Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 146: The Battle for the Next Generation Flagship

The modified version of Android Yun OS system used in Zhiyun mobile phone adopts extremely strict permission management, which directly blocks all the little ideas of these software manufacturers.

I want to work with Zhiyun Technology and Weiku Electronics, which have channels for three major smartphone brands.

If you want to seize the initiative and even make money in the mobile Internet market with annual sales of tens of millions of mobile phones... you have to follow the rules of the Yun OS system.

In the contemporary smartphone market, or mobile Internet market...Yun OS is very strong.

The combined monthly sales of Zhiyun and Wecoo mobile phones can reach nearly 8 million units... This figure is very terrifying.

In the smartphone market in the past March, Zhiyun Mobile had the largest shipments, with over 1.8 million units of the S series and over 4 million units of the C series, for a total shipment of 6 million units, ranking first in the world.

The second place is Fruit Mobile, which, thanks to the continued strength of 3GS and the old model 3G, can also achieve monthly shipments of more than three million units... and their average shipment price is higher.

The two companies mentioned above have one characteristic, that is, the shipment of new models relies on the European, American, Japanese and Chinese markets, while the shipment of old models relies on emerging markets. The sales of Fruit 3G and Zhiyun C1 in emerging markets such as India, Indonesia, Brazil, etc. are rising steadily.

In addition to Zhiyun and Fruit, the third place in the smartphone market is Weiku Electronics. Relying on its earlier launch time and its leading advantage of being the first to enter the mid-to-low-end field, Weiku Electronics established its brand early on. Its Little Blue brand is quite popular online, while the Weiku brand has very high sales offline.

The two brands combined have monthly sales of more than two million units.

Next are traditional international manufacturers such as Six Star and HTZ, whose sales volume ranges from a few hundred thousand, and not many exceed one million.

Except for Samsung, which launched the Galaxy S series and initially entered the high-end field and gained a foothold, other mobile phone brands' attempts to impact the high-end smartphone market have almost all failed, and now they have fallen into competition at a price range of around 2,000 yuan.

Domestic mobile phone manufacturers are even better, having begun to lower the price of smartphones to below 1,500 yuan.

The price of the Little Blue M1 has now been reduced to 1399...

In today's smartphone market, the most intense competition is not in the high-end market, nor in the mid-to-high-end market, but in the mid-to-low-end market between one thousand yuan and two thousand five hundred yuan. Major international and domestic mobile phone manufacturers are all competing in it.

In the mid-to-high-end market of 2,500 to 4,000 yuan, Zhiyun C series is the only one in the market... and has no rivals at all.

In the market above 4,000 yuan, the Zhiyun S series and Fruit are evenly matched. Depending on the region, some Fruits have the advantage while others Zhiyun has the advantage.

For example, in the North American market, Fruit has put Zhiyun under great pressure... The competition is too fierce. In the US market, Fruit's 3GS is sold cheaper than Zhiyun S9 by taking advantage of tariffs. Coupled with the localization advantages, Fruit basically dominates the local market.

On the other hand, in the Chinese market, Zhiyun S9 also beat Apple to the point of fleeing in panic.

As for other markets, they are basically evenly matched, some Zhiyun is better, and some fruits are better.

Looking at the entire smartphone market, you will find that the Yun OS system used by Zhiyun and Weiku has in fact become the smartphone operating system with the largest market share... Well, of course, it can also be said to be the Android system.

After all, Yun OS is just a super modified version of Android!

However, this super modified version uses a semi-closed ecosystem, and strictly guards against third-party software. They almost directly block third-party download channels. No matter what software it is, they ask you to download it from their built-in system mall APP.

In this case, for software manufacturers, entering the Zhiyun APP channel is equivalent to entering a mobile Internet market with tens of millions of existing users and seven to eight million new users every month.

Even Google couldn't help but start a strategic cooperation with Zhiyun in the face of this huge new market, spending a lot of money to build in all the Zhiyun mobile phones for overseas markets, and then jointly engage in Android research and development...

