Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 188 The Pride of the People: Zhiyun
At the end of February, Zhiyun's tablet computer 'YunPad' was launched globally and has achieved great success in China as well as in major markets such as Europe and Japan.

Even in the US market, while the old models of Apple's IPAD had no potential and the new models had not yet been launched, it once stole the limelight from the Apple IPAD, surpassing the IPAD in sales and becoming the best-selling IPAD in the North American market.

However, this did not last. Soon in early March, Apple officially released the IPAD2, which performed extremely well in the North American market, directly impacting Zhiyun Technology's YunPad and even quickly surpassing it in sales.

Fruit's products have always been able to outperform Zhiyun Technology's products in the U.S. market. Even the S10 phone, which is equipped with fingerprint recognition, an aluminum alloy body, and is excellent in all aspects, cannot sell better than the Fruit 4 in the U.S. market.

This actually has little to do with whether the product is good or bad, but rather is a matter of regional market characteristics and usage habits.

Fruit has been deeply rooted in North America for many years and has long cultivated a very loyal user group...For these people, no matter what Zhiyun Technology's products are like, they will not consider buying them, they will only buy Fruit's products.

The purchasing power of consumers in North America is very high, which leads to very high sales of Apple's mobile phones, laptops and tablets... A considerable portion of Apple's sales are supported by its native North American market.

Therefore, Apple, which has an absolute advantage in North America, can achieve higher sales than the Zhiyun S series in the high-end mobile phone field with a price of more than 4,000 yuan just by relying on the North American market... This is also very helpless.

There is no way around it. Affected by tariffs, Zhiyun phones are more expensive than Apple phones in the North American market.

But in the Chinese market, everything is reversed. As the base camp of Zhiyun Technology, the Chinese market almost monopolizes the high-end market.

In the domestic smartphone market with a price tag above 4,000 yuan, Zhiyun almost monopolizes 85% of the market, leaving less than 10% of the market share to Apple... well, there is no third company!

However, the overall capacity of the current domestic high-end market with prices above 4,000 yuan is still relatively limited, and cannot accommodate the huge Zhiyun S series mobile phones, making Zhiyun mobile phones more dependent on overseas markets.

But even so, the domestic market contributed about 50 percent of Zhiyun's S series global sales.

Although the overall economic level of the country lags behind that of developed countries in Europe and the United States, the population base is large. Although the proportion of people with middle and high economic levels is small, the total number is still huge.

In addition, Zhiyun Mobile has relied on various innovations to bring more attractive features to its high-end S series mobile phones, which even makes people show off, so that quite a number of middle-income groups will choose to grit their teeth and buy a Zhiyun mobile phone!
Aluminum alloy body, Baiyun LOGO and the oblate fingerprint recognition module on the front...all these combined together, in 10 and 11, that was "face".

A young person who lives in an ordinary circle and holds such an S10 in his hand will arouse the envy of his middle-income peers!

In addition, Zhiyun mobile phones are also very popular in the political and business fields because of their high-end domestic attributes... When many institutions and companies purchase mobile phones, they often directly default to purchasing Zhiyun S series mobile phones for middle and senior management to use.

Even in some public occasions and even in news reports, whenever there is a picture of bosses holding a mobile phone... then this phone must be a Zhiyun phone, and there is absolutely no possibility of a second phone.

Because Zhiyun phones are not only high-end, their prices match their status... They are also the most dazzling pearl in China's consumer electronics industry in recent decades!

This is a company that can compete with high-tech giants like Apple on a global scale, and even trample on high-tech companies like Sixing Electronics, which Chinese people used to look up to!

To put it bluntly, the current Zhiyun mobile phone is the pride of the Chinese people...at least the pride of some Chinese people!
Especially some Chinese people who work or study overseas, they might be asked about Kung Fu, pandas and the like in the past... But now, when many foreigners see Chinese people, they will subconsciously say: Oh, China... I know, Zhiyun phone!
In 11, the Chinese people's self-confidence had not yet risen, and public intellectuals were still spread across every corner of the Internet. Even the most confident people would find it difficult to predict that China would be able to take the second place and aim to become the first in a dozen years.

