Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 175 Drones and Market Impact

Although Xiaojiang Technology’s drones have not yet been fully developed, it has already achieved quite good technical results.

After Xu Shenxue took control of the company, he did not just ignore it and wait for it to explode. Instead, he invested a large amount of money through strategic investment to help with rapid research and development.

With sufficient funds, the founding team's technology is very good and the management model is also acceptable, so the overall R&D progress is also quite good.

Xu Shenxue saw their original prototype in Xiaojiang’s laboratory. It was just a very simple drone, but it was able to fly.

And it flew pretty well, at least there were no major problems during the demonstration.

However, Xiaojiang Technology's R&D engineers said that this is only possible under very ideal conditions to fly so well.

If the external environment deteriorates slightly, that is, if it is windy, there will be some problems with the flight control of the drone.

And this definitely won’t work!
Because drones can still operate in a windless environment indoors, but it is difficult outdoors.

Even in seemingly windless weather, when a drone rises to tens or even hundreds of meters in the air, there is still a great possibility that it will be encountered by unstable air currents.

This places very high demands on the drone's autonomous flight control.

The flight control needs to constantly adjust the flight according to the attitude of the drone to maintain the stability of the entire drone and avoid loss of control.

This actually places very high demands on flight control.

Xiaojiang is currently trying to solve this key problem.

As for other aspects, there are no major problems. For example, hardware can actually be purchased directly from mature supply chains.

Such as motors, propellers, batteries and so on.

The only thing you need to figure out is the algorithm, and it also needs to be paired with a dedicated flight control chip.

Strictly speaking, a drone is also a kind of mobile smart terminal. The core of it is not the motor or battery, but the flight control system. These flight controls also require specially designed chips and sensors to provide underlying support.

Without the chip, no matter how good the flight control is, it’s useless!

Of course, the design and processing of these chips are not that difficult... After all, drones don't need to have super high performance like mobile phones and computers.

In fact, the technical requirements for its flight control chip are not high, and even chips made with a 65-nanometer process can be barely used.

Of course, if possible, the flight control chip still needs to be manufactured using high-process technology to maximize computing power.

Because for a drone, flight control is of vital importance, and for flight control, its brain, that is, the flight control chip, is also the most important. Using a more powerful chip will naturally bring better flight performance.

But if the manufacturing process is slightly different, it is not unusable, the only difference is that the performance will be slightly worse.

After seeing the prototype of the Xiaojiang Technology team and encouraging the R&D team of Xiaojiang Technology, Xu Shenxue did not stay in Xiaojiang Technology for long, but returned to Zhiyun Building.

Participated in a product marketing plan for the autumn and winter period, which is also the next stage.

"After our S10 series was officially launched in June, during the first few months of the boom, the monthly shipments remained around 10 million units. However, this month, as the popularity of the launch faded, our S series sales began to decline slightly!"

"The downward trend in sales in September is already quite obvious, with shipments of only 1.9 million units. Sales in October are expected to weaken further!"

"This situation is similar to the sales curve of our S9 after it was launched last year."

"In response to this situation, we are preparing for the next phase of promotional activities in major markets, especially in China and Europe, to boost sales through small price cuts!"

"In China, we plan to take advantage of the recent rise of the Double Eleven online shopping voucher concept and cooperate with two major e-commerce channels to a certain extent to carry out a price reduction promotion!"

"We estimate the price reduction to be between 200 and 300 yuan, and we will strive to increase sales to 2 million units!"

"As for the C series, the sales volume is still relatively stable, and it can still maintain a total sales volume of about 3 million units. The main sales force is the C3 series that we launched first, and the shipment volume of the C8 3GB version is very large!" "However, the C9 Pro version is relatively high in price and its hardware advantages are not obvious. It is suppressed by the S3 mobile phone, and it is also squeezed by some flagship competing products of other companies. At the same time, it is also affected by the low price of the ordinary version of the C3 series, which has caused a certain impact on the brand value of the C pro version. Therefore, after the stimulation of the popularity of the launch in the first two months, the sales volume has dropped significantly this month!"

"Our C3 Pro series has been hit hard in terms of price and market positioning. Our marketing department recommends that we drastically reduce the price of C3 Pro to maintain sales while further suppressing the survival space of other manufacturers' flagship models priced between and yuan!"

"Next year, we can further separate the Pro version and focus on a new product line of around 4,000 yuan, while the C series will focus on the price of around 3,000 yuan."

"After all, the market and hardware differences between the C3 and C3 Pro are already very large. Consumers generally do not regard the C3 standard version and C3 Pro as the same... After all, they even have different screen sizes. Further segmentation will have both advantages and disadvantages, but we believe that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages!"

