Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 299 S14 pre-order launch and intelligent unmanned freight vehicle

After the S14 was officially released and pre-order channels were opened on the official website and a few important online platform partners, consumers in various first-launch regions placed full-payment pre-orders on the official website or local mainstream shopping platforms.

While other domestic mobile phone manufacturers basically focused on the domestic market when launching their products, Zhiyun's products were directly launched in the global market, with more than 30 countries in the first batch.

There are also many pre-order platforms. In addition to Zhiyun’s official website in various countries, basically all the mainstream local shopping platforms in each country will cooperate for pre-orders.

There are actually a lot of various online pre-order channels... Of course, not all of them are official full-payment pre-orders from Zhiyun, many of them are actually organized by the shopping platforms themselves.

At the same time, it is impossible to disclose all the data on various online platforms, especially the mall channels on Zhiyun’s official website, which account for a considerable proportion. Therefore, it is difficult for the outside world to accurately judge the pre-order results of S14 after its release.

However, although the overall data is unknown, we can still see through some channels the strong performance of the S14 mobile phone after the pre-order was released.

Taking Dimao, the largest online shopping platform in China, as an example, in the mobile phone sales list in August, the S14 standard version took only one day to become the number one on the list, while the S14 Pro climbed directly to the fourth place on the list within one day.

The Zhiyun flagship store in this Dimao is a self-operated sales channel of Zhiyun. Like the official website mall, it adopts a full payment pre-order system. Consumers pay the full amount in real money, but the products will be shipped after they are launched on the global market.

At twelve o'clock that evening, within just ten minutes after the pre-order was opened, the Zhiyun Mobile Phone Flagship Store in Dimao announced that all the S14 full-price pre-order stocks were sold out, with total sales reaching one million units. Then, the store was forced to stop the full-price pre-order entrance... There were too many orders, and the production capacity allocation at the Dimao flagship store was limited. It was impossible for you to be given priority supply even if you received orders for tens of millions of units.

The one million units of full pre-order capacity were sold out...

Zhiyun's S14 initial production capacity was allocated by channel dealers based on their performance in previous years and the various support efforts promised this year. For example, of the initial production capacity of million units, each operator channel will have to take at least to million units of the capacity, and then each country's offline channels will also have to take more than million units of the capacity. In fact, only about % of the capacity is left for the online channels, which is about million units.

And this is referring to the global online market...if the domestic online channels are allocated only four million units.

But there are many online channels in China, not just DiMao.

If we look at the Dimao flagship store, the initial stock was only one million units...

After all, in addition to the Dimao flagship store, domestic online platforms also include Zhiyun’s official flagship store, Jingxi flagship store, as well as Vipshop, Yiguo and other platforms.

It’s impossible for your flagship store to open for sale!
One million pre-orders have been placed in the early stages, and the orders will be ready while stocks last.

But getting one million pre-orders in just over ten minutes is quite astonishing.

This is still a street cat. If it is Zhiyun’s official flagship store, it will be even more exaggerated... Because this is the official flagship store, Zhiyun can control it by itself and can even arrange a queue for delivery for you!

Anyway, you have money and can tolerate the long delivery time, so you can pre-order with full payment. Of course, you can cancel the order and get a refund at any time if you don’t want it.

Then, after seeing that the spot pre-orders on various platforms were cleared out, a large number of people rushed to the Zhiyun official website to place non-spot pre-order orders. As for when the goods will be shipped, it depends on how early you come. If you come early, the goods may be shipped a few days ago. If you come late, it may have to be shipped a month or even two months later.

This is the domestic part, while abroad, it is more diversified, but it is also a similar approach, either to conduct limited pre-orders of spot goods through online channels, well, this model is actually an online rush purchase, but the rush purchase is only three days in advance.

Either you place a pre-order on the official website for non-spot products and queue up for delivery, or you can place the order as you like.

In short, get as many pre-order orders as possible!
Zhiyun's product sales channels are relatively complex, with a variety of methods... After all, this is a giant company facing the global market, with a large number of channel partners, including official website channels, official self-operated network platform channels, operator channels, and strategic channel partners such as Weiku Trading.