Today's Chinese people still lack self-confidence and still care a lot about the recognition of foreigners!
When foreigners agree with and even praise Zhiyun phones, they will also feel the same and develop a sense of honor. The year before last and last year, when they saw foreigners lining up to buy Zhiyun phones, they would be curious... and they would have a doubt: Is Zhiyun phone really so amazing that even the high-ranking foreigners are rushing to buy it?

Then they would think that since the foreigners are rushing to buy it, it must be a good thing, so they also rush to buy it... It's like converting exports into domestic sales.

Now, when Chinese people living abroad are asked by foreigners, they will straighten their backs and answer with confidence: "Yes, Zhiyun mobile phone is our Chinese, the best mobile phone in the world! Zhiyun Technology is also the greatest high-tech company in the world!

In fact... these so-called sense of identity and pride are not good things... because only backward, weak and lacking self-confidence groups will be proud of an excellent company in their country.

Americans are not proud of fruits, because there are too many similar high-tech companies in the United States, and fruit is just one of them!

People are used to being the boss and think it's natural!
When Chinese people are no longer proud of Zhiyun, it means that China has become the world's hegemon... There is still a long way to go!
No one has analyzed or discussed the above "proud" mentality in depth, so ordinary people don't have a strong sense of it, or they have this mentality but they don't know it yet...

But this situation really exists.

This has greatly stimulated the growth of the domestic high-end market... Many people did not originally plan to buy high-end mobile phones, but when they saw the Zhiyun S series mobile phones, they would also think about gritting their teeth and buying a high-end Zhiyun S mobile phone.

In addition, various social influences are everywhere!

The most obvious situation is that when many companies and institutions purchase high-end business mobile phones, they almost default to purchasing Zhiyun phones without any second consideration.

When many websites, businesses and even companies organize raffles, they use Zhiyun S series phones as prizes.

And these tendencies and driving forces from the upper level are extremely huge... Let me say it again: the big bosses, managers, and supervisors in the company all have Zhiyun S10, and no one will say anything to ordinary employees using a cheap mobile phone of one or two thousand yuan.

But if you take out a Fruit 4 with the same high price, it will instantly attract a lot of people's attention... Some people with low emotional intelligence may not be able to help but ask: Why did you buy this phone?

Then they go on to talk about a bunch of disadvantages of Fruit, such as no fingerprint, small screen, bad ecosystem, poor fluency, bad feel, inconvenient single button, etc... and then they brag about the various advantages and benefits of Zhiyun.

In this environment, even if someone paid a high price for the Fruit 4, they might be embarrassed to take it out.

In order to fit in, when ordinary employees in the company want to buy high-end mobile phones, they often default to the Zhiyun S series...without any other considerations. It's not that they don't want to, but the surrounding environment, superiors, and colleagues all tell them that they can only use the Zhiyun S series!

They have no choice but to choose the Zhiyun S series!

The only thing they can choose is how many GB of storage to buy and what color to buy...

Of course, there are still a small number of people who choose to buy fruits, and even some people buy the four-star Galaxy series... Everyone has their own choices and preferences, which is very normal.

The point is, the Zhiyun S series almost monopolizes 85% of the domestic high-end market above 4,000 yuan!
And after a significant expansion, it accounts for 85% of the domestic high-end mobile phone market.

These factors ultimately supported the Zhiyun S series sold in the domestic market, accounting for about half of the global sales!
-

Fruit is strong in North America, Zhiyun is strong in China!
However, in the third-party market, the two sides are almost the same. In the two major third-party markets of Europe and Japan, the two sides are basically the same. In some places, Fruit has a higher market share, and in some places, Zhiyun has a higher market share.

In Japan, it's half and half.

At the same time, although Zhiyun and Fruit compete with each other in these areas, their most important task is still not to fight each other, but to continue to join forces to strangle traditional mobile phone manufacturers and grab more mid-to-high-end market share.

And this kind of snatching does not even mean snatching market share from high-end mobile phone manufacturers of those traditional mobile phone manufacturers, but rather making potential customers who originally planned to buy two or three thousand yuan mobile phones from these traditional mobile phone manufacturers pay more to buy four or five thousand yuan mobile phones from Zhiyun or Fruit.