In other words, even a dominant software manufacturer like Google has to follow the permission management of the YUN OS system and pay Zhiyun Technology built-in fees and channel fees!
Not to mention other software vendors.

Tens of millions of existing users and millions of new users every month... This is the confidence behind Zhiyun Technology's semi-closed ecosystem and extremely strict requirements on permissions.

Software vendors unwilling?
If you don't want to, then don't want to. Zhiyun turned around and went to support your competitor...

Finally, after all these conditions are combined, the software ecosystem under the Yun OS system is still relatively healthy. There is no messy software, and there is no such mess as automatic startup, associated startup, automatic download, and background opening...

This means that Yun OS phones are smoother than other Android phones with the same configuration.

People have noticed this contrast before, but the feeling was not profound...and it did not cause much public response.

But after the four-star Galaxy S was launched, people found that the Zhiyun S9 was more fluid than the four-star Galaxy S with the same configuration.

This is what made the matter completely exposed...and then a group of people analyzed and discussed why this happened?

After all, both of these phones are based on Android. If you want to change the system, Samsung has actually made some modifications to the original Android... Of course, it only involves some surface-level modifications such as fonts and interfaces.

People used to think that since they were all modified versions of Android, there shouldn’t be much difference… but after actually comparing them, they found out, damn, the gap is as huge as heaven and earth!

Then consumers in many other markets started to criticize the four-star rating one by one...Everyone is changing the system. Just look at Zhiyun next door, theirs is so easy to use!

Look at what you guys have modified, what rubbish it is...

The engineers at Sixing Electronics felt very aggrieved about this... It seems like we don't want to change it. We want to, but we can't...

And forced changes are more risky. When those damn Google engineers and Zhiyun engineers modified the Android open source system, the code they wrote was like shit, and there were no notes, which made people feel overwhelmed. When the system engineers of Google and Zhiyun wrote code for the Android open source core, they didn't act like babysitters and give you a lot of tutorials and manuals.

Anyway, the open source code is here. If you have the ability to understand and modify it, you can modify it at will.

If you don’t have this ability, you’d better just use the native system!
Google hopes that other manufacturers will continue to use native Android, and then forcibly bundle the entire Google family with them... It can tolerate Zhiyun starting a new business, but it doesn't mean it will tolerate you doing the same.

Google tolerates Zhiyun's messing around because Zhiyun's system team is really super technical and has surpassed Google's Android R&D team in R&D progress. If Google doesn't cooperate with Zhiyun, Zhiyun can also launch the Yun OS 3.0 system on its own.
In addition, Google and Zhiyun actually have a comprehensive strategic partnership: Zhiyun phones in overseas markets all have the entire Google family package built-in.

To be honest, how much of the mobile Internet market share Google can grab at this stage depends largely on whether Zhiyun phones are powerful enough!

Every time Zhiyun sells a mobile phone in the overseas market, it means that Google has one more mobile Internet user, and that user of the entire family package!

Based on the strategic cooperation relationship between the two parties, and the fact that Zhiyun Technology's system team is indeed very powerful, Google is also working with Zhiyun on the open source version of Android.

What does it mean?
What this means is that a large number of other mobile phone manufacturers are now using the open source Android 2.2 system released in February... A lot of the underlying core code in it was actually written by engineers from Zhiyun Technology!

This Android 2.2 system was ostensibly developed and released independently by Google, but in fact it adopted a large amount of core open source code contributed by Zhiyun Technology.

However, Zhiyun is restricted by the limitations of the open source system, and many things must be open to others... But it does not mean that Zhiyun Technology will let you use them at will... Many open core codes actually have some hidden bugs deliberately left by Zhiyun Technology engineers.

If you don't make any random changes, you can use it as is. If you are capable of making the changes, you can avoid these hidden bugs.

If you don't have the ability and still make random changes, don't blame Zhiyun's system engineers for secretly setting a trap to bury you.

This series of factors has also led to the fact that the current native Android system is still far behind the YunOS system. It has all the functions it should have, but the gap in fluency is huge.

This also directly affected the sales of the Sixin S1 mobile phone. Although it was quite popular, it still could not shake the position of the Zhiyun S series and the Fruit 3GS series in the high-end market.

