Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 212 My Big Brother Zhiyun is the Best in the World
5.4K big chapter, 1.2 words updated today, to be continued tomorrow!
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From the end of June to mid-July, during the more than 11 days after Zhiyun Technology held a flagship phone launch conference, the biggest news in the global technology circle and even the entire consumer electronics industry circle was undoubtedly the launch of the S mobile phone and the artificial intelligence Xiaoyun equipped on it.

Not only has it been hotly discussed in China, it has even become a national topic and it is also very popular overseas.

All of this was ultimately reflected in the sales of the S11 series.

In Weiku Electronics, Xu Shenxue and Bai Qiwen were sitting and drinking tea... He has many company executives under him, but if you ask who Xu Shenxue admires more in private, it is actually Bai Qiwen.

It's not just because of Bai Qiwen's business ability. To be honest, Bai Qiwen's business ability can only be said to be at an ordinary first-class level, not too amazing.

When it comes to brand building and marketing capabilities, Ji Chenghe can beat him.

When it comes to supply chain construction, maintaining a huge supply chain operation, whipping up various supply chain manufacturers, forcing each supplier to work hard on research and development to keep up with Zhiyun's pace of progress, and at the same time forcing suppliers to provide new products while significantly reducing supply costs, Gu Zhiming is a master.

A man that countless suppliers want to meet but are afraid to meet!

Being able to meet him often means that you have the opportunity to get a huge order, a huge order that would make the leading spare parts manufacturers swallow their saliva!

But meeting him also means that you have to bear the great pressure he brings.

He will follow you, whipping you continuously with a whip to force you to move forward.

Speaking of technological research and development...well, Bai Qiwen doesn't understand technology.

In terms of strategic planning, Bai Qiwen is actually average.

But...the above are all issues of ability, and although ability issues are important, they are not that important to Xu Shenxue.

The reason why Bai Qiwen is special is that he was not only a core executive in WeCool Electronics during Xu's father's era, but also after Xu's father passed away and his predecessor took over the family business, Bai Qiwen still tried his best to maintain the operation of WeCool Electronics despite the lack of ability of his predecessor.

After the establishment of Zhiyun Technology, many people knew that Zhiyun Technology had a better future, but Bai Qiwen was willing to manage Weiku Electronics, which took the low-end route.

This person's personality is very much to Xu Shenxue's liking.

And he also likes tea.

Xu Shenxue often sought out Bai Qiwen for tea, and the two would chat about work and even life.

Today, the two of them sat down to drink tea, and Bai Qiwen complained about the situation at home, saying that his wife had become a little arrogant in the past two years. Today, he even said that he wanted to send his children to learn horse riding and hire an etiquette teacher to teach them etiquette...

"I've only made a little more money in the past two years. Before that, I was struggling to pay off my mortgage and save money. But she's acting like we're already rich. She's even learning horse riding and aristocratic etiquette. My ancestors were all peasants. There's nothing I can learn!"

Bai Qiwen said: "Besides, what's the point of playing with these things? It's better to buy a few more houses and store them. Spend hundreds of thousands to learn horse riding and buy a horse to keep in a stable. Isn't this a spendthrift woman?"

Xu Shenxue didn't know how to respond... because Lin Yaxian also liked riding horses, and she would invite a few girlfriends to go riding from time to time, and she actually had a few horses at the stable!
The only difference is that the horse farm was run by her second aunt... and the horses were given by her second uncle.

Xu Shenxue could only change the subject: "It's a good idea to stock up on houses. In today's situation, housing prices will continue to rise. My mother has sold a lot of houses before, and the prices have increased a lot now. It would be a good idea for you to stock up on some houses in the future!"

“I can’t say how much more it will be, but it won’t be a problem if it doubles or triples in ten years.”

Bai Qiwen asked: "More reliable than our company's stocks?"

Xu Shenxue did not answer immediately, but said: "Stocks are too risky, even for our own company's stocks."

Even though he has a good relationship with Bai Qiwen in private, Xu Shenxue will not say much about the strategic issues of his own company, let alone reveal whether sanctions will be imposed or not.

At present, in the entire group, only Ji Chenghe knows more, and it is more because Ji Chenghe himself has strong analytical ability and a strong sense of the overall situation. Just by looking at clues and some news reports, he can judge that the future situation is not optimistic.

Later, he personally led a series of plans aimed at delaying the US's comprehensive sanctions against Zhiyun as much as possible.

