. The mobile terminal company also admits that the smart terminal can not give up not giving the production to the manufacturer. The biggest challenge is Good components procurement and inventory management, any part of the bad control will lead to out of stock or loss, so many cottage manufacturers are bankruptcy in this round of competition leave.

Fu Liang told reporters that the mobile phone to do their own brand an obvious advantage is that from the level of terminal manufacturers to understand the needs of end-users, the original is from the operator point of view, it can be seen from the perspective of the industrial chain to find inadequate So that their applications or other service products can be better combined with the mobile phone products.

"But if you really want to sell a certain amount, compared with other terminal manufacturers, there are many things that mobile needs to improve." Fu Liang said that the mobile terminal manufacturers themselves have a complete set of industrial chain solutions for mobile phones. R & D began to mobile phone supply chain production, set the number of goods, how much to sell, each product's listing cycle has a rigorous research and calculation. Operators themselves due to the larger volume, the need to go more processes, the structure and the phone company is not the same.

"Affixed to the operator's label is not easy, the terminal technology, research and development, integration capabilities are the test, especially after-sales service, people harsh on the carrier products far beyond the other companies." Fu Liang told reporters.