Mobile phone Battle 2014: The charm of the tribe

No doubt, 2014 is the mobile phone industry to speed up the shuffle of the year.

While Apple still enjoys the five-star treatment, the decline of Samsung, Sony and HTC in the Chinese market is an indisputable fact. On the contrary, domestic mobile phones are rising strongly. In the carrier stop subsidy in the background, the traditional "China cool" has been exerting power channels, a plus, hammer and other emerging brands turned out, OPPO, vivo, such as deep into the high-end market. With the strengthening of domestic mobile phone competitiveness, the impact on foreign brands and is expected to become the mainstream market.

China's smartphone market increasingly fierce competition, major players have to display their own stunts, inventory this year on the mobile phone industry, the impact of the larger manufacturers, not millet and the charm of the family. Their focus is not only on the war of words that erupted in September, but also on its corporate strategy, product layout and the huge impact it has on the mobile market. Today I offer my observations on the charm of the year.

Zang return: The enchantment opens fission

The reason why we use "fission" to describe the change of the Charm clan is because of the great change of the charm clan this year, which is based on the subversion of past practices and will have a great influence on the future development and market position of the charm clan.

Zang comeback by the outside world as the beginning of the change of the family. In February of this year, the founder of the Phantom, Zang, was the CEO of the company and announced that it would start financing, which meant that the Charm clan transformed from a family business to a popular company, and that financing was mainly used for employee equity distribution and for making up marketing short boards.

In Zang's view, "charm" is the greatest competitiveness of the family, this charm from the external to the charm of the existing strength and future potential recognition. But he is also not shy of the problem of the family, in answer to the staff on "where the charm people need to change" question, zang that the charm should be changed in three ways: to strengthen product development efforts, increase market promotion efforts;

The above three major directions laid the tone of the transformation of the Charm clan, passing out the trend of the charm of the development of the United States from small to large priority positive signal. Next, we all see that the Phantom of the family really changed!

Huge financing: Rapid staff growth

This June, the charm family successfully completed the financing, the amount of financing at least 2 billion, the overall valuation of more than 20 billion. Insiders emphasise that this round of financing is financing, not strategic investment. Investors are not the previous rumors of Gree, 360, because Zang and their ideas are different.

With the funds in place, the charm family to open the internal equity incentive plan, and increase recruitment efforts. It is understood that more than 5 years of internal employees and P5 (including) The above employees have a shareholding qualification, the first group of employees have been taken stock rights and the right way, in order to further motivate employees, the recent charm of the vice President Linan hint that the charm may be completed in 5 years, means the charm clan will be in the old rival millet before listing.

In addition, the charm is in the history of the fastest growth in the number of employees, the past few months, staff growth of 40%, the plan reached at least two thousand or three thousand people. The influx of talent to the charm family led to tension in the office area, the family had to put the mobile phone patch factory and assembly workshop moved away from the building.

In addition to the expansion of the Zhuhai headquarters staff, the charm family is also actively planning to set up branch offices in Shenzhen and Beijing. At present, Shenzhen Branch has been established, the main research and development of intelligent routers to improve the layout of smart home. The Lifekit platform, released by the Phantom of the September, is also the team responsible for integrating the Phantom's smart hardware partners.

Fission: Expanding product line

Financing, equity distribution will ultimately be implemented to serve the product, since the announcement date, MX4 has become a much-anticipated object. The reason why the attention, not only is zang the charm of the first half of the year ushered in a big test, more important is the first confrontation between the charm clan and millet, opened the September mobile phone war prologue.

September 2, MX4 and to, compared to FlyMe 4.0, Sony camera, exquisite technology and other stunning performance, 1799 yuan pricing on the user's impact more directly, also become the focus of attention. In my opinion, MX4 pricing not only adds to the charm of the evil, but also reflects the support effect of capital. For a long time, because the market positioning is not accurate, the product pricing has been criticized, for always insist that "products larger than business" for the charm, at the capital level reserves sufficient ammunition to help to kill the price to the lowest.

High-quality products plus reasonable pricing, natural for the MX4 to bring more than the expected amount of booking. 3 days 4 million, 10 days 7.7 million, no doubt to the smoke of the mobile phone market dropped a blockbuster. Do not know is premeditated speculation or unintentional controversy, 1799 for the detonation of millet and the charm of the mouth of the fuse. Executives on both sides of the microblog, you come to me.

The dispute between the two sides finally did not distinguish the result, but the capacity became a big problem in front of the charm, the hammer by capacity drag eyesore still in sight. Before the charm clan has never openly MX2, MX3 and other products sales, but the initial estimate but millions, to 20% conversion rate to calculate, tens of millions of orders also produce 2 million sales, this is not a small pressure on the Phantom line. Although the whole line of the charm of the entire working overtime, but still can not meet the needs of users, after the charm of the family announced the subsidy, but the overall capacity to alleviate the help is not enough, so far MX4 still in stock status.