Ji Chenghe is not just what people see on the surface, just a person who does marketing. He is a very pure salesman who will do anything to sell things.

In this case, Ji Chenghe became the only person in the group who knew the huge risks hidden in Zhiyun Technology.

Because of the huge risk of future sanctions, Xu Shenxue himself doesn’t know what will happen to Zhiyun Technology’s stock price in the future. To be honest, no matter what the future holds, a plunge in stock prices is inevitable when sanctions come.

Therefore, Xu Shenxue would cash out whenever there was an opportunity to cash out. Anyway, he only needed to manage a portion of the shares and maintain the management rights. After the sanctions came and the stock price plummeted, he would come forward to buy back the shares. Not only would he lose a lot of shares, but he would also be able to make a lot of money from American money.

As for the possibility that there will be no sanctions in the future, Zhiyun Technology's stock price will continue to rise, and Xu Shenxue would be even more willing to do so... But Americans cannot be so stupid. If there are no sanctions, its high-end industries will be gradually eroded, with serious consequences.

From consumer electronic terminals to semiconductor design and manufacturing, and then to the future smart industry with artificial intelligence as the core, etc. These are all things that Zhiyun Technology intends to develop. If the Americans do not impose sanctions after seeing this, Xu Shenxue will doubt the Americans' IQ: Are you stupid? Why don't you impose sanctions on me?

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Bai Qiwen and Xu Shenxue didn't know what to say, they could only say that the stock market was risky.

As for real estate investment, it is relatively safe.

Even if housing prices fall in the future, they will only rise to the top and then fall. Even after the fall, housing prices will still be much higher than they are now.

It is still a relatively good opportunity to buy a property now. Of course, don't expect to make a lot of money or to achieve a ten or even dozens of times increase in your assets.

The two chatted for a while and then turned the topic back to work. Bai Qiwen said, "Zhiyun's situation is really enviable. They had 8 million phones in stock and they sold them all out in just a few days!"

"And I heard from President Ji before that the reason why it can be delayed for a few more days is that Zhiyun's stocking around the world is not evenly distributed, and market judgments are not necessarily all accurate. As a result, some places sold out their stocks on the same day, while other places took three or four days to sell out their stocks."

“Otherwise it could sell faster!”

"These are eight million mobile phones, and they were all sold out within a few days of their launch. We at Weiku Electronics can't even imagine this, it's just too popular!"

Xu Shenxue said: "This result has indeed exceeded expectations. It is the combination of technology and marketing, coupled with the current relatively friendly international environment and the continued growth of overseas markets, that has led to this result!"

Since July, Zhiyun S11 mobile phones have been out of stock worldwide. Even though Zhiyun Technology's three OEM factories are working non-stop to produce them, it is still a drop in the bucket compared to the huge market demand.

This situation makes a large number of mobile phone manufacturers extremely jealous, but there is nothing they can do, and they can't even imitate Zhiyun Technology's approach.

The S11 mobile phone is a mobile phone that has achieved perfection in all aspects. This is unimaginable and impossible for other mobile phone manufacturers.

First of all, the technology is not up to the task. Even if the technology is up and the spare parts are available, the high hardware cost will make them lose all their money...

Even if they stack the same hardware, the phones they make cannot be sold at such a high price as Zhiyun phones.

Not to mention maintaining such a high percentage of gross profit.

Although each of Zhiyun Technology’s various smart terminal products is quite expensive, the cost control is extremely good because Zhiyun Technology’s procurement is cheaper and the cost of self-developed spare parts is also lower.

The overseas dual-network version of the S11 mobile phone uses MSM9200, which is a customized upgraded version of the baseband-free version APQ8 in Qualcomm's 60X8060 series. When Zhiyun Technology purchased this chip, it was cheaper than other mobile phone manufacturers who directly used the original APQ8060, and it was much cheaper.

The purchase price of the same domestic three-network version of the OMAP4600 chip is much cheaper than the original OMAP4430. Because Zhiyun's purchase volume is large enough, its bargaining power is very strong!
In addition, the internal procurement cost of Zhiyun's self-developed products such as memory and flash memory is much lower than the regular market purchase price.

Finally, the production costs, equipment depreciation and other costs seem to be huge numbers, but because the sales volume of Zhiyun mobile phones is large enough, there is not much when it is spread over each mobile phone.

