i have an electronics factory

Chapter 135 Smart Home

Chen Zifan:? ? ?

Can you say that again?
Fifteen styles! ?

Where do so many products come from?

Wang Jinli explained a bit: "Actually, there are only three types of products: air conditioners, refrigerators, and washing machines, but there are more styles. Take air conditioners for example, there are wall-mounted, vertical, and central air conditioners."

There are different classifications, different wind power, and different price ranges. The same is true for refrigerators and washing machines. There are single-door, double-door, drum, and automatic... Calculated in this way, the fifteen products are really not as many as imagined.

Originally, Midea wanted to develop several more products, such as range hoods, integrated stoves, vacuum cleaners, drinking/water purifiers, etc., but in the end they gave up, because they couldn’t get fat in one sitting, so they had to push a few models out to try the water first.

First take down the "three big pieces" of daily household appliances, and then consider other things, and Midea's development strategy is completely different from that of Stardust Technology. Stardust Technology takes a specialized route, and there are only a few products in one category.

Midea casts nets everywhere, covers firepower, and has many and miscellaneous product lines. Some products are OEM products processed by OEMs. There is no such clear line as Stardust 2 → Stardust 3, Xinghan 01, Xinghan 001, and Xinghan 009. Product planning, it seems very confusing.

Ordinary consumers only know that Midea is a big brand, but what products are good... They can't tell. When they walk into the home appliance city of Midea, it seems that every model is good, and the design is quite beautiful.

The product feels solid enough, and the price...is not too different from Gree, Haier, and Supor, but Supor specializes in kitchen utensils, and in which year it seems to have won the title of "Kitchen Overlord".

As a result, several brands specializing in household appliances may not pay as much attention to products as brand marketing, advertising, and grabbing market share, as long as the products maintain normal standards.

That is to say, when Gree advertised, it also advertised "master the core technology". In the early stage, many people did become users of Gree air conditioners, but later...Xiaomi already made air conditioners, where is your technology?
Or was it an ad from the beginning?

If Chen Zifan were to make electrical appliances, he might not specialize in air conditioners, washing machines and other products, but would choose cutting-edge emerging home appliances, such as dishwashers, shoe washing machines, and robot vacuums.

Even if he is asked to make air conditioners, he will only launch a few models, and then upgrade every two years. However, due to the long service life of air conditioners and washing machines, brand has become a key factor.

The air conditioners, washing machines, and refrigerators of big brands are not necessarily better, nor are they necessarily better than those produced by small factories. They may even sell the same thing with them, but with a different brand.

Of course, these are all Chen Zifan's "malicious speculations", and he has never had a deep understanding of these brands. As far as Midea is concerned, it can be seen from Wang Jinli's investigation that Midea actually has a production factory.

And it is also equipped with a dedicated product design team. This time, it wants to engage in "smart home" and is also seeking new breakthroughs to improve the brand power.

Chen Zifan carefully read the documents brought back by Wang Jinli, only to realize that he had misunderstood Midea. Although they wanted to build a lot of products this time, the product positioning was very clear, and the product line was also very clear.

For example, the washing machine has produced a simple and colorful series with very beautiful colors, which directly reminds Chen Zifan of LG's LG AKA big-eyed mobile phone.

"This color scheme...isn't it suitable? Isn't it easy to get dirty with light colors for washing machines? And the texture is not good enough, not as durable as dark colors!"

"Ahem, the person in charge sent by Midea this time said that they also want to create more 'younger' products. These things are preliminary plans and have not yet been finalized. They will definitely be adjusted later?"

"In the name of intelligence, improve product positioning? Oh~ it turns out that it is this intelligence, using Stardust OS to connect refrigerators, washing machines and other products to realize remote control of various functions..."

It is definitely much easier to use than the infrared remote control, but it is not very useful when you think about it carefully. The air conditioner has a remote control, and you can switch it on and off, adjust the temperature, and adjust the mode directly. As long as the refrigerator is turned on, it basically doesn’t care.

The rest of the washing machines are used more frequently, but who uses a mobile phone to control the laundry halfway!Chen Zifan didn't know what to say for a moment. Is this smarter or more inconvenient?
In other words, throw the clothes directly into the drum, close the door, turn on the mobile phone, select the mode and timer of the mobile phone, and then directly dry the clothes after washing and throw them into the basket, and then just take them up and hang them up.

