The threshold of the millet disciples

Absrtact: A year ago those who had a mouthful of the millet model of the mobile phone industry, is now in a hurry to become a disciple of millet. The industry's view of Millet has gone through three stages, at first it is looked down upon, later is not understand, to now is not catch up. Not long ago, the millet hand

A year ago those who had a mouthful of the millet model of the mobile phone industry, is now in a hurry to become a "disciple" Millet.

"The industry's view of Millet has gone through three stages, at first it was looked down upon, and then was unable to understand, and now is not catch up." "Not long ago, Li Vanchang, founder and vice president of the Millet mobile phone, said to reporters.

Just a year ago, the low price model of Millet 1999 was also criticized by many mobile phone industry as the "cancer", Millet was criticized as a cheap to destroy the industry rules of the game of enterprises, so that everyone can not make money enterprises. A year later, when Millet burst a mobile phone has hundreds of yuan profit, including mobile phone design companies, handset companies, internet companies, start-up companies have poured into the field of Internet mobile phones, the original rugged track was quickly stepped into a smooth road.

In a very short time, in addition to TCL (Micro-Bo), Haier, amoi these old mobile phone manufacturers, some unheard of new companies such as green Orange mobile phone, pepper cell phone, rice mobile phone, mushroom cloud cell phone, Chup, THL are scrambling to become a faithful disciple of millet, millet model began to become sweet cakes.

Mobile phone channel industry is familiar with the mobile phone design company Mirs Vice President Liu Jiaolong told reporters that this year, the domestic sales of mobile phones will reach 50 million, and last year, as long as 20 million, its growth is very obvious, will account for the total number of domestic mobile phone sales of 10% to 15%.

Such a big Internet market, can you feed another one such as the Internet mobile phone company? The imitators of the millet, how are they living now?

National Science Millet

In the Zhangjiang park on the outskirts of Shanghai, there is a company on the wall are all decorated with bright green orange touch, the wall everywhere "I am not an apple, I am a green orange" such a playful poster, a huge office, the staff busy on the computer through micro-blog and BBS and netizens to interact.

Green Orange Mobile phone is regarded as the current industry in The imitation of millet one of the fastest, and the industry in the rumors, Green Orange mobile phone will soon become the following Huawei (Micro-Bo), TCL, Haier, Amoi after another 360 special machine manufacturers.

"We hope that this year to achieve 1 million of shipments, next year to do 10 million." "Green Orange mobile phone CEO Cai Xiaonong told reporters. This is a crazy number, millet mobile phone to next year's expected sales will not be 10 million-15 million units.

Previously, Cai Xiaonong has worked in Motorola for many years, and has a wealth of mobile phone industry experience. Green Orange Mobile phone's parent company is Shanghai's mobile phone design company Rui Cako, this is a revenue billions of yuan mobile phone design company, has the strong handset research and development ability and the deep supply chain resources.

Earlier this year, Cai Xiaonong's team launched the Blue Orange mobile phone, the mobile phone from the launch to the sale of various links, have played a strong trace of millet. At that time, the Mars1 and Mars2 of the green Orange only price 599 and 799 yuan respectively, according to its handset configuration, the price has dropped to the freezing point.

Cai Xiaonong said, and Millet is still positioned in the high-end market, green Orange mobile phones will be mainly located in the low-end market, the main users are concentrated in the second, three or four-line cities, mostly young people.

Cai Xiaonong told reporters that the reason to sell so cheap, because the use of green Orange mobile phone parent company Rui Cako their own factories, their own platform, so can ensure rapid listing.

and blue Orange Mobile phone in the internet, the storm is a small chili cell phone, the reporter in the small dipper Pepper mobile phone official online See, "September 1 second round of 100,000 Taipei Dou small hot pepper mobile phone pre-sale has sold out" impressively in the column.

And in the home of mobile phones, Shenzhen, there are more small and medium-sized handset manufacturers in the gearing, ready to learn millet mode. Almost all handset manufacturers have decided that the E-commerce channel is the future trend, so all began to carefully try.

Not long ago, the CEO of the Brush Machine, who had just bought shares from 360, said that Shenzhen has a large number of small and medium-sized mobile phone manufacturers who want to imitate the millet model, they do not have the ability to sell their mobile phones online. Value this market, Brush Machine Wizard launched a "recommend machine" business, its model and 360 special machine very similar, that is, through their own Internet traffic to help mobile phone manufacturers sell mobile phones online.

