"Depth" MIUI: The last line of defense of Millet

May 15, Millet Company's second important new product conference finally dropped the curtain, millet TV second generation and rumors have long been the Millet tablet finally show the true, and millet 3S continue to be absent.

On the surface, millet TV and millet flat is undoubtedly the press conference on the absolute "protagonist", but in fact there is a "supporting" throughout the conference, although the play is not much, but also essential, it is MIUI.

The press conference introduced the link of Millet flat, because of the time is urgent, an important PPT is lei a pen to pass, it transmits the information also immediately submerged in two new heavyweight release to create the restless atmosphere, did not get the attention of the scene audience. This ppt shows: MIUI's global user volume is over 50 million.

MIUI is known as the "soul of Millet", and is widely regarded as the core competitiveness of millet mobile phone. This is based on the Android operating system two development of ROM first in the first generation of Millet mobile phone a year, in the company's early opening of the process of extension of the Earth to take credit to Wei, for Millet brought the first batch of seed users.

Since its release, the MIUI development version has maintained a tradition of updating every Friday and has so far been iterating over nearly 200 versions. Within the millet company, a large team of over 400 people is responsible for its development and day-to-day maintenance.

An interesting phenomenon is that even the most "mean" opponents tend to show considerable respect when mentioning MIUI, a stark contrast to their attitude towards the millet phone. The most harsh criticism of MIUI is limited to its "bloated", because of the original Android system has been a lot of optimization and functional innovation, resulting in a large volume of MIUI, occupy memory, in some low-cost models sometimes run on the poor.

In fact, on the smartphone front, Millet once proud of the cost-performance advantage has been almost wiped out by rivals. ZTE Nubian, Huawei Glory, the charm family and other enterprises are competitive rivals, in addition, there are a plus, Iuni and other finished new manufacturers eyeing. Put aside marketing, brand and other factors, only from the product level, MIUI is already the last line of the millet mobile phone lines.

However, it is not easy for any vendor who sees millet as an imaginary enemy to break the last line of defense.

MIUI Biosphere

Before Android 4.0, Android's poor user experience gave many third-party ROM space to live, and Miui was one of them. For a long period of time, MIUI was advertised as the most suitable ROM for Chinese use.

However, if you still only MIUI as a user experience of the best ROM, it obviously underestimated its strength and role. After 4 years of development, MIUI has long surpassed the meaning of a ROM and initially created an independent ecosystem.

The reason for being able to be called "ecology" is that in the MIUI system, some features and services are being extended to show tempting opportunities for change and attract more and more resources and power from millet.

This may be a bit abstract, and an analogy to Apple's iOS ecology may help you understand it. The iOS eco-based app Store attracts tens of thousands of developers, many of whom rely on it to make a living, or even become a billionaire.

Although millet can not be completely compared with Apple, but MIUI is showing this potential. On the basis of MIUI, Millet built its own application stores, theme stores, game centers, browsers, video centers and cloud services. We can see these as the middle of the Miui pyramid, and then to the upper level, it is more reading, rice Chat can be separated from the MIUI survival of the independent application. In addition, Millet also launched its own virtual currency meter-can be used to recharge the game, buy themes and read more books.

The best description of the MIUI has been the formation of the ecological case is the theme store millet, the current theme store monthly has been able to bring millet millions of of water. According to Millet, individual top designers rely on the theme of sales monthly can earn 7, 80,000 yuan, more designers identified as the superior, so deliberately set up a company specialized operation.

Not only that, the millet theme of the distribution capacity even attracted a lot of business attention, not long ago Hollywood blockbuster "Captain America," when the release, Che dedicated and millet cooperation launched the United States captain's theme, launched only the first week of download volume reached 550,000 times. It is already remarkable that the total amount of download can be reached 200,000 times before.

