Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 122 There is no opponent who can fight

Compared to the grand launch event when Zhiyun Technology released the S9 flagship phone, the scale of global publicity was huge, with long queues and rush to buy on the first day of listing, and it was sold out in one day.

The launch conferences of the two brands, Xiaolan and Weiku, under Weiku Electronics, were much more modest, and the scale of publicity was not large. Only limited publicity was carried out in China, and there was no large-scale queuing and rushing on the first day of listing.

It may seem ordinary, but it does not affect the sales of these two and four models of mobile phones under Weiku Electronics!

Bai Qiwen's marketing method is somewhat different from Ji Chenghe's.

Ji Chenghe likes all kinds of propaganda, especially using online channels to promote and build momentum. He aims to mobilize consumers' emotions, build a sense of identity and even pride, and tends to be a fan circle.

Bai Qiwen, on the other hand, prefers traditional marketing, going directly into the offline markets of second-, third- and fourth-tier cities, and posting posters directly in street mobile phone stores, bus stops, and outdoor advertisements, so that users can reach them everywhere and have a sense of familiarity.

Then let the front-line sales staff use various sales pitches.

Of course, we can’t avoid using operator channels!
Before the phone was launched, it had already signed contract phones with the three major operators.

The order volume is very large, and basically every operator's initial order volume has reached hundreds of thousands of units!

After all, these two models of mobile phones under Weiku Electronics are priced in the mid-to-low end, and are very cheap compared to other contemporary smartphones.

In particular, the contract phones ordered by operators are mainly low-end versions. For example, most of the orders for Xiaolan 1 are 4GB versions, and the retail price in the official flagship store of the National Bank is 1999 yuan.

When operators purchase in bulk, they still get the wholesale price, which is even cheaper.

In addition, there is also the Xiaolan M1, which is cheaper. The official flagship store sells it for only 1599 yuan, and the operator's purchase price is also cheaper.

In addition, there are the Weiku K60 and V71, which appear to be different brands but actually have the same internal structure and price.

The prices of both mobile phones are below two thousand yuan, which is more in line with the large-scale application and promotion of 3G packages by operators.

With the construction of 3G network, the coverage is indeed getting wider and wider. At the same time, more low-end and mid-range 3G smartphones are also needed to attract people with ordinary financial conditions to use 3G packages.

The mid- and low-end mobile phones of the two brands, Xiaolan and Weiku, are very suitable for this market.

Therefore, after the initial testing, the operators each purchased a large number of WeCool Electronics mobile phones.

In addition to operator contract phones, Wecoo Electronics also conducts large-scale offline distribution through its own channels, namely the channels under Wecoo Trading, and also cooperates with other first-tier channel dealers.

Therefore, although the promotion of Weiku Electronics seems small in scale, especially online, it has not caused much waves, but it is actually very large in scale offline.

Posters announcing the launch of new smartphones from Vicoo Electronics can be seen in street mobile phone stores in many provinces. At the same time, local operators will also produce posters and flyers for promotion.

This also led to the fact that there was not much discussion on the Internet about the launch of Weiku Electronics' new mobile phone, and the discussion was mainly focused on the Little Blue phone...

But offline, various posters and flyers can be seen everywhere...constantly attracting consumers to buy these four smartphones from Weiku Electronics.

Bai Qiwen is very good at this offline promotion and sales model, and he does it very well.

This also led to the fact that although Weiku Electronics’ smartphones did not cause a large-scale sensation, their sales volume was not small!

Taking advantage of the start of the school year when a large number of prospective college students are about to enroll, Bluegogo has seized the market share of these new college students and launched the promotional slogan "The first smart phone in life"!

The Weiku mobile phone is marketed in a regular manner to a large number of ordinary users offline.

After being put on sale in mid-August, the sales of the Little Blue brand under Weiku Electronics have exceeded 300,000, and the sales of the two models of the Weiku brand are even better, reaching 500,000 mobile phones.

In just half a month, the sales volume of mobile phones under Weiku Electronics reached 800,000 units!
After receiving the sales report, Bai Qiwen couldn't wait to find Xu Shenxue to report the good news: "Boss Xu, we have lived up to everyone's expectations. Our smart phones from Weiku Electronics have been successful, and the sales have clearly exceeded our expectations."