Ultimately, this leads to the fact that in the field of high-end phones, the cost of Zhiyun phones is much lower than that of other mobile phone manufacturers. The only one that can be compared with Zhiyun in terms of cost control is the fruit company next door... They also have huge volumes and strong bargaining power.

The most important thing is that even if other mobile phone manufacturers pay a high cost to produce such high-end mobile phones, they can't sell them at the price of high-end mobile phones...

On one hand, the cost is higher, and on the other hand, the selling price is lower. The combination of the two has led to an embarrassing situation for other mobile phone manufacturers in the field of high-end mobile phones.

The only way to break through is to do everything by yourself, control costs well, and have the four-star Galaxy series with Korea as your basic base to guarantee sales.

But it’s impossible to say that other mobile phone manufacturers are not jealous... If they can’t make high-end mobile phones, they can still make a breakthrough in the three to four thousand yuan range.

Since last year, they have been doing very well in this field, grabbing a lot of market share, and this year they plan to do it again.

In response to this, Zhiyun came up with Plan A, intending to make a mid-to-high-end mobile phone to compete...It is said that Apple is also planning a similar plan to seize the market around 4,000 yuan.

As for the low-end and mid-end market...it has not been affected too much. The low-end and mid-end market are very different from the high-end market, and there is almost no connection between their consumer groups!
How should I put it? Generally speaking, there are very few people with a monthly income of two to three thousand who would spend six to seven thousand to buy the new flagship of Zhiyun S series. It’s not that they don’t want to, but they really can’t afford it or are reluctant to do so.

However, the middle and low-income groups are the mainstream groups in society, so the scale of the low- and middle-end mobile phone market is extremely large and has always accounted for the majority of smartphone sales.

Although Zhiyun phones are so popular and make so much money, their total sales only account for a dozen percentage points of the smartphone market, and this is only including mid-range phones like the C series.

In the global market, the company that sells the most smartphones is actually Sixin... They started to explode last year and have been extremely active since the first half of this year. Analysts estimate that their smartphone sales in 11 are expected to exceed million units. The number alone is terrifying, but if you look at the net profit of Sixin's smartphone business estimated by analysts, it is not even a fraction of Zhiyun's.

In the domestic market, Zhiyun has the largest sales volume of smartphones, but its C series mid-range phones still have the largest shipment volume in the domestic market.

The second is WeCool Electronics...and if nothing unexpected happens, WeCool Electronics' smartphone sales this year will surpass Zhiyun and take the top spot in domestic smartphone sales.

However, the revenue is very low, and the profit is even lower, not even a fraction of the profit from Zhiyun’s domestic mobile phone business.

The mid- and low-end markets are the successor markets, especially the low-end mobile phone market which started to explode after 10 years and has penetrated into every corner since this year. Nowadays, almost all mobile phones priced at more than yuan on the market are smartphones.

The market for feature phones is now only priced at one hundred yuan.

The mid-to-low-end smartphone market priced at over one thousand to two thousand yuan is also the core market where major mobile phone manufacturers compete with each other, except Zhiyun and Fruit.

China Lianku, a domestic company, has gained a foothold in this key mid- and low-end market by relying on its cost-effectiveness and operator channels, while Weiku Electronics is a little special. Although it also focuses on cost-effectiveness, it generally does not carry out such publicity.

Weiku Electronics’ mobile phones sell well because they rely on Zhiyun’s strong support... This is an advantage that other mobile phone manufacturers dream of.

Weiku Electronics makes mobile phones, and without doing anything, it can obtain a lot of paid technology licenses from Zhiyun Technology... Not to mention that patent licensing requires money, other mobile phone manufacturers cannot get the license even if they pay.

Then you can get Yun OS, Zhiyun's core system. The LAN OS system customized according to the Zhiyun system and the accompanying Zhiyun APP ecosystem are the core competitiveness of Weiku Electronics' mobile phones, without a doubt.

Then in the publicity, two out of three sentences mentioned Zhiyun... On the left, they kept saying my elder brother Zhiyun, and on the right, they kept saying my brother Zhiyun. They had no shame at all.

They even said that their own brand is a sub-brand of Zhiyun. They have no shame at all.

Strictly speaking, Zhiyun actually only holds 13% of the shares of Weiku Electronics, which cannot be considered a controlling stake.

But Weiku Electronics insisted on saying so, and Zhiyun did not refute it, so it became like this.

Of course, many people, even ordinary consumers, know that these two companies have the same boss: Xu Shenxue!

