Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 120 Crazy Earnings of Billion
When the media was reporting wildly, many Japanese consumers began to give feedback to operators and channel dealers, asking them to purchase products as soon as possible...

If you don’t restock quickly, I’ll turn around and grab the fruit from the next door!
Consumers are anxious, operators and channel dealers are even more anxious...but they don’t have any good solutions!

Now Zhiyun Technology’s S9 production capacity is limited, but the demand is too great and it is simply unable to meet the needs of all customers!
These 9 S phones were the result of great efforts by their operators and channel partners to jointly secure production capacity. All they can do now is wait for distribution...

In order to take care of as many markets as possible, Zhiyun Technology was forced to allocate quotas based on the sales volume of C1 mobile phones in various markets!

Your previous C1 phone sold well, so we will give you more quota for the S9 phone. Your previous C1 phone sold poorly, so don't expect too much quota for the S9. We will just give you some as a token of our appreciation.

As for really large-scale production capacity, we will have to wait until September.

There is no way. Zhiyun S9 is really in short supply. You can’t get it just because you want it. You have to queue up according to the quota.

After all, it’s not just the Japanese market that’s sold out in one day, but the global market, where the product is out of stock everywhere.

The Zhiyun S9 phone was launched globally on August st... and then... it was out of stock worldwide one day later!

This triggered a wave of public opinion...

The last time people criticized Zhiyun Technology for its hunger marketing, it was only Chinese people...

This time, people from all over the world, from different countries, with different skin colors, regardless of gender, and even age, cursed together...

The next day, Xu Shenxue looked through some translated news newspapers and even some public opinions from all over the world sent to him by Manager Dong.

After looking at it for a long time, he sighed: "You can curse me all you want... I can't conjure up so many mobile phones even if you curse me."

Who the hell could have thought that production would begin in early July, and after entering full-scale production in late July, the foundry would work overtime and operate in three shifts 9 hours a day, and finally produce S mobile phone stocks, but they were all sold out in one day!

This is a high-end product with an average price of over 600 US dollars... Previously, the marketing department was worried that the production volume was too high and it wouldn't be able to sell.

As a result, all the stock was sold out in one day.

Now Xu Shenxue is silent, and Ji Chenghe rarely takes the initiative to admit his mistakes: I underestimated the market, and I didn't expect consumers from all over the world to be so crazy...

However, consumers are angry, and Zhiyun Technology avoids talking about issues such as insufficient supply and hunger marketing... But the media reporters are going crazy...

"In one day, Zhiyun Technology made over 2.3 billion in revenue!"

“It’s incredible that Zhiyun S9 made over million US dollars on its first day of listing!”

This is an almost unimaginable number... Many people saw this news title and directly thought that Zhiyun Technology made more than 2 billion yuan in one day.

But it is not actually the case... After all, this is revenue. After deducting various costs, the gross profit is estimated to be around 9 billion... The hardware gross profit margin of Zhiyun S is an astonishing %!
What is a high-end machine? This is a high-end machine!

Of course, there is no need to say such things. A gross profit of over 1 billion is more enviable and jealous than a revenue of 2.3 billion.

Fortunately, Zhiyun Technology is not a listed company and does not need to disclose its profits to the public.

Even the revenue was not announced in a timely manner. The first-day sales of 2.3 billion yuan were all guesses made by the media...

Although there is no clear data, everyone has reached a consensus that Zhiyun Technology is very profitable and S9 has become a super hit!

In this environment...it is not easy for operators and channel dealers in various places to get sufficient supply of S9!
The Japanese purchasing team has been staying in Shenzhen... just to grab production capacity.

The production capacity of the first batch of 30,000 mobile phones in the early stage was the result of their hard work for half a month, otherwise they would not have been able to get these 30,000 units.

Zhiyun phones are sold worldwide, not just in Japan...

The production capacity that will be put on sale on August 1st is the 500,000 units of stock machines that were produced overtime in July.

Of these 500,000 mobile phones, about half remain in the domestic market, and the remaining half are supplied to the European market first, followed by the Japanese market and the American market. As for other markets, they are supplied in very small quantities!
From this supply, we can basically see that Zhiyun Technology focuses on the market. The domestic market is larger than the European market, larger than the Japanese market, and larger than the American market...

Among these major markets, the United States still ranks last!

It’s not that sales in the U.S. market are not good, but that the U.S. market is destined to be a short-term business and there is no need to invest too much... It is better to put limited production capacity into the European and Japanese markets to win the favor of local operators, channel dealers and consumers.

Selling out within a day is not just a situation in the Japanese market. In fact, except for South Korea, in the first batch of countries or regions where the S9 phones were launched, they were basically sold out within a day!
Especially in the domestic market, it couldn’t even last a few hours, let alone a day…

Almost every business hall or flagship store with the right to sell s9 is filled with long queues... As soon as the store opens, it is basically sold out within a few hours.

The situation on online channels is even more exaggerated… Even though the technical department has limited the purchase of one phone to one, they were all still sold out in just one minute!
Then, countless people started to curse... saying that Zhiyun Technology was just using hunger marketing again.

Some people were shouting that if they couldn't buy the items anymore, they would go buy some fruit.

Haha, what a nice thought...

The current Fruit 3GS is also a hot commodity... It's not just Zhiyun that has been criticized for hunger marketing, but also Fruit next door. Fruit has even been criticized more severely and is even harder to buy.

Currently, the global market has a monthly production capacity of about 2 million fruit phones, and it is not easy for ordinary consumers to buy one, not to mention that fruit has not yet officially entered the domestic market.