"My suggestion is to let them develop some 'novelty' products, and then label these products as 'technology' and 'smart', such as dishwashers. It is not impossible now, it depends on how the products are..."

If the Midea APP is well developed and the functions of the product can be completely transplanted to the mobile phone for remote control, it seems that you can try it.

Thinking of this, Chen Zifan suddenly remembered something, and hurriedly stopped Wang Jinli who was about to retreat and continued: "By the way, we must remind Midea! Don't install advertisements on their smart homes!"

Wang Jinli: "...I know."

From the manufacturer's point of view, it is a good thing that a product can get a lot of advertising revenue, but from the consumer's point of view, no one wants an advertisement to pop up when the screen of their refrigerator is turned on.

You can’t have it on the APP either. If you want to really do a good job in the product and brand management, you have to give up a part of the profit, first to improve the product experience and user satisfaction, and then talk about the profit issue.

This is just an ideal state, and Chen Zifan is just reminding them that it is good to be able to cooperate and save trouble. He also wants to achieve his goal as soon as possible, but if it is not possible, he will do it himself.

"Smart TV", "smart refrigerator", "smart air conditioner"... Many products originally carried a very good development concept, but they were all destroyed by advertisements, making smart home a "deception".

These are all good, some crazy car manufacturers even have advertisements on the car, the good thing is not on the dashboard, if an advertisement pops up on the dashboard halfway, the driver will probably collapse on the spot.

At present, in China, only Stardust Technology can control advertisements. Some mobile phone manufacturers have already started to accept pre-installed applications and built-in advertisements. For example, LeTV is in dire straits.

On the one hand, Boss Jia "disregards his business" every day and is busy working on Faraday Future, which is benchmarking against Rolls-Royce and Bentley. On the other hand, he has suffered fierce attacks from Xiaomi, and the product experience is indeed not good.

The price-performance ratio is high enough, but Boss Jia's "software subsidy hardware" flooded LeTV's mobile phones, TVs and other products with various advertisements, so Xiaomi seized the opportunity and began to provoke their user relationship.

There is also a saying circulating on the Internet: If you want to buy a mobile phone that is cost-effective, then buy LeTV, but the LeTV mobile phone must run the Xiaomi UI system!
Taking advantage of this opportunity, Mi 1 has also entered the most critical period before the launch, and it is almost the end of the year. In case Stardust Technology launches some "limited editions" during the Spring Festival, it will advertise on the Spring Festival Gala...

Or it broke the news in advance about Stardust 4, Stardust 4+, or other products...Rebs is really a bit overwhelmed. While the residual heat of Stardust 3 is still there, he must seize the opportunity to enter the market.

Rebs also regrets it now. He originally wanted to choose a brand with the highest sales volume and influence in China for a wave of cost-effective benchmarking. After choosing Stardust 3... it realized that things were not that simple.

The starting price of Stardust 3 seems to be as high as 3999, but after careful analysis, Stardust 3 is extremely cost-effective, and other brands are not popular enough. It seems that there are quite a lot of supporters of Apple and Samsung abroad, but it is useless!
They can't even enter the Huaxia market, so what's the use of benchmarking?So there is no way, no matter how powerful Stardust 3 is, he has to find some loopholes, such as the most criticized 3-megapixel camera on Stardust 500.

520 million pixel camera came into being~

Another example is that Stardust 3 only has 3G...

Let’s not mention 3G for now, because Xiaomi can’t get 4G chips for the time being, and the Tiangong generation of Haihua chips is still in preparation. After the test is completed, it is estimated that it will be after the Spring Festival, so next year will be the main battlefield for 4G mobile phones.

Although Stardust 3 only has 3G, as far as the current package costs...sometimes there is no difference between 2G, 3G, and 4G, the traffic is not much, and the cost is still huge.

Midea can still talk about it, and slowly determine the final product. The 4G era has just begun, and "intelligence" is not something that happens overnight. This time Wang Jinli has another important thing besides Midea:

"Smartphone wise..."

Regarding smartphones, there is another important but not urgent project to be solved this year, and that is about "low-priced brands". Strictly speaking, it is not a sub-brand of Stardust Technology.