Many people buy Wecool Electronics mobile phones just because of the reputation of the company under Xu Shenxue. They think that Xu Shenxue's high-end mobile phones are good, so their low-end mobile phones must not be much worse.

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As a sister company, Weiku Electronics can naturally get some information earlier than other mobile phone manufacturers, such as Zhiyun Technology's large-screen strategy.

Therefore, Weiku Electronics started preparing for the large-screen mobile phone plan a few months ago, and abandoned the original 4.5-inch screen plan and adopted a 4.7-inch screen plan.

Just wait for Zhiyun S11 Pro to ignite the market, and then quickly follow suit to grab the mid-range market.

On July 3, Bai Qiwen hosted the autumn press conference of the Little Blue brand under Weiku Electronics, at which he launched the Little Blue MAX.

For Wecoo Electronics, this mobile phone is the best of the best: it uses the self-developed S103 chip, and the single-core main frequency reaches 1.5GHZ. The performance of this SOC is not much worse than the 10X8 chip equipped on the S55 mobile phone.

Even today, it is considered a first-class chip.

The screen continues to use a domestically produced screen, and the resolution is actually just barely acceptable, but the color performance and energy consumption performance are not very good.

Then again, if the performance in all aspects is good, the cost must not be very low, and Weiku Electronics cannot afford it.

The running memory has reached the 1GB memory level that is only available in high-end machines. Well, don’t ask about the process and memory frequency, I just want to ask you if it is 1GB memory?
Zhiyun Semiconductor’s previous generation 1GB memory using 1nm process is still GB of memory!
It has built-in 4GB flash memory and supports up to 64GB flash memory expansion. Well, Weiku Electronics also sells flash memory cards.

It is equipped with a 2,000 mAh battery and uses a removable battery solution, and the battery is also sold separately.

Then, with the addition of all domestically made parts and components, Weiku Electronics finally made this large-screen mobile phone with a scary appearance.

And the price is also quite good, only 2899 yuan!
For 2899 yuan, you can buy a 1.5-inch ultra-large screen mobile phone with a main frequency of 1GHZ, a top-level Zhiyun chip for first-tier flagship phones, and GB of memory that only first-tier flagships have. Is it worth it?
Moreover, the appearance design is highly similar to the S11 Pro. Except that it is a little thicker and the body is made of plastic, it really looks somewhat similar.

Then it is also equipped with LAN OS4.0...Except for the lack of built-in AI function, other aspects are highly similar to Yun OSd4.0.

After seeing this phone, many consumers compared it with the S11 Pro. After drooling over the S11 Pro for a long time, they silently placed an order for the Bluemax3!

Then I secretly swore to myself that I must work hard to make money and buy Zhiyun the next time I change my mobile phone.

As for this little blue, haha, it’s not that it’s bad, but:

If you have money, who the hell doesn’t want to hug a young and beautiful woman while holding a Zhiyun S11 Pro in your hand!
Isn't it because our strength doesn't allow it at the moment?
Wait until I become rich... hehe!
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The Xiaolan MAX series insists on being a substitute for the Pro version during Zhiyun's top period. The first two generations have achieved considerable success, and this generation MAX3 is even more successful!
Less than half a month after the launch, 2899 units were sold... Don't think it's a small amount. For Weiku Electronics, which focuses on the mid-to-low-end market, a mobile phone priced at yuan was able to sell units in half a month after its launch. That is already a huge success.

After Weiku Electronics released the Little Blue MAX3, there was a stir in the mid-to-low-end market, but none of them had as big an impact as the Zhiyun autumn launch in mid-August.

Many people who cannot afford Zhiyun’s new flagship are waiting for the new C series at Zhiyun’s autumn press conference and the A series that has been rumored for a long time.

In particular, many people are looking forward to the A series, because there has been news that this A series will not be that expensive, but it will still be equipped with fingerprint recognition, dual-core chips and large-size screens.

It is a rare "conscientious work" of Zhiyun Technology!
According to a secret rumor, Boss Xu felt that the Chinese people were too poor and could not even afford a mobile phone that cost six or seven thousand yuan, so he was kind enough to make cheaper high-end mobile phones to give back to consumers.

As for other brands’ flagship phones, they have eaten into the market of around 4,000 yuan and are constantly trying to pull in Zhiyun by relying on this market.

This is slander. We at Zhiyun never worry about competition from our competitors!
(End of this chapter)