"And most importantly, sales are relatively stable while maintaining a certain rate of increase."

When Bai Qiwen handed the sales report to Xu Shenxue, he couldn't help but smile!

Xu Shenxue took the report and looked at it, then nodded slightly: "Yes, the sales momentum is indeed good, exceeding my expectations!"

Bai Qiwen said: "As we predicted, users are still very sensitive to price. At the same time, most offline users don't really know much about the performance and configuration of smartphones. So we paired the 7225/7625 and 34 series M1 and V71 phones, and the sales were very good, accounting for % of the total sales!"

"The key point is that our sales volume has not fluctuated greatly, but has been very stable. The data collected every day has maintained a steady upward curve. We predict that after entering September, the total sales volume will probably increase to the level of 2 million units."

As he spoke, Bai Qiwen couldn't help but sigh: "This smartphone market is really a blue ocean... After our phones were launched, we had no rivals... Not a single competitor that could compete. With almost no competitors, there was no pressure on sales at all. We didn't even have to give unplanned commissions to our frontline sales staff. We could just keep selling phones in the usual way!"

Xu Shenxue poured cold water on him, "Don't be too happy too soon. As far as I know, Google's system development is progressing smoothly. It is possible that a new version will be released around October. By then, this version will have the key multi-touch function, which means that other mobile phone manufacturers will also be able to launch multi-touch mobile phones through this system!"

"They don't even need to make in-depth modifications to the phone system like we do. They may just use the native Android system to save research and development time!"

"According to this calculation, a number of Android phones that support multi-touch will appear on the market starting in October, and there will be more and more in the future!"

"You must be prepared to face fierce market competition, especially in the contract phone sector."

Bai Qiwen said: "This is indeed a very serious threat, but we have full confidence in our mobile phones and channel construction!"

"In terms of mobile phones, we rely on the joint price reduction with our sister company Zhiyun Technology to achieve very good control over hardware costs. At the same time, we also use a large number of domestic supply chain companies, so the hardware cost is very low. In addition, relying on the technical authorization of Zhiyun Technology, our R&D costs are not high." "Whether it is foreign or domestic peers, it is unlikely that they will surpass us in terms of cost in a short period of time!"

"After a large number of our peers have launched mid- and low-end mobile phones to the market, we will take appropriate price reduction measures to stabilize the market, and continue to launch this model, and continue our strategy of flooding the market with new models in the era of feature phones!"

"If the situation is good, we will be able to launch a new phone next month, and then another one in October. We will continue to release a new phone every month to seize the market and deepen our presence in the 1,000 to 2,000 yuan market."

For mid- and low-end mobile phones, the strategy of launching a large number of products is very important, whether in the era of feature phones or in the era of smart phones... You always have to give users more choices so that you can cover more different types of users.

Of course, there must be flagship phones, such as the Blueplus 1 and Blueplus M1. These are actually flagship phones used to promote the brand in the early stages. Then, around these two flagship phones, we will develop similar models with different appearances and different user groups. Finally, we will have seven or eight models on sale...

By combining different colors and configurations, you can have dozens of mobile phones that can fill the entire mobile phone store cabinet so that it doesn't look empty.

Bai Qiwen continued, "As for channels, our current channel ratio is still very healthy. Our own channels and first-level channels account for 58% of the total sales of bare phones, while contract channels only account for 42%. As our channel construction continues to expand, the sales ratio of our own and first-level channels is expected to increase further!"

"This will not only effectively increase our gross profit, but also avoid heavy reliance on operator channels!"

For high-end mobile phones like Apple and Zhiyun, the dependence on operators’ channels is not a big problem…

They are in the business of branding and high-end products...The relationship between them and the operators is a cooperative one. To a large extent, the operators even use these two high-end mobile phone brands to promote their 3G networks and attract and consolidate high-value 3G users!

At least for now.

Because the brand is there, even if the operator's promotion work ends in the future and there is no need to purchase contract phones on a large scale for subsidy cooperation, the phone can still be sold through its own and first-tier channels relying on the phone's own brand.

But for WeCool Electronics, which produces mid-to-low-end mobile phones, the situation is different... Although WeCool Electronics' mobile phones are currently the first choice, or even the only choice, for the three major operators to purchase mid-to-low-end smartphones... but it is only limited to the current situation.