Among them, the company Weiku Trading is not well-known in the eyes of ordinary people, but in fact it is a very important channel dealer for both Zhiyun and Weiku.

This is true not only in the country but also overseas.

Because Weiku Trading has sales channels in many overseas regions, especially in Europe, ASEAN and South America, it has a very deep layout, mature and complete sales channels and a large number of local channel partners.

Nowadays, when many domestic mobile phones and other smart terminal products want to go overseas, they tend to seek cooperation with Wecoo Trading and use Wecoo Trading's channels to distribute their products overseas.

It is actually not that easy to market and sell mobile phones overseas, especially for some less mature and newly emerging smart terminal manufacturers in China.

You can’t just make something with good performance and low price and then sell it. You need to have sales channels, have a good understanding of local conditions, make legal preparations, and avoid various cultural customs. Otherwise, you won’t even know how to apply for a license to sell on the market…

This is not a problem for large companies like Huawei, Lianxiang, and Zhongxing that already have a large amount of overseas business and are familiar with overseas markets. However, it is very troublesome for many newly emerging mobile phone companies.

Many times I would run over excitedly, but end up not being able to find where the door is.

At this time, if you seek cooperation with Weku Trading, it will be much simpler. Weku Trading can provide all-round assistance for its partners' overseas expansion, including legal advice, marketing advice, public relations advice, etc.

Last year, excluding its own Zhiyun and V-Cool phones, the export of mobile phones from other brands, including TCL, OP, Dami, Coolpad and a large number of second- and third-tier brands, exceeded 80 million units through V-Cool Industrial.

This is also quite exaggerated!

Not all brands are Zhiyun. It already has a strong appeal overseas. Even if you stay at home, there are a large number of channel dealers and operators who come to you to seek cooperation.

For these second- and third-tier brands or newly emerging mobile phone brands, they have basically no popularity overseas and it is difficult for them to increase sales immediately. Weiku Industry plays a very important role in the overseas export process of these companies.

And Weiku Industry... is just an important channel partner of Zhiyun. Zhiyun has many channel partners all over the world, and there are more than a hundred operator channels alone...

The 4G era is being promoted and popularized around the world, and operators are providing huge subsidies and support. In order to grab 4G users, unless there are any special circumstances, operators will generally choose to cooperate with Zhiyun.

Including this year's S14 mobile phone, its initial launch in quite a few countries was through operator channels. Operator contract phones still account for a large proportion of Zhiyun's mobile phone sales.

The main reason is that mobile phone sales in many countries are basically controlled by operators, and the proportion of regular mobile phone sales is relatively small.

The S14 mobile phone has launched a large-scale official website full payment pre-order campaign in the first launch countries around the world, and some channel dealers and agents also organized their own pre-order and rush purchase activities.

The entire pre-order scale is extremely large, and because there are too many channels, the pre-order method is not a unified full payment pre-order. Some channel dealers are doing full payment pre-orders, some are small deposits, and some simply do not sell queue orders and only sell inventory, turning pre-orders into rush purchases.

Many channel dealers will not inform Zhiyun of the relevant information in a timely manner, so even Zhiyun itself does not know how many pre-order sales there are in these three days.

This is also the reason why Zhiyun Group did not release omni-channel pre-order data.

Because the data is distorted, rashly releasing such data can easily lead to investors' misjudgment and cause trouble... Zhiyun is a listed company and it needs to bear legal responsibility for the release of all data. It is not possible to just blow up or conceal data.

Therefore, Zhiyun simply did not announce the full channel, but only announced the full payment pre-order data of Zhiyun’s official website and self-operated platform.

In three days, in more than 30 countries where the product was first launched worldwide, the total number of orders for spot products and queued products in Zhiyun's official mall, as well as full-payment spot pre-order orders in flagship stores of some self-operated online shopping platforms, reached 32.6 million units. For the non-spot queued orders on the official website, the latest delivery time was as late as October.

On the morning of the 25th, Monday, Zhiyun announced the pre-order results of its official website channels in dozens of languages ​​on its official websites around the world.