Even though Cook went to China for public relations lobbying in mid-July, he still failed to break through all the obstacles... They can definitely get in, but they have to produce additional stocks and get network access licenses, and also finalize the cooperation plan with China Unicom... Apple has always wanted a share of the phone bills, which is also their main cooperation model around the world: not only do they charge for the phone itself, but they also want a share of the phone bills!
But China Unicom will definitely not do that and will only offer subsidies...Anyway, you are not the only one, there is also Zhiyun next door.

Well, by the way, Zhiyun Technology is cooperating with operators on contract phones. In addition to directly selling mobile phones at wholesale prices, it also adopts a subsidy model. In addition, it also has a call package profit-sharing model with some operators.

As long as it can make money, Zhiyun Technology is not too picky about the specific cooperation plan!
But Apple is more persistent. All of their contract phones have a phone bill-sharing plan... There's no reason for it, they just make more money this way.

But in the domestic market, fruits may have to make an exception... Unless the top executives of China Unicom go crazy, it is impossible for them to agree to such conditions for fruits.

It will take time to solve this series of problems. If fruits want to clear all obstacles and enter the Chinese market, it will have to be after October at the earliest.

This means that Zhiyun S9 can still maintain a monopoly period of nearly two or three months in the domestic high-end smartphone market.

How to make use of these two or three months to seize as much of the domestic market as possible has become the focus of Zhiyun Technology's next stage of work.

However, the prerequisite for seizing the market is to have production capacity, and the current Zhiyun S9 has encountered the same problem as C1 in the first half of the year, that is, insufficient production capacity.

However... Zhiyun Technology does not dare to rashly increase its production capacity on a large scale.

At present, a monthly production capacity of one million units is already quite risky... The performance on the first day of sale cannot represent the sales performance for the whole year.

It is impossible to determine the annual production capacity based on the sales volume on the first day of sale.

Therefore, after a meeting, several senior executives of Zhiyun Technology decided to temporarily increase part of the monthly production capacity and then observe the situation after three months.

The temporarily increased production capacity is not much, only 500,000 units.

It is expected that the total production capacity will reach 1.5 million units per month.

As Zhiyun Technology received more orders, various supply chain companies and OEM factories also stepped up their production efforts.

Anlong Precision, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Zhiyun Technology and the only production factory of Zhiyun S9 aluminum alloy body, is producing aluminum alloy body at high speed on one side, while technicians are installing and debugging advanced equipment on the other side.

If the production capacity of this body cannot be increased, the production capacity of the entire S9 mobile phone cannot be increased either!

Not only the fuselage, but the production capacity of any other components also needs to be accelerated synchronously.

Of course, Zhiyun Technology would not cheat its own supply chain companies, so it informed them in advance that this increase in production capacity is temporary and is expected to last only about three months.

At the same time, they were also reassured that even if the number of S9 orders decreased after three months, they did not have to worry about any problems, as other orders would be delivered to them as compensation.

Zhiyun Technology is also in the early stages of production and stocking for a C2 phone, which is expected to be launched in September...and orders for C2 will be larger than those for Zhiyun S9.

Because of the price of the C2 phone, its sales volume is destined to be larger than that of the S9, and the demand for components will also be greater.

At the same time, Zhiyun Technology also tried for the first time to use spare parts of the same specifications from different manufacturers on the C2 mobile phone. For example, the screen is no longer supplied by LG alone, but by LG and Sharp at the same time.

The same applies to batteries and other spare parts. Try to use more than two manufacturers as much as possible.

Zhiyun Technology is working at full speed to increase the production capacity of Zhiyun S9, but it has not forgotten to prepare for mass production of C2 mobile phones.

In fact, these are two relatively independent product lines. The mass production of the S9 mobile phone will not affect the mass production of the C2, but in fact promotes the mass production and stocking of the C2 mobile phone.

Supply chain companies have seen the hot sales of the previous C1 phone and the current S9 phone...naturally they are full of confidence in the C2 phone, so they will invest more in the production lines and have more confidence.

After arranging the mass production of Zhiyun S9 and the stocking of C2, Xu Shenxue breathed a sigh of relief, and then saw the news sent by Manager Dong.

This is a piece of news from the UK, saying that the latest batch of Zhiyun S9 mobile phones arrived in London, England by air, and attracted media reporters to pick them up at the airport...

We have to say that the local reporters are really resourceful. They actually got the information of the cargo plane that transported the Zhiyun S9 mobile phone, and then staked out at the airport... They even sneaked into the airport and took pictures of the staff unloading the cargo.

It didn’t take long for a group of photos to be published on the local online media… The title was simple and crude:
"The second batch of Zhiyun S9 has arrived in the UK and is expected to go on sale soon!"

Many people who heard the news lined up without saying a word... Many people went too late last time and queued for half a day but still didn't get a chance, so they would not miss it this time.

This has put the local operators in a very passive position...this batch of mobile phones has not yet completed the customs clearance procedures.

It's no use asking people to explain and persuade them, the consumers simply don't listen and just line up with tents and stools... They threaten to wait in line until they die!
Looking at the long line of hundreds of people with tents and stools, the operator’s head was immediately overwhelmed... What to do?
What else could I do? I worked overtime, mobilized all the connections I could, and urgently handled customs clearance procedures. I finally got the phone out on the third day, and then started selling it...

Otherwise, if we continue to wait, who knows what these impatient consumers will do.

After seeing this set of news, Xu Shenxue quietly increased his attention to the European market!

(End of this chapter)