Don’t think that this kind of cross-mid-to-high-end market competition will never happen... In fact, it has always been going on and is getting more and more intense.

In the first quarter of 2011, Zhiyun Technology conducted a survey in the North American market and found that compared with last year, the smartphone penetration rate has reached %.

At the same time, the proportion of potential users who prefer to buy high-end mobile phones represented by Zhiyun or Fruit has risen sharply from 9% to 17%.

This means that last year, only nine out of a hundred potential mobile phone users were willing to buy high-end mobile phones, but now seventeen are willing to buy high-end mobile phones.

These eight extra users were all users of other mobile phone manufacturers last year!

Now, Zhiyun or Guoguo has snatched them away.

This is because high-end mobile phones bring better user experience, richer ecological content and even practicality, making people willing to pay more money for it.

This is the basic theoretical support for Zhiyun and Fruit to join forces and continue to seize the mid-to-high-end market share of major traditional mobile phone manufacturers.

Zhiyun Technology has this kind of survey report, and Fruit Technology probably has one as well... So even in 11, in addition to competing with each other, Fruit Technology and Zhiyun were often actually fighting tacitly.

The ultimate goal is not to seize the other party’s market share...but to seize the mid-to-high-end market share of traditional mobile phone manufacturers.

There is a big price gap between Zhiyun and Fruit's high-end models and other manufacturers' mid-range and high-volume flagship models. A new mobile phone starts at RMB 5,000, while a new flagship is around RMB 4,000.

From an apparent perspective, there is no direct conflict between the two.

But in fact, the Zhiyun S series and the Fruit 4 series are grabbing the market share of other mobile phone manufacturers in the range of to yuan!
And the snatching was particularly fierce!
As for the competition between Fruit and Zhiyun, that certainly exists... but it is difficult and the returns are low.

Both companies are giants, and it would be difficult for them to defeat each other in one fell swoop... It would be better to grab the mid-to-high-end market share of other mobile phone manufacturers first.

Today is still an incremental market. On the surface, Fruit and Zhiyun are mortal enemies, but it has not reached the point of a life-and-death fight... On the contrary, other traditional mobile phone manufacturers hate Zhiyun and Fruit even more!

The mobile phone market share of traditional international mobile phone manufacturers has dropped by more than ten or even dozens of percentage points... They are all suffering from losses.

Even many traditional domestic mobile phone manufacturers, some of which were very famous in the era of feature phones, have seen their sales collapse in the past two years, their revenues drastically dropped, and their profits...what kind of profits are there? They are suffering huge losses every year.

However, there are also several domestic mobile phone manufacturers that have risen rapidly by relying on mid- and low-end contract phones. Huawei, Zhongxing, CoolPay and Lianxiang are the most typical ones.

In 09, these companies successively launched Android smartphone strategies, abandoned their self-developed systems and many messy smartphone systems such as WM, and began to follow Zhiyun Technology's example and fully move to the Android camp.

At the beginning, these manufacturers wanted to make some mid-to-high-end mobile phones, but they basically failed as soon as they tried... Because since 09, Zhiyun phones have dominated the Android lineup, competing with Apple phones while working together to clean up the high-end market of major mobile phone manufacturers.

Under the joint suppression of the rising Zhiyun Technology and Apple, not to mention them, even a large number of international traditional mobile phone manufacturers such as Samsung, LG, Motorola, Nokia, HTZ, etc., have been beaten by Zhiyun and Apple in the mid-to-high-end smartphone market... very miserable.

The situation is even worse for domestic mobile phone manufacturers who try to produce high-end mobile phones... they don't even deserve to be beaten.

So after 10 years, these domestic mobile phone manufacturers woke up one by one, and then rushed to make mid- and low-end mobile phones to compete with Weiku Electronics and a number of international mobile phone manufacturers' mid- and low-end mobile phones!

It’s no wonder that, relying on the gradually mature domestic supply chain, the desperate efforts to reduce prices, and the current special historical opportunities, several domestic mobile phone manufacturers have achieved a certain degree of success in the market.

(End of this chapter)