As of midnight on the 25th, the number of three-day full-payment spot and non-spot pre-order orders in the first launch countries worldwide reached 32.6 million units.

And global simultaneous shipments will begin today, with consumers receiving their phones as early as this morning.

Once the news was announced, it added fuel to the already very popular S14!

More than 30 million units... and this is just the full payment pre-order before the official release. According to such sales volume and the traditionally high prices of Zhiyun phones, especially the high sales proportion of high-end phones, the average sales price is also relatively high.

Some outside organizations have analyzed that Zhiyun earned at least 14 billion US dollars just through the three days of full-payment pre-orders for the S mobile phone, which directly killed the annual revenue of a large number of Fortune companies.

Looking around the world, no company can make more money than Zhiyun.

Even Zhiyun’s main competitor, Fruit, would have to admit defeat in the face of this achievement!
At the same time as Zhiyun released the pre-order results on its official website, the S14 mobile phone was officially launched for sale in China at nine o'clock in the morning.

Consumers who had been queuing outside various offline flagship stores early on rushed into the mobile phone store as soon as possible to buy Zhiyun S14 mobile phones... Of course, it is unknown how many of them are scalpers.

Even though Zhiyun has adopted a policy of limiting the purchase of two units per person in offline channels in order to curb scalpers and protect the rights of offline consumers, it has not been able to stop the enthusiasm of scalpers.

Anyway, outside the mobile phone stores, there are a lot of scalpers squatting to buy Zhiyun S14 phones!

The brand new, unopened and activated standard version of the S14 mobile phone was purchased on the spot for an additional RMB , while other versions were even more expensive.

It's just that no one pays attention to them, because those who can buy the S14 mobile phone first often line up a day in advance... They are either true fans, scalpers themselves, or buyers hired by scalpers.

Otherwise, who would stay here all night to queue up...

In fact, in order to curb scalpers, some people within Zhiyun once suggested a model of mandatory on-site unpacking and activation, but it was rejected by the legal department.

Once a consumer spends money to buy a mobile phone, it becomes his personal property. He can open it if he wants to, or not if he doesn’t want to... As for whether to activate it or not, it depends on his mood. If he buys it as a gift to someone else, and you force him to open it and activate it, then that would be crazy!

Furthermore, when you buy a Zhiyun phone on an online platform, you don’t have to unpack and activate it, but if you buy it offline, you are forced to unpack and activate it. This doesn’t make sense!
This is discrimination!

If Zhiyun carries out forced unpacking and activation of offline channels, it will not be a problem in China, but if it does this abroad, it will easily lead to class action lawsuits and then sky-high fines!

But if you make a distinction between overseas and domestic markets, that is not a good idea either, as you may be easily criticized and accused of discriminating against domestic consumers.

So Xu Shenxue simply closed his eyes and didn't care about the scalpers anymore, just let them do whatever they wanted!

Anyway, every year there is a global shortage due to limited early production capacity, and no matter what we do, we can’t produce more S14 phones to meet the early market needs.

Being accused of playing monkeys and using hunger marketing every year, Xu Shenxue said he is used to it... He is thick-skinned and is not afraid of your scolding!
While Zhiyun consumers and scalpers around the world were going crazy for the official launch of S14, Xu Shenxue was not keeping a close eye on the sales of the phone.

Instead, he went to the Shenzhen production base of Weiku Industrial to inspect the production situation.

Because he could guess without even watching him that the inventory in the domestic market would be sold out in one day at most. Even if the channel dealers wanted to limit the supply, extend the sales for a few days and maintain the popularity, it would not work because Zhiyun would not allow it.

This is to prevent channel dealers from hoarding goods and causing artificial market shortages, and also to prevent channel dealers from becoming scalpers themselves.

Zhiyun has corresponding data on how much quota each channel dealer has obtained and how many have been activated. Once the activation rate fails to meet expectations, it will attract review from Zhiyun. Once deliberate hoarding or selling at a higher price is discovered, the dealer will be fined and have their subsequent quotas reduced in minor offenses, or disqualified as a channel dealer in serious cases.