However, even so, this four-star S1 is the only one in the past year that has been able to stand out and can barely be considered a successful high-end mobile phone... Even if it can only survive in the gap between Zhiyun S9 and Fruit 3GS, it is already a great success.

Since last year, so many mobile phone manufacturers have launched a large number of various high-end mobile phones. Last year, major mobile phone manufacturers used Symbian, WM system, BlackBerry, etc., but they all lost to the impact of Zhiyun and Fruit.

After last winter, mobile phone manufacturers started to get the hang of it and started developing Android flagship phones, but most of them failed to make any splash.

Today, the Samsung S1 is the only exception. In March, it occupied percent of the global high-end mobile phone market with a price of more than yuan.

Although there is still a huge gap compared with Zhiyun and Fruit, it is far ahead of other mobile phone manufacturers.

Due to the success of the S1 mobile phone, Sixing Electronics held a large-scale celebration banquet.

However, it is hard to say how long its sales can last, because in June and July, Fruit and Zhiyun will release a new generation of flagships...

People are still very much looking forward to the next generation flagship phones from these two major mobile phone manufacturers.

There have been some news coming out about Fruit, saying that it plans to subvert the mobile phone industry and bring people a brand new smartphone experience.

Ordinary people are confused by what they hear, but Zhiyun Technology, as the biggest competitor, has concluded through some clues about Apple phones, especially changes in the supply chain, that the new phones released by Apple in June and July this year will most likely use a glass back cover and a 3.5-inch reticulated screen... because Zhiyun Technology discovered that its partner LG has launched a new production line for 3.5-inch high-resolution screens.

As for this thing, apart from Zhiyun, only Fruit can adopt it on a large scale... Since it is not Zhiyun itself, it is most likely Fruit.

At the same time, there has been no news that Apple is negotiating with Samsung, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and other manufacturers on mobile phone SOCs... At least these chip manufacturers have not increased production of flagship chips on a large scale. At the same time, there have been news in the chip foundry industry that Apple is developing its own chips and has achieved success.

Through these, the intelligence analysis department of Zhiyun Technology has basically determined some basic features of Apple's next-generation mobile phone: self-developed SOC chip, 3.5-degree field of view screen, and glass back cover!
Of course, it is not clear exactly how this will happen.

After all, the fruit company has done a good job of keeping secrets. Although some true and false news will be revealed, some key information, especially the specific appearance, performance parameters and some more unique things will not be announced.

Just like Zhiyun Technology's S10 mobile phone, although it has been clearly stated that the fingerprint recognition module is used internally, and the outside world basically knows that Zhiyun Technology is working on fingerprint recognition, it is still unclear whether and when Zhiyun Technology will adopt the fingerprint recognition module.

Even the outside world doesn’t know that the fingerprint recognition module developed by Zhiyun Technology is a very special press-type fingerprint module... Don’t think that Zhiyun Technology will continue to develop friction-type fingerprint recognition... So many manufacturers cannot understand why Zhiyun Technology is developing this fingerprint recognition.

What's the use of friction fingerprint? It's completely useless.

But in fact, Wanjin Technology has already started small-scale trial production of the fingerprint recognition module used in the S10 mobile phone, and provided it to Zhiyun Technology's S10 R&D team for testing and adjustment.

The mobile phone market in the first half of 10 seemed calm overall. Only Samsung's launch of the Galaxy S phone created some waves, but it soon disappeared on the beach.

Nowadays, consumers and other mobile phone manufacturers are waiting for the new generation of flagship phones from Fruit and Zhiyun.

They want to know what kind of mobile phones these two technology giants will come up with and what kind of technological innovations will be introduced.

Then, they can determine the research and development (imitation) direction!

To be honest, if Fruit and Zhiyun don’t adopt new technologies and innovations, I’d be unsure if you asked them to install new things on their own…

I would first doubt myself: this seems like a good thing, why don’t these two companies do it? Is there a major technical flaw that we haven’t discovered yet?
(End of this chapter)