The core of the millet pattern

Millet's success, the biggest impact on the mobile phone industry is the impact of the concept, especially the use of Internet channels to do brands, using Internet channels to sell mobile phones.

In the traditional retail sector, the 300-dollar mobile phone is usually sold to 500, 1000-dollar mobile phones are usually sold to 1500, because the channel layer of price increases, making mobile phone sales of the intermediate link cost is very high.

This year, Suning, Gome, Di, such as the physical channels of the mobile phone store has been a big impact. In the first half of this year, a A-share listed company Shenzhen Eschde huge loss of 268 million, become one of the top ten a-share loss listed companies, traditional mobile phone vendors days sad to see.

It is because of the traditional channel sales of mobile phone costs are too high, forcing some mobile phone manufacturers to start looking for new channels, millet mode is in this context began to popular.

Mirs Vice President Liu Jiaolong estimates that this year domestic handsets sold via the Internet are expected to reach 50 million units, and last year only 20 million, its growth is very alarming, the mobile phone sales through the Internet has been able to account for the total number of domestic mobile phone sales of 10% to 15%, this is already a market can not be belittled.

At present, the largest sales of the domestic internet is Apple's iphone (including a large number of parallel mobile phones), and then Samsung's Galaxy series, and then ranked on the Internet channel of millet.

Those who rely mainly on the Internet channel "Amoy brand" type of mobile phones, most of the life is very difficult. As the cost of network traffic is getting higher, once the purchase of advertising and traffic is stopped, sales quickly drop.

"We spent some time trying to figure out the cost of selling a mobile phone online, up to two hundred or three hundred dollars," he said. Shenzhen Innos mobile phone general manager Wang told reporters.

The way to reduce the cost of traffic is to do social marketing or event marketing, in which the concept of millet to the industry impact is also huge.

"Six months ago we wanted to go to Sina advertising, when we actually thought that in Sina to put a banner advertising costs only hundreds of yuan, the result asked down, a day to hundreds of thousands of." "The joke that the general manager of a mobile phone manufacturer in Shenzhen told reporters is that most handset makers are ignorant of internet sales."

"Millet to our greatest reference value is through the Internet to promote, direct and user interaction." "Green Orange mobile phone CEO Cai Xiaonong said that millet through the maintenance of their own fan forum, the continuous improvement of the product has a great help."

"Millet in the interaction with the user to do a particularly good, it is worth the traditional mobile phone manufacturers for reference." "Cai Xiaonong points out. Millet has a person in Weibo, forum and user interaction, listen to the views of users, in the service provider direct and user communication, which greatly enhance the relationship between users, so the green orange manufacturers are also learning millet, micro-blog and user interaction, and establish their own forum.

Cai Xiaonong recalls his past experience in Motorola, when mobile phone brand marketing is one-way transmission, Motorola every year in the television, print media on a large number of ads, like radio. But in the internet age, the effects of this business model have gradually begun to decline.

But in Mirs deputy Liu Jiaolong, there are only a handful of manufacturers with online marketing capabilities. "Millet is the most difficult to copy is its marketing ability." "Not everyone has the power to Liu Jiaolong on the internet," he said. ”

This is true, not long ago, reporters to the Millet Beijing headquarters to visit, deeply felt that kind of network marketing atmosphere. Millet's 1500 employees are working at 10 o ' clock in the morning, leaving work at 10 o'clock and working six days a week. Millet Weibo marketing staff has as many as 30 people, these employees are mostly product managers, and daily interaction with fans on Weibo. Millet's more than 400 after-sales service telephone operators and the company's research and development team work together, rather than choose to outsource, the advantage is to ensure that those difficult issues can be effectively answered.

Millet has established a set of mechanisms to interact with fans, including microblogging, forum online communication and various online fan activities. By contrast, most mobile phone companies are still in the early stage of network marketing, micro-blog marketing is a simple "send mobile" activities. A mobile phone company's boss told reporters that he sent a lot of mobile phones on the internet, but the actual effect is very poor, prizes are online those lottery professional led away.

The lack of network marketing capability is the main reason why the 360 special machines have been sought after by handset manufacturers. Although Tcl, Haier's first special special machine sales poor, but 360 strong network marketing capabilities, or let many mobile phone manufacturers willing and 360 cooperation.