The Zhiyun mobile phone is already in serious shortage, and the channel dealers are hoarding goods and raising prices, which makes consumers even more dissatisfied.

As for those ordinary scalpers on the market, they cannot affect the overall situation, unlike the large channel dealers who have a supply volume of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of units.

As for what you said about really not being able to sell it...what a joke. If you say that, even the dogs next door will know you are lying.

Of course, even so, every year there are still many channel merchants who take risks and choose to be scalpers to earn more profits. Zhiyun has many inspections and crackdown measures for this, and many are caught every year. Domestic inventory can only last for one day at most, and some remote areas may have two or three days, but it is impossible to have more.

The situation in foreign markets is similar. The inventory in most markets will be sold out in two or three days. Even in markets like South Korea where sales are not very good, the inventory will not last long...the inventory will be sold out in about a week.

What Xu Shenxue needs to focus on now is not the sales volume, but the production capacity.

What affects the sales of S14 mobile phones nowadays is not the market heat or people’s purchasing enthusiasm, but the production capacity.

At the Shenzhen base of Weiku Industry, An Dayu, general manager of Weiku Industry, accompanied Xu Shenxue around the factory and introduced the current production capacity to Xu Shenxue: "What we are seeing now is the eighth production line of Zhiyun Mobile Phone Division."

"This production line is the first to complete mass production of the S14 mobile phone, with a monthly production capacity of 14 units, mainly producing the 16GB model of the S!"

"As our entry-level model, this model has the highest sales volume, so we have invested more production capacity!"

"The eighth production line has been in full production mode in three shifts around the clock since mid-July, with people resting while machines continue to operate. Except for necessary equipment maintenance time, the production line has been running for 43 consecutive days, and its production capacity ranks among the best among our many production lines!"

An Dayu pointed to the production line in the factory in front and said, "At the same time, in order to further improve production efficiency, increase product yield and reduce production costs, we have further expanded the application of intelligent equipment on the new generation S14 production line. The overall production efficiency has increased by at least % compared to the previous generation of production lines, and the yield has increased by %!"

“Although the equipment investment cost is relatively high, the improvement in production efficiency and the reduction in overall cost due to the increase in yield are still worth it!”

Xu Shenxue looked at the huge workshop in front of him. This workshop was a workshop that implemented precision processes and had a very high degree of automation. There were only one or two hundred people, and most of them were technicians who operated the equipment. There were very few ordinary low-skilled workers.

An Dayu continued: "In front is our unmanned workshop, which adopts fully automated production. We only need more than ten engineers to monitor and adjust externally to complete production!"

"We also use a lot of artificial intelligence technology in the development of our equipment, so that the equipment can run automatically under the control of the program."

An Dayu and Xu Shenxue continued to move forward, and then saw the unmanned workshop inside through a large glass window.

All kinds of equipment in the unmanned workshop are in good order. There is no one inside. All the equipment runs automatically and the production speed is extremely fast.

Xu Shenxue said: "Intelligent manufacturing is a very important field, and you have done a great job in this regard."

Artificial intelligence plays a huge role in the production field. As long as there is electricity, the machine can continue to run without any malfunction and with extremely high efficiency.

However, it is not easy to engage in intelligent production, which requires a lot of technical support. Traditional intelligent production can only cope with some highly unified production processes and use fixed procedures to execute them.

Programmers often need to set a large number of parameters, let the program compare them one by one, and then make judgments before execution.

However, intelligent production requires more flexibility. After large-scale training by feeding data in the early stage, the model will have the ability of autonomous recognition, and then a large number of unconventional production processes can be carried out.

At this time, An Dayu pointed out the many autonomous unmanned lanes in the workshop: "This is an unmanned freight vehicle developed by us in cooperation with Zhiyun Intelligent Research Institute. It can operate autonomously throughout the whole process. The system can be flexibly adjusted according to the production process. Compared with previous manned freight vehicles, it is more cost-effective, more efficient, and has a lower accident rate!"

Following An Dayu's instructions, Xu Shenxue also saw that there were many unmanned vehicles running in the workshop.

This unmanned vehicle is not big, with a length of only about two meters. It is low in height and has a support frame on the top for placing pallets.