"There are many competing products in the 3500 yuan market now, especially the four-star Galaxy S series. While we are focusing on the 4000 yuan and above market and the yuan market, we are focusing on the - yuan market with a high-spec, low-price model. The sales of this series of mobile phones have increased significantly in recent months, creating considerable pressure on our Pro!"

"Other mobile phone manufacturers have also launched their flagship models in this price range. The hardware performance configurations are pretty good. Although the current sales are not very good, if we don't pay attention, they may really rise in the future. Therefore, we need to launch a more competitive Pro model next year to maintain the suppression of them... Not the previous mid-range configuration, but adopt some of the flagship hardware configuration to achieve a certain degree of high-end model!"

"Right now, we need to simply lower prices to suppress competing products from other manufacturers first!"

Xu Shenxue also knew that in the past few months, various mobile phone manufacturers, including Samsung, have been frantically launching new mobile phones in the price range of 1 to yuan... and they are all top-of-the-line flagships. For example, chips generally use GHZ chips, large-size high-resolution screens, and large-capacity running memory.

After the initial chaos and confusion, major mobile phone manufacturers quickly found a way to deal with Apple and Zhiyun... stacking flagship products!

Moreover, their stacking mode is quite different from Zhiyun's.

In addition to the regular top-level accessories, Zhiyun also pays more attention to details, striving to make almost everything the best. Even small components such as microphones and speakers are basically top-notch high-end products.

Other manufacturers do not do this in order to control costs. They only pile up materials in areas that consumers can see and pay the most attention to, such as chips, running memory, and screen size...

Although these core components are expensive, they can use a large number of cheap products in other non-core components, especially those that consumers cannot see or feel deeply, and ultimately control hardware costs.

This way, even after the price is lowered to more than 3,000 yuan, a certain hardware profit can still be maintained.

This kind of playing style makes Zhiyun Technology's C series, or to be more precise, the Pro series, a little uncomfortable!
As for the regular version of the C series, there will not be any impact. The price of this thing was 2899 when it was launched. Now, after being on the market for a while, the price has dropped slightly, and it can basically be bought for .

At this price point, the C3 8GB standard version is actually very competitive. Its decent hardware configuration, coupled with the support of the Zhiyun brand and the smoothness of the YUN OS system, ultimately make the low-end version of the C3 the main shipment product.

Other mobile phone brands can hardly compete with the C3 series at this price point... In the 2800-3000 market, the C3 standard version still has a very strong dominance.

But Pro is different. It is an upgrade from the C3 standard version. Although it uses better chips and a better screen, it is affected by the C3 standard version, and it is also under pressure from the big brother S series.

Therefore, no consumer will regard C3 Pro as the flagship series of Zhiyun mobile phones, but just as a high-end version of Zhiyun's mid-range mobile phones.

There is no doubt that this has affected the sales of C3 Pro.

Ji Chenghe from the marketing department is very sensitive to these things, and he himself also wants to develop this series.

Whether it makes money or not is not very important. The most important thing is to block the price range of 3,000 to 4,000 yuan and not leave too much opportunity for other mobile phone manufacturers... Otherwise, it will be a disaster.

Otherwise, if they continue to do this, it is possible that the next step will threaten the survival space of Zhiyun Mobile S series.

Just imagine, when Zhiyun Mobile excitedly released the S10 phone and priced it at yuan... Motorola, LG, Sixin and other manufacturers next door also used the same SOC, memory, screen and other hardware of the same level, and then made a so-called flagship phone for yuan... This is very embarrassing, isn't it?

In other words, Zhiyun Technology is now strong enough and its production and sales volume is large enough, which is why it can take over the initial production capacity of Qualcomm's new flagship chip.

What about next year? Or the year after?
While listening to the analysis of the marketing department, Xu Shenxue turned his thoughts to the research and development of dual-core SOC at Zhiyun Semiconductor.

The best way to avoid the embarrassing situation described by Ji Chenghe is to develop self-developed SOC and other core components... avoid homogeneity - even if the actual performance is not stronger, as long as it is a self-developed exclusive component, I can brag about it however I like.

For example, there is no difference in CPU main frequency and GPU, and mine is even worse. But I can brag about the coprocessor, fingerprint chip module, built-in full network baseband, etc. I can always find my own unique advantages to promote.

And this will bring huge advantages in publicity!

In the end, the mobile phone equipped with this chip, I say it will be sold for five or six thousand!
It's worth the price!
Guoguo did this before, and now Zhiyun is preparing to do the same, and even wants to do it more thoroughly!
(End of this chapter)