It’s just that compared with other mobile phone brands that rely on Hongqi OS and Stardust ecological chain manufacturers, they will get some Stardust technology and official promotion resources. After Wang Jinli’s screening, there are four goals identified:

"Xiaomi, Meizu, Coolpad, Motorola!"

The current development situation of the first two and the latter two is completely different. Xiaomi and Meizu are going uphill, and Coolpad has been swept up by other manufacturers and is about to collapse.

Not to mention Motorola, the big brother Nokia can't even hold on. Its second child was dismantled two years in advance in the wave of smartphones. At present, Google has revealed its intention to acquire it at a high price.

In Chen Zifan's memory, Motorola was later acquired by Lenovo. In fact, it was a mess and cost 29 billion US dollars, but there was no way.

The reason why I didn’t choose Nokia... is that Nokia has not yet fallen, and the other is that the lean camel is bigger than a horse. If I want to buy Nokia, Stardust Technology has paid a bit too much, and it will cost more than 50 billion US dollars.

In order to support a "people's livelihood brand" that is almost unprofitable and completely designated by the government, it is a bit too expensive to pay more than 300 billion yuan to acquire Nokia. Motorola is cheaper, but not much better.

Therefore, the real alternatives are Xiaomi, Meizu, and Coolpad. Xiaomi has to wait for Xiaomi 1 to come out to see the situation. Meizu may not accept the life of living under others. Small factories are small factories, but small factories have dreams.

Coolpad is the best place to start, but despite Coolpad being a domestic mobile phone brand, the purchase price is not low, but if they don't buy it, their development philosophy will conflict with Stardust Technology, and they can't help it.

As for other brands... such as Big Coke, this brand that specializes in "square" mobile phones is still down, there is no way, the square screen is too anti-human, big and heavy, and there are two big black borders when watching videos.

Chen Zifan is quite interested, but he will not joke about this kind of thing, so he may have to choose between Xiaomi and Meizu in the end:

"Leave Xiaomi aside, let's see what tricks they can come up with, and send someone to contact Meizu. Aren't they planning to create a sub-brand called 'Meilan'? See if they have any idea of ​​making a low-priced product."

When Wang Jinli heard this, he immediately patted his chest and assured: "Don't worry! They must have ideas!"

Chen Zifan: ...

You can't do anything bad, can you?

Forget it, as long as you can achieve your goal!

Wang Jinli's idea is very simple. He thinks this is not a multiple-choice question. Not only Meizu, but he will send people to contact the two brands. They are famous, profitable and have resources. Are these two brands not fools?

Moreover, it is their sub-brands that are supported, which have a strong driving effect on the main brand. Of course, after accepting the support, it is impossible to break away from the Stardust ecological chain in the future, and can only become a vassal of Stardust Technology.

This needs to be thought through in advance.

Coolpad is an alternative. After all, they still have a certain family background. After two rounds of Coolpad's purchase price has dropped, it is not impossible to consider it.

The matter of low-priced brands can be finalized before the Spring Festival, and there is plenty of time. The reason why they want to do this is because both the official and Chen Zifan are a little dissatisfied with the current structure of the Chinese mobile phone market.

And their products...really stand out.

Obviously there is Hongqi OS, and various technologies authorized by the Stardust Ecological Chain Project, which are much cheaper than those charged by foreign technology companies, but they just can’t make any good products, and they just have to resist passively.

The mentality of these mobile phone manufacturers is also very simple: no matter how hard they try, they can’t do Stardust Technology, so it’s simply a failure. Only a few mobile phone manufacturers with "dreams in their hearts" are still working hard to make mobile phones.

In fact, Chen Zifan is also to blame. He also knows that Stardust Technology’s initial development goals were not clear enough. Either it will go all the way to the dark, or it should not be so radical. It is enough to maintain the leading products of 1-2 generations.

Being caught in the middle is the most uncomfortable, but this is only from the current perspective. The development situation at that time and the strength of Stardust Technology may not allow them to use such an aggressive approach to take the entire market into their own hands.

The current situation is different, and we can try to change the development method. The most important thing is: to popularize low-priced smart phones, which is conducive to the promotion of Stardust technology products and mobile payment promotion in the later stage.

(End of this chapter)