It looks unremarkable, just a long flat rectangle with four wheels, which is very different from the traditional manned vehicles.

At this time, these unmanned trucks are frequently passing through the workshop, moving between various processes. At first glance, it seems quite chaotic, and people are afraid that they will collide with each other, but if you look closely, you can find that they are in order.

Xu Shenxue also saw that several driverless cars were driving along different roads, and their speed did not slow down at all when passing an intersection, and it seemed as if they were about to collide with each other in the next second.

However, in reality, these cars passed each other safely, and the interval between two cars passing through the intersection was very short. As soon as the first car passed through the intersection, the second car also passed through the intersection from another direction, and the two cars were only two meters apart.

There was no braking or slowing down during the entire process, maintaining high-speed and efficient operation.

This made Xu Shenxue very interested.

This is the driverless car he wants to see!
"This driverless car is pretty good. Is it controlled by the AI ​​inside the car?"

An Dayu said: "I don't quite understand the details of the technology, but I heard from the project team that it is controlled by the on-board AI and the workshop control system together."

Then, An Dayu turned to a young man and said, "Mr. Li, come and tell me about your intelligent freight truck system!"

Soon, a young man walked over and said, "Mr. Xu, Mr. An, our Zhiyun freight vehicle system has received technical support from the Zhiyun Intelligent Research Institute. We have referred to some technical solutions of their unmanned vehicle project team, and also integrated some of our own technical solutions!"

"We use a combination of workshop intelligent control systems and vehicle-mounted AI systems. This is probably similar to the smart city transportation system you mentioned earlier."

"The various sensors and AI on board the vehicle are used to perform the most basic and emergency control of the vehicle. At the same time, a large number of sensors are deployed in the workshop. The workshop intelligent control system makes a comprehensive judgment and analysis based on the data from these sensors, the sensor data uploaded by the unmanned vehicle, and the production status of each process. It then issues instructions to the unmanned vehicle and adjusts the operation of the entire unmanned vehicle system."

He also knew that the two group executives in front of him didn't understand any technology, so he tried to describe it in simple and understandable terms.

After listening to this, Xu Shenxue said: "It seems that it is indeed somewhat similar to the smart city transportation system. This is quite good!"

"This set of things should be able to be expanded and applied, right?"

Xu Shenxue thought for a moment and said, "Warehousing centers in logistics companies should be widely used. In addition to warehouses, ports seem to be able to be used as well!"

Li Gong said: "Mr. Xu, your opinion is great. Our intelligent unmanned freight system was actually developed for the company's storage center from the beginning. Its application in this intelligent production workshop is just a small application, which is used in conjunction with highly intelligent production. Before this, our system has been applied in several storage centers of the company. As for the port, this is more related to our industry, and we have not yet set foot in it!"

Xu Shenxue encouraged with a smile: "We can also work on the port. I think this system should be very useful in the port!"

Then Xu Shenxue continued to say to everyone: "I didn't expect that after not coming here for half a year, you guys still gave me a big surprise. That's great. Keep up the hard work!"

Intelligent manufacturing is the future, and Xu Shenxue also attaches great importance to this aspect. Among the many companies under Xu Shenxue, Weiku Industrial is the one responsible for the intelligent manufacturing sector.

Of course, Weiku Industrial cannot do it alone, and it also needs the AI ​​technical support from Zhiyun Group’s Intelligent Research Institute.

Xu Shenxue had visited several times before, but didn't see any obvious results. Some so-called automated production seemed very advanced and were unmanned workshops. However, even Xu Shenxue, a liberal arts student, knew that these things were only in the traditional manufacturing field and had nothing to do with intelligent manufacturing.

If it is just an unmanned production workshop, there is no need for AI, and it can be done even if it only relies on mechanized design.

Decades ago, the production lines of many products were actually able to achieve mechanized and automatic production without the need for human intervention. For example, light bulbs in the 1960s and 1970s were fully automated, and humans only needed to inspect equipment, add materials, and then pack them!
From the glass firing of the light bulb to many other processes, all are completed automatically by the equipment.