In the Millet co-founder, MIUI head Hong Feng view, the future Millet theme store profit model may be to B, because the theme is a good way to promote corporate culture. Earlier, MIUI has been working with the Coca-Cola Company to launch the theme. Compared to the C-end market's ability to pay, the enterprise market is undoubtedly a bigger cake. "If it were to be commercialized, it would be a lot larger than to C." "Hong Feng judged.

More can show MIUI strength is the application store.

The application store of millet is already recognized as one of the five distribution channels of Android in the industry, and the other four are Baidu, 360, Tencent and pea pods in turn. Millet is the only company in the first camp with a hardware background. A user of hundreds of millions of app market personnel told reporters that the millet application store is quickly embarked on a commercial road, such as the beginning of a large number of sales advertising. However, in the millet aspect, compared to already appeared in the presence of millet, the commercialization of the application store has been quite restrained. "We've been controlling the proportion of our selling positions. MIUI product Director Huffei said.

And in general, mobile phone manufacturers dominate the application of the market, millet users are generally a heavy user of the Internet, which also makes the application of millet market user activity is much higher than the opponents. "We sell 3 million active users, equivalent to the number of active users in 10 million other manufacturers." ”

Compared with the other four main channels, the Millet application store is more frightening is that with the millet mobile phone shipments of steady increase, its distribution capacity will continue to grow at a high speed.

To measure the value of the Millet App Store, there's a concept for a horizontal comparison--in January 2014, pea pods got 120 million dollars in soft silver for a B-round financing, valued at more than 1 billion dollars. Previously, Baidu has spent 1.85 billion of dollars to buy 91 wireless.

MIUI's native browsers are also not to be underestimated. For most smart machines in the Android ecosystem, the original browser is often a device, users will usually download UC or other Third-party browsers to meet their own internet needs, but Miui's native browser is a lot of millet users preferred.

MIUI Forum for Millet users of a number of surveys show that Miui browser after UC, is the second largest group of users of Millet browser. Among them, the use of UC browser users accounted for about 40%, and the use of native browsers accounted for 30%.

But for now, the bulk of the income for MIUI is still a game of intermodal business. In fact, in the mobile internet age, mobile advertising has not formed a scale, the industry has not explored a better business model, in contrast, the game is still the easiest and most mature means of liquidity.

This February, Millet announced the formation of "Millet Mutual entertainment", the integration of the game Center, video and rice chat and so many lines of business, the original Kylin game CEO Shang as the new general manager. And in the first week of the establishment of millet Mutual entertainment, millet announced strategic investment games company West Hill, hand Tour is the West Hill at present the most important point of exerting force. With the introduction of the millet plate, millet Mutual entertainment will play the role of the future is more important, because for most users, the flat-panel is the entertainment function, which games and video have a great commercial imagination.

The reason for the establishment of Millet Mutual entertainment, Hong Feng explained: "Because this can run faster." Although we run fast in every small team, we can always run faster. ”

Today, MIUI has been able to contribute more than 30 million of the income per month to millet, and remains a fast-growing trend.

Invisible "secret" forces.

These are, in fact, the most obvious parts of MIUI's ecology, and beyond them there are many "hidden" skills that miui have not really opened. These features are hidden in the development version of MIUI's weekly iterations, and most ordinary users cannot experience them in the first time.

This mode of operation is MIUI has been adhering to the strategy, MIUI weekly iteration version is mainly for those who are willing to toss the Fever users, they are the real rice noodles, and because of the smart phone is very understanding, so for a variety of bugs will also be relatively tolerant. MIUI's development team constantly polishes and corrects the product's functionality on a weekly basis, based on feedback from these brush-machine users. Only when the product is polished relatively mature, millet will release the MIUI stable version for all users.

At present, hidden in the development version of the "secret" unit is the millet Yellow pages. Millet is trying to integrate the dial-up feature with the Yellow pages, making the phone call a barrier.

In most users ' perceptions, calling seems to be a pretty handy thing, and there's no need for improvement, but MIUI's team obviously doesn't.

