Lenovo's mobile phone is too dependent on the operator's three main consequences

Compared with Huawei, ZTE, Cool faction actively open up the electric business channel, Lenovo is "China Cool Alliance" inside the last one to embrace the electric company.

In Lenovo's channel strategy, there are still nearly 70% dependent on the carrier channel, Lenovo in the domestic mobile phone has not been the most dependent on the carrier channel companies, but with Huawei, ZTE and Cool faction have intensified the social channels and electric business channels, Lenovo has become the carrier's most dependent on the most mobile phone brands.

Over-reliance on carrier channels has made a contribution to the rise of Lenovo's mobile phone. Lenovo ranked fourth in the global smartphone market in the first quarter of this year, with market share rising from 7.9% in the first quarter of last year to 12.9%, according to IDC.

However, one shark believes that excessive channel betting in the operator, has given the Lenovo mobile phone planted a huge hidden danger, Lenovo needs to change as soon as possible, otherwise it will seriously affect its development in the future.

One of the consequences, excessive reliance on operator channels, so that mobile phone manufacturers to greatly reduce the bargaining power, a sharp increase in competition, will seriously affect their profits, resulting in incremental income.

The number of mobile phone purchases by operators is huge, this also determines the operator's bargaining power is very strong, at the same time, operators face a lot of mobile phone manufacturers to take bidding strategy, so that mobile phone manufacturers in the price of fierce competition, mobile phone manufacturers are often forced to close to the cost price to provide operators, which seriously affected the profits of mobile phone manufacturers.

More noteworthy is that operators in order to promote the popularity of their network, to draw users into the net, often the mobile phone customization focus on the low-end. such as in the golden Age of 3G era, the three major operators to the thousand-yuan smart machine as the focus of customization, prompting the handset manufacturers forced fierce competition, the launch of the thousand-yuan model, which makes the mobile phone manufacturers profit plummeted.

HTC's fading case is a cautionary tale for Lenovo's mobile phone. July 2010, HTC officially entered the mainland market. Because of the weak retail channels in mainland China, coupled with the operator's strong control of mobile phone sales channels, HTC will channel the focus on operators. Operators did let HTC get a good record on sales. HTC sold 2.8 million smartphones in China in the third quarter of 2012, twice times the previous quarter and more than the iphone's sales.

However, over-reliance on carrier channels has continued to reduce its gross profit margin, thereby increasing the profit pressure on HTC, which is already in the red. It can be said that HTC's decline in addition to its products lack of star models, in the channel over-reliance on the operator's strategy is also one of the important reasons, failed to control their own channel fate.

The bad result of the second, the excessive reliance on operator channels, so that it can not directly to the consumer brand, will seriously damage its brand development in the consumer.

Lenovo mobile phone through the operator channel sales, is essentially a B2B2C model, although not as foreign operators in the customization of mobile phone manufacturers even the logo can not play, but overall, this model makes Lenovo mobile phone can not directly to consumers to play the brand, can not directly interact with consumers, Will seriously damage their brand development.

In fact, Huawei, ZTE, the cool faction and so on saw this kind of evil result several years ago, began desperately to develop the social channel and the Electric business channel, for example they all successively set up the brand specially for the internet and the electricity merchant: Huawei set up the glorious brand, ZTE established the Nubian brand, the cool faction established the Great God Brand They are also strengthening the expansion of social channels. And the opposite view Lenovo, the development of the electric business has been relatively slow, the development of mobile phone brand is relatively weak. A shark (micro-credit public: Southsharker) believes that, in the event, Lenovo mobile phone even if it can continue to carry out sales growth, but if its own brand strength drops, in the operator there will be abandoned.

The consequences of the third, over-reliance on operator channels, will make it with the consumer communication disconnect, resulting in a decline in innovation, can not achieve the entire process based on user needs optimization.

If the main channel in the operator to customize the mobile phone, is tantamount to focus on customers in the operator of this big customer, rather than consumers. Operators to customize the mobile phone, there is a clear, detailed requirements, equal to many aspects are limited to death, the manufacturer to play a limit, such results will make mobile phones become increasingly homogeneous. Originally mobile phone because of Android operating system and Qualcomm/MTK, such as the development of CPU, has become the same as the PC standardization and homogenization, operators customized mobile phone a large number of appearance, more make the mobile phone become homogeneous, resulting in personalized missing.

At the same time, as mentioned above, operators in order to attract users to the largest scale, the customization machine will focus on low-cost machines (such as the thousand-yuan intelligent machine), which will hinder the development of high-end machines, and thus prevent mobile phone manufacturers in technology innovation investment. In addition, the operators to customize the profit of the rival machine manufacturers, more so that the handset manufacturers can not put more money into research and development, so that mobile phone manufacturers to halt innovation.

Too dependent on operators, but also make mobile phone manufacturers and consumers out of touch, making it impossible to accurately understand the real needs of consumers, this and the internet era of "detection of user demand and rapid iteration" concept is inconsistent with the user interaction and product optimization, can not predict the number of mobile phones and then supply chain optimization. For example, in the number of 4G mobile phone shipments, the original Lenovo group responsible for mobile phone business Feng Jue has complained, in the end to move the commitment to 4G shipments how much appropriate. What if the 4G network drives slowly and produces a lot of inventory?

Last month, Lenovo Group made a big adjustment in the business structure, the original MID H Group (mobile internet and digital home) renamed Mobile Business Group (MBG), Lenovo for the three major operators set up different heads, from its adjustment, Lenovo mobile phone will still be the focus of the channel on the operator.

However, the over-reliance on operators can lead to sales growth, but exaggeration, such as poison to quench thirst, is not a good thing in the long run.