However, this kind of mechanized and automated production is not what Xu Shenxue wants.

Those are old technologies from decades ago. What are they used for? Today's automated production is all about electrification, which means using computers for various controls.

What Xu Shenxue wants is further intelligent manufacturing: large-scale and in-depth application of AI technology in industrial production processes to achieve higher production efficiency, safer production processes, lower production costs, and higher production precision.

Not only will these intelligent manufacturing technologies be used in assembly line production, Xu Shenxue also expects them to be applied in some special, dangerous, and highly repetitive production processes.

The intelligent manufacturing that Xu Shenxue wants is not to let equipment replace human workers, even if the actual process will lead to such a result, but this is not the goal Xu Shenxue pursues. It is just a by-product, or even an by-product that Xu Shenxue tries to avoid as much as possible at this stage.

Let AI-controlled mechanical equipment do things that human workers could not do before!

This is the intelligent manufacturing that Xu Shenxue is pursuing!
Only in this way can Xu Shenxue's more ambitious future plans be supported and he can move towards the starry sky...

After all, you can't let humans wear space suits, carry oxygen tanks, and then run to the space port to build spacecraft. It's not like an eighth-level electrician welding a spacecraft in space...

Xu Shenxue felt his scalp tingling just thinking about this kind of scene. This kind of thing has to be done by machines, and humans just need to sit in the control room to control the machines.

Therefore, Xu Shenxue still attaches great importance to intelligent manufacturing. It seems to be relatively new now, with extremely high cost and can only be used in a few specific fields.

However, Xu Shenxue has a hunch that in ten or twenty years, intelligent manufacturing will become a necessary condition for him to climb to higher technological heights.

Of course, the above is talking about the future.

As for now...

In the subsequent assembly workshops, Xu Shenxue saw densely packed production line workers!

On the production line, there were a large number of young people wearing work clothes sitting densely, both men and women. Most of them were very young, around 20 years old. Among them, Xu Shenxue also saw a young man who was probably only 17 or 18 years old.

A large number of workers are busy working on the production line, assembling Zhiyun S14 mobile phones for consumers around the world.

Xu Shenxue made a simple estimate and found that there were hundreds of people in just one workshop.

The current mobile phone manufacturing industry, and even the entire consumer electronics industry, is still a very labor-intensive industry. It not only has high technical requirements and requires a large amount of equipment, but also requires a large number of industrial workers with a certain cultural foundation and relatively high comprehensive quality.

Xu Shenxue visited several other workshops in succession, not only visiting the eighth production line, but also the ninth production line next door that produced S14 Pro.

There are a total of thirteen S14 mobile phone production lines in the entire Weiku Industrial Shenzhen base, with a designed monthly production capacity of five million units.

And this is not all of the Shenzhen base of Wecoo Industry. In this production base, there are production lines for C series mobile phones, production lines for Xiaolan mobile phones under Wecoo Mobile, and production lines for several other smart terminals.

This is a huge production base covering the two major companies, Zhiyun and Weiku, and various smart terminals including mobile phones, laptops, tablets, smart watches, Bluetooth headsets, etc.

The number of workers in the entire base exceeds 300,000!
The entire production base is as large as a city, and it also has hospitals, schools, supermarkets and other supporting facilities.

Weiku Industry has three such comprehensive production bases, namely the Shenzhen Production Base, the Dongguan Production Base, and the Ancheng Production Base!

For Zhiyun Group and Weiku Electronics, Weiku Industrial is just one of their OEM factories. Other companies that provide OEM assembly and production services to Zhiyun Group and Weiku Electronics include BYD, Luxshare and Foxconn.

Together, the four major foundries are expected to produce more than 500 million smartphones, 40 million laptops, 50 million tablets, 30 million Bluetooth headsets and other types of smart terminals for Zhiyun and Weiku Electronics this year!
The four major OEM factories are just comprehensive assembly factories in this industrial chain. In fact, there are thousands of various factories in the entire Zhiyun/Weiku supply chain, including large factories with thousands or tens of thousands of employees.

The scale of the entire industrial chain under Zhiyun/Weiku is extremely large.

(End of this chapter)