And the first batch of 360 special machine sales is not good, to a large extent, because the handset manufacturers in the marketing of 360 too dependent on their own lack of strong network marketing capabilities, and ultimately did not allow the handset manufacturers to truly form a strong online mobile phone brand.

But from the market, millet still left room for other internet phone brands.

Cai Xiaonong that Millet is still positioned in the high-end, and constantly to pursue the latest, the highest configuration, and green orange manufacturers can be lower in the configuration based on lower prices. At 1999 of the price of millet below, there are also a large number of price interval segments exist opportunities. Starting this year, China's smartphone-switching boom has begun to penetrate cities below, bringing a new wave of opportunities. The only problem to be solved is that the habit of buying mobile phones online is not yet formed in the cities below.

By contrast, Millet is sold well on the Internet, and its geographical distribution has a great relationship. Millet mobile phone Vice President Li Vanchang told reporters that the user distribution of millet and China's Internet users distribution is very close, of which about 80% of the user is male, 20% is female, in the region most of the millet users concentrated in the coastal developed areas. These areas of online shopping habits have been very mature, so led to the sales of millet.

Among the imitations of the millet, the features are Chup and THL mobile phones, which use the line Direct shop to add online direct sales model. The gross margin of the direct shop below the line is usually very high, it is often 5 to 6 times times of the gross profit of Shenzhen ordinary handset wholesaler, this new pattern starts to be favored by more and more manufacturers.

The threshold of the Millet model

So, does the Internet still have the opportunity to produce the next millet mobile phone? Most of the people in the mobile phone industry interviewed by our correspondent believe that this is already very difficult.

In the eyes of some in the industry, the specific history of the success of the Millet model has passed, in other words, even if Lei (Weibo) at this point in time to do the same thing in the past, it is still difficult to succeed.

The reason, the success of millet at a specific point in the country, that is, the first to push the dual-core 1.5G mobile phone sold to 2000 below. The low price strategy of millet directly robbed HTC, Motorola, such as the original high-end brand market.

Mirs Vice President Liu Jiaolong to reporters, millet this model to be successful, must catch up with the technical iterations, such as single core to double core, dual-core rose to four nuclear. At that time, the dual core of Millet 1.5G a full lead in the industry for six months, and in this year 2 liters four cores, Millet has lost this leading advantage, so the market heat of 2 meters is far from the first generation of millet compared.

In addition, millet and the user interactive "fan economy" is placed in front of its "disciples" another threshold.

Li Vanchang told reporters that many imitation millet manufacturers only learn the fur of millet pattern, this is because and user interaction is a very learned thing.

He cited, for example, millet just released the Rice 2 mobile phone, after the conference received users in the Forum and micro-blog heated discussion, enthusiasts rushes to millet suggestions for improvement. As a result, Millet has added several new functions after the product is officially released, such as adding a 32G version.

After a large number of mobile phone manufacturers quickly into the market, millet mobile phone profits will be predictable decline. Industry insiders generally believe that Millet recently began to put on the building ads, and increase the strength of the offline sales related to this.

Blue Orange mobile phone CEO Cai Xiaonong to reporters, smart phones rely on hardware to make money the era will end one day. So the company will first have to do mobile phone sales, and then through this portal to drive other Internet businesses to make money.

Unlike other handset manufacturers, Millet has its own MIUI system, Millet is trying to imitate Apple to take the path of vertical integration of hardware and software, and millet to investors tell the story is "China's apple."

However, Li Vanchang admits that relying on the internet to make money is a long process, no years difficult to cultivate. Li Vanchang stressed that millet and users directly effective interaction is its largest capital, he said Millet users active degree is very high, "other manufacturers sell 1 million mobile phones, may only know 5% of the users who, but the user activity of millet up to 60% or 70%." ”

By contrast, the model of selling mobile phones on the internet purely by price is difficult to long. "If you want to spell the price, no one can spell the Shenzhen Huaqiang north of the manufacturers." "Shenzhen Innos mobile phone's general manager Wang said that the recent Shenzhen Huaqiang North has appeared 200 Yuan smartphone, smartphone price decline is very alarming." In Shenzhen, many mobile phone manufacturers are light assets, focusing on short-term interests. If the price is pure, few firms will be able to do so.

"This market is very big, we welcome everybody to come in together, use the way of the Internet let domestic brand together bigger and stronger." "Li Vanchang said.