MX4 is not enough to satisfy the charm of the wild aggressive mobile phone market ambitions. The rich product line plan developed at the beginning of the year, the end of October, the charm of the United Ali released MX4 YunOS3.0 version. In addition to the rapid expansion through the cat sales, the charm of the family more value with Ali to create "flow-channel-Mobile phone-system (to the electricity dealers again diversion)-value-added income" closed-loop ecosystem and business model, for millet intention is obvious.

Half a month after the double 11 for the charm of Ali marriage after the first show. The first minute of the phantom sales of Millet, but 4 minutes after the charm of millet, become double 11 first sales broken billion enterprise. Due to the lack of stock of the charm family, ultimately cherish the loss of millet. "Double A nothing, 11.19 see me," Huang Zhangtan said.

Zang Mouth "11.19" is released MX4 Pro, also known as the charm of the great recruit. Fingerprint unlock, hifi sound, fingerprint payment is its product highlights, on-line one day predetermined amount of breakthrough 2 million. The market is hot, I can not help but a little worried, this concern mainly reflected in two aspects:

One is MX4 pro enough "pro". Although Bai Yongxiang constantly stressed that pro is different, but the appearance and MX4 difference is not small, material, key position, perforation are exactly the same, the bottom square home key even less beautiful than small dots, equivalent to the enlarged version of the MX4. Second, capacity is still a hindrance to the scale of the charm family. MX4 Pro High price helps the charm of the high-end market, but in view of the hunger marketing has become a means of rotten streets, regardless of the charm of the family is intentional or unintentional, the damage of capacity not only to expand production capacity, but also the charm of the brand and reputation caused harm.

At the same time, the group also decided to release the first quarter next year with Ubuntu operating system of the Phantom MX series mobile phones, and will be in the European market and the domestic market and other channels of sales, based on the external cooperation and the recent product line deployment, the charm is very likely to launch the Ubuntu version MX4, This means that the product will become an international market for the charm of water test. In addition, the charm family is planning more than 3000 yuan products and thousand-yuan machine.

Channel, marketing both upgrade

In addition to constantly improve the product layout, the charm of the channel construction and marketing methods also make a corresponding upgrade. At present, the charm family online sales channels and offline sales channel ratio of 3:7, the charm of the official website, Jingdong, the sky cat accounted for 1:1:1. Linan believes that, in the long run, users through the electric channel to buy mobile phones will become more and more common, price war intensified, traditional store profits will be compressed, but 30% market share is its bottleneck.

The solution of the Charm clan is to distribute the order directly to the offline store or pop, and to reduce the intermediary and channel cost of the provincial and municipal agents, and to tilt the profit to the sales store of the company as far as possible. In other words, the charm of the social open channel to the investment is focused on the future, which with the current millet on the power of the channel's extreme reliance on different.

It is noteworthy that the charm has been taking the form of the chain of franchise, the general store only sell the charm family of a brand, although the effective control of products and prices, but not conducive to large-scale expansion. In the mobile phone manufacturers to seek rapid occupation of the market environment, too much reliance on offline channels to promote the Phantom family sales is still unknown.

The change of the charm is also reflected in its marketing strategy. Because Zang character reason, the Charm clan marketing has been in the tepid state, becomes its development market cannot neglect short board. "Hello everyone! I have just returned from Mars to Earth, I will be the most open heart to embrace the world. We all know that our marketing is rotten, from today onwards, I will tell more people know, in addition to the millet mobile phone, there are better for the charm family mobile phone can choose. ”

This is the first article of Zang opened Weibo, also indicates the Charm clan will vigorously launch marketing activities. Zang comeback soon after, it is a strange place only concern Zhou one person, causing a lot of speculation outside, and played MX3 price, and 360 and gree to negotiate financing combination boxing, earn enough eyeball also for the whole year marketing win good luck.

Since then, the charm family through the industry meeting voice, saliva warfare and other marketing means of multi-pronged, further expand the brand influence and promote the product. When entering the new product release cycle, from the launch before the black, product information leakage, to the conference ridicule friends, involved in multi-party war, so that products get more exposure and then detonate the market.

In general, the 2014 charm of the family opened the change of the big screen, whether it is the capital operation or product line layout, people feel that the charm of the family really changed. But for the charm family, the urgent matter is not to mark Millet, but to solve their own capacity problems. At the same time, the smartphone competition has risen to the ecological circle, millet through the integration of the upstream and downstream industry chain has completed the "Hardware + Software + Internet Service" of the initial construction of the ecosystem, Linan also admits that there are no manufacturers in the industry can resist millet closed-loop business model. In the long run, the Phantom of the Open model needs to unite with other handset makers and developers to further improve the construction of the "flow-channel-mobile-system-value-added income" eco-circle.