On the phone, the so-called "convenience" refers to the conversation between acquaintances, but in fact it is not the whole of the phone, and the conversation between strangers, but also occupy a large proportion of people talk every day.

Believe that everyone has such an experience, whenever you see a strange number of calls when the heart more or less will feel some entanglements, especially in some inconvenient to pick up the phone, on the one hand, do not want to be the marketing of advertising harassment, on the other hand, but also worried about missing some important information, such as interview

Another kind of scene is also common, want to call out how also can not find a restaurant takeout list, so can only go online to the public comment on the phone search restaurant.

These are actually the pain points that users make on the phone, and the goal of MIUI is to eliminate unfamiliar numbers.

MIUI has worked for a long time. For example, you want to call Madanlai, as long as the dial-up interface directly into the McDonald's pinyin can show the McDonald's booking hotline, do not require users to remember or save this number. In the development version, the Yellow Pages function is further optimized, MIUI can be based on your location to recommend the surrounding restaurant, and even access to the public comment on the service, can help users better make choices.

For businesses, this is certainly a very good promotional opportunity, and from the standpoint of MIUI, this kind of resources and services in the future can be very natural to derive business opportunities, for example, can be like the application store to sell the location of the merchant.

Most traditional mobile phone manufacturers ' understanding of smartphones is still in the product itself, but for millet, its vision is clearly broader.

A convincing example is the collaboration between Millet and Michael, a company that helps businesses build WiFi networks and then provide free Internet access to users, and if you often surf the internet in a place like Starbucks, you'll surely hear about the company. Last September, Michael finished the B-round financing, investment founder is millet. In March this year, Millet officially cooperated with Michael to launch a key Internet service for MIUI users.

Surfing the Internet in a public place like a café is a bad experience, especially when asking a waiter for a WiFi password, and MIUI to help the user solve the problem by working with Michael. For example, when users enter a Starbucks and want to connect to WiFi, they will find that MIUI automatically prompts for free WiFi from Michael, who clicks on the connection and removes the step to enter a password.

While these features and services do not seem as ornate as app stores and theme stores, they are also a very important part of the MIUI ecosystem.

"Now users are using mobile phones to do all kinds of things, as long as the service providers behind these things are likely to be part of our biosphere." What we want to do is to help the user better when the service is available. "In the traditional sense, Hong Feng doesn't seem to be a partner in millet ecology, but it is. ”

For MIUI know more, you will find, although the hardware part of the Millet mobile phone has no advantage, but the existence of MIUI so that millet can still calmly face the external challenges. MIUI is like the shield in the hands of the captain of the United States, which helps millet to withstand a violent attack from its opponents, and at other times it can act as an offensive weapon.

New weapons and new imaginations

In early April, the annual Rice Noodle Festival Eve, Millet released a new application-millet system. According to the official statement, Millet system is a MIUI ROM and millet desktop app between the products, in addition to the landscaping features similar to millet desktop, but also integrated MIUI dial-up management, contacts, cloud services and other features, greatly reduced the use of MIUI threshold, in the Millet system propaganda page, Millet simply defined it as "no brush machine MIUI." Of course, the name "Millet system" has also attracted a lot of criticism.

To create such a product is not the rise of millet in the act, in fact, Millet has a great intention of the heart.

Millet before the system, the app has been introduced for nearly two years, and 5 million of users, but this result does not let Hong Feng feel satisfied.