In a few months, especially after 10 years, it is estimated that various mobile phone manufacturers will launch a large number of mid- and low-end smartphones.

By then, WeCool Electronics' mid- and low-end mobile phones will face a more complex and fiercely competitive mid- and low-end smartphone market... At the same time, the increase in competing products also means that the operators' voice in contract phones will gradually increase, and eventually reach the point where their words are final.

In order to increase their profits and promote 3G packages with the least amount of money, operators will inevitably continue to lower prices and reduce the average purchase price of contract phones.

This will eventually lead to the profits of contract phones becoming extremely slim, and Weibo’s profits will force mobile phone manufacturers to simplify configurations, reduce quality, lower prices, and ultimately lower brand value... turning them into something that is the same as copycat phones!

At this time, if the mid- and low-end mobile phone manufacturers whose shipping channels are heavily dependent on contract phones, they will face a huge survival crisis... If they can transform at that time, that would naturally be the best, but if they cannot transform, then they will basically end up in failure.

Of the four kings of the original time-space contract phone era, only Huawei successfully transformed, and the other three were completely wiped out...

why?
There are too many low-end contract phones, which leads to problems with brand positioning. When consumers see this thing, they subconsciously think it is a rubbish phone given away by the operator when they top up their phone bills...

At this time, don’t expect consumers to spend money to buy your mobile phone...

People are so disgusted with the crappy phones given by operators that they throw them in drawers and don’t use them. How can the phone manufacturers expect them to go out and spend money to buy this crappy brand of phone?

The mobile phone manufacturers are crazy, but the consumers are not!

It can be seen from this that for mid- and low-end brands, contract phones are actually a double-edged sword. If used well in the early stages, they can quickly capture market share and gain certain profits.

However, if you rely too much or even completely on operator channels, sooner or later you will be hurt by contract phones and eventually be doomed.

Xu Shenxue sees this very clearly, and although Bai Qiwen does not know the future situation of contract phones, as a senior marketing personnel, especially having experienced the era of feature phones when the market was heavily dependent on Huaqiangnan's first-tier channel dealers.

But it is very clear that it is unreliable to leave all the shipping channels to outsiders...

Even in the era of feature phones, Bai Qiwen had already begun working hard to build his own channels, and the predecessor of Wecoo Trading was the early Wecoo Electronics' own channels.

Although Weku Trading has become independent, it is still a part of the entire Weku system.

Bai Qiwen is also a senior executive of the company who has long supported the development of Weicoo Trading and continued to expand its own channels.

In addition to supporting Weiku Trading's own offline channels, Weiku Electronics also has its own online channel department. At the same time, it has reached cooperation agreements with more than ten first-tier channel dealers in different regions in the country to improve and enrich its own channels.

Therefore, although Weiku Electronics still relies on the operator's channels to a certain extent, the dependence is not great... Without contract phones, Weiku Electronics' thousand-yuan smartphones can still be sold.

And in the previous contract phone purchases, we also rejected the operator's proposal for cooperation on super low-priced customized phones... The operators wanted smartphones with super crappy configurations, regardless of performance, and the cheaper the better. The operators had no intention of selling such phones, but instead planned to recharge phone bills and give them away directly when you sign up for broadband!
Bai Qiwen was still a little hesitant, but after hearing it, Xu Shenxue gave a direct instruction: Don't do it!
Operators can purchase in bulk and give pre-order discounts... but they will never make customized phones. The research and development of mobile phones must be based on brand positioning and market positioning... We cannot let a big customer lead us by the nose.

In particular, we must resolutely not produce low-priced customized machines, as that would seriously lower the brand image.

However, it doesn’t matter if Wecoo Electronics doesn’t do it, because the three major operators will turn around and look for other domestic mobile phone manufacturers... With the support of Zhiyun Technology, Wecoo Electronics has the confidence to reject the operators’ customized phone plans, but other domestic mobile phone manufacturers do not have this confidence.

Even for these domestic mobile phone manufacturers, this is still a huge opportunity to rise!

To some extent, in fact, WeCool Electronics rejected the operator's low-price customized phone plan for the sake of its own brand value. At the same time, in order to diversify its channels, the scale of publicity and promotion in the contract phone channel was not large, and its main energy was focused on building its own channels.

This also provides other domestic mobile phone manufacturers with a valuable living space!

(End of this chapter)