"A lot of people have done desktop, including go desktop, 360 and Tencent have done the desktop, but gradually you will find that the desktop is not the user's pain point." It mainly meets the needs of user beautification, but how important is this requirement? How big is its audience? Actually we see it has a ceiling. "Flood peak tells business value", "such a product in China can do 10 million to 20 million of active users have been very difficult, a thing, if we do the best and only this level, then why should millet do this thing?" ”

In his view, millet shipments every year than desktop products can cover more than the number. "If we can do more than just one piece of software by means of hardware, then it proves that this is a failure," he said. ”

Because of this, millet hopes to change a way to break through the bottleneck of the desktop, it hopes to bring those who are not millet mobile phone users In addition to beautify more experience. "There are at least 10 times times the size of a person who uses a brush machine." Now that 6 million people have brushed the MIUI, does it mean that the millet system has at least a potential of more than 100 million users. ”

Although the millet system is still in the public test stage, but the peak has seen from its potential. Millet system After two weeks, the user feedback received more than the Millet desktop throughout the lifecycle of user feedback, "Millet desktop we have 3 million active users, 3 million active users two years of feedback to the enemy but 300 users two weeks of feedback." This is the difference. ”

For millet, millet system may become a new killing of millet, in such a way to invade the opponent's territory. Moreover, the future MIUI is likely to integrate more functions into the millet system, such as their own application stores and so on.

Today's MIUI has almost become a synonym for good and intimate, the brand effect is even more frightening than the product itself. For example, millet just released tablet computer, the biggest selling point is actually pad version of the MIUI, Android tablet user experience has been criticized by users, and MIUI to at least let Millet fans have to give up the ipad mini reason. Because in the eyes of Miui's fans, MIUI can solve the problem of poor Android tablet user experience.

Lei in the press conference, said Millet hope that the miui of the application shop, Game Center and open platform to promote the development of the Android tablet eco-chain. In other words, MIUI is the hope of Millet's opening up in the Android tablet market.

It is also worth mentioning that, starting from the pad version of MIUI, the idea of millet seems to have undergone some subtle changes. After the release of the MIUI version of the pad in mid-March, lei the first time on Weibo that it was open to cooperation with third-party pad manufacturers. That is to say, the tablet manufacturer has the opportunity to preinstall MIUI system on its own product. In the mobile phone market, MIUI has been in the way of fans to develop the market outside millet.

Millet's latest two flagship products Millet 3 and millet tablets are using the Nvidia up to the same period of the most advanced new Tegra 4 and Tegra K1, and are the first model, depending on MIUI, millet and Nvidia may be formed in the future of the class of Intel and Microsoft-style "Wintel alliance", Who says such things must be impossible? In a business society, everything is possible. In fact, a careful analysis of the two companies of the temperament and culture, you will find that two companies in fact have a lot of similarities, the nvidia GPU is known for high performance, the gamers have a large number of loyal fans, and two companies are also rich in the engineer culture, It also left room for the two sides to have various forms of deep cooperation in the future.

Pure to sell the visual angle of the hardware to look at Millet this company, you probably feel that this company "is", rely on only marketing, but only from the overall view of the company, can appreciate its strength. In fact, Lei from the beginning of millet repeatedly stressed that millet to do "triathlon", that is, hardware, software and services, and stressed that does not expect hardware to make money. Only in the past three years, Millet has been the best selling point price, which also makes the attention of the outside world for most of the focus on the hardware.

However, with millet in the hardware to complete the "primitive accumulation", lei next focus will be placed on the software and services above, from the past six months of the various measures of millet, already can obviously feel such a change. Fundamentally speaking, the hardware is difficult to open the gap, now the industry's competition has been misguided, reduced to the level of components, such a trend has been very obvious. With the further convergence of products, the future to attract users, you have to work from the software and services.

For those who want to kill Millet, in this time node, should be aware that the best components and industrial design is not enough to rout Millet, ROM level suit can only learn miui fur. So far, traditional manufacturers have been thinking about how to build a high-quality mobile phone, and lei for millet design is a more magnificent blueprint, he wants to create a cover hardware, software and services of the mobile Internet ecology, in this blueprint, mobile phone is at the heart of the position, But it is only one part of it, to some extent, the meaning of MIUI is far more important than the hardware of the millet phone. (article/"Business value" Charles Yeung)