Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 326 S15MAX on the bus and subway
Shenzhen in the early morning is not like ordinary small cities. It is still deserted at six or seven o'clock.

At six or seven o'clock, the streets are already crowded with cars, and the bus stops and subway stations are crowded with young men and women rushing to work.

There are no old men or women taking the early morning buses to buy vegetables at the market. Most of the people on the buses and subways are young and middle-aged people rushing to work.

This city is different from other cities. It is extremely young. Not only the young people in the city, but the people in the city are also young.

Because this is an immigrant city, its permanent population is almost entirely young people who come from all over the country in pursuit of a new life.

Lisa is one of them!
Lisa is the English name she uses at work. As for the Chinese name, Li Cuihua, she would rather not use it in her daily life.

After being woken up by the alarm clock in the small rental room of more than ten square meters, she took a nap in bed and then hurriedly got up to brush her teeth, wash her face, put on makeup, put on the clothes she had prepared last night, and picked up the LV small shoulder bag that she had spent more than 16,000 yuan to buy.

At this time, she was wearing a sleeveless chiffon top, paired with a black A-line skirt. The hem of the skirt was neither long nor short, just ten centimeters above the knees. She was also wearing flesh-colored stockings and a pair of discounted high-heeled sandals from a big brand.

In my hand, I also have a S15MAX 32GB phone that was delivered yesterday...

At this moment, she seems somewhat out of place in this small rental house!
However, even such a small rental house requires her to pay 1,800 yuan per month in rent. This is already a nice and relatively cheap house she has found nearby. She cannot afford a better one, and she would not even look down on any cheaper one.

As for the good and cheap ones, they were too far away and she didn't have time to go to work.

And when she pushed open the creaking door and went downstairs, the handshake building seemed even more out of place with the surrounding area, which was so dense that it seemed to block out the sky.

However, there are many people like her who seem out of place in their surroundings.

In front of me there is a middle-aged man wearing a suit, leather shoes and holding a bag. Next to him is a young man wearing fashionable clothes and carrying a backpack.

Lisa also saw from the corner of her eye that a young woman with a very good appearance, long wavy hair, wearing slim trousers, a white shirt, a sun-protective jacket in her hand, and high heels came out from the residential building behind her.

Lisa blended in with them without feeling out of place, as if everyone was like this.

These people came out of each handshake building one by one, then shuttled through the alleys and hurried to the main road outside. When they were near the bus stop, a few people seemed to see the bus they were riding coming, and immediately rushed forward in their leather shoes and high heels, and finally squeezed into the bus.

On the way, Lisa bought soy milk and a bun from a mobile breakfast stall set up by a young couple. After eating them simply, she threw the buns away. The small white plastic bag flew in the wind and was finally left in a corner on the roadside, becoming part of the urban village in this city.

Lisa mixed in the crowd and came to the bus stop. She stood alone at the front of the bus stop. This was her experience. The driver of the 888 bus every morning liked to park at the front of this stop.

Because this is a big bus station, there are too many workers taking the early bus to go to work every morning. Every day there will be a large group of people waiting for the bus at the bus station, and there are also many buses.

Lisa stood alone on the edge, picked up the S15MAX in her hand, and started to open WeChat... But except for a few bootlickers on WeChat, no one sent her a message.

I opened the Moments and no one updated.

After closing WeChat, she opened the video again… but it closed right after she opened it. Data traffic was too expensive and she was reluctant to use it. So she decided to wait until she got to the company and connected to the company’s WIFI before watching the video.

She opened and closed one app out of boredom, seemed to look here and there, but in the end she looked at nothing.

Most of the people around her were like her, standing and waiting, and most of them were staring at their phones in their hands, not knowing what they were looking at.

A few people who were anxiously waiting for the bus kept looking in the direction of the oncoming bus. Perhaps they were going to be late.

While Lisa was browsing her phone, she noticed from the corner of her eye that several people around her seemed to be staring at her new phone.

Lisa didn't look in the direction he was looking, nor did she show any expression to explain. She just continued to play with her phone as if no one was around.

The unique notch screen of S15MAX looks so unique and dazzling among the mobile phones in the hands of many workers around, so that even people who have never seen the real S15MAX mobile phone before can tell at a glance that this phone is the S15MAX that has been hyped up online and offline in recent days.

However, despite its fame, not many people can buy it now.

Lisa rushed to buy it as soon as possible and became one of the first lucky people to buy the S15MAX in stock.

After the phone was officially released, the official website started shipping pre-orders. However, too much goods needed to be shipped out at once, and the courier company had a heavy workload. Therefore, although the goods were in stock, they were delayed for a few days before being shipped.

After anxiously waiting for several days, Lisa finally got the S15MAX yesterday. This is the first mobile phone she bought!
Well, it’s not the first one in my life, or even the first Zhiyun phone.

Her first mobile phone in life was a Nokia, which her parents bought for her when she was in college. She has a very clear memory of it.

The second mobile phone was S9, which was bought for her by her first boyfriend when she was in college with the money he saved while working during the summer vacation. It brought her very good memories.

The third S12 was a gift from her third boyfriend after she started working.

The fourth S14 was given to me by a male best friend when I was dating my fifth boyfriend. When my fifth boyfriend found out, he got very angry and ran away. He has no magnanimity at all.

The most infuriating thing is that when she turned around to find her male best friend and was ready to upgrade him to her sixth boyfriend, he actually ran away.

He said that this phone was the last test and he would run away if she took it.

He also said that he was going back to his hometown to inherit the pig farm, and that all women outside were gold diggers and that they didn't believe in love anymore... Lisa was almost vomiting blood because of this.

You're crazy. I only accepted a cell phone, a few bags and some jewelry from you, but you talk like I accepted several houses from you.

Besides, she has also made efforts. For a period of time, she often accompanied her boyfriend to eat and drink without telling him.

She was actually accused of being materialistic. She was very upset.

If I were a money-grubber, why would I look for you? Wouldn't it be better for me to look for Xu Shenxue?

This S14 pro brought her some unpleasant memories... She lost two candidate husbands at once, which was a big loss.

Especially my male best friend, his family’s pig farm is quite large, and he’s the only son in the family. He looks okay, and he thought that if he worked hard he could become a pig farmer’s wife, but unfortunately... Alas!

It’s hard to look back on the past!

During the S15 launch conference this year, she had nothing else to do but look at it, and thought about simply replacing this unlucky S14PRO.

As a result, she couldn’t take her eyes off the S15MAX... She doesn’t understand 3D face, and she doesn’t care about S603, but this notch screen... is so unique, it’s different from other phones!

Then she wanted it very much!
Unfortunately, she had just broken up with her fifth boyfriend, and her best male friend had also run away. She was currently single and didn’t have any capable boyfriend candidate around her... She couldn’t find anyone to pay for it for the time being.

As for those die-hard bootlickers, they don't have much strength. On weekdays they only send a small red envelope, milk tea, flowers, etc., and they have no tact at all.

So Lisa had no choice but to grit her teeth and buy it with her credit card. At worst, she would have to eat steamed buns every day for the next few months.

Of course, if possible, it would be better to find a new boyfriend as soon as possible to share the burden.

Thinking about the credit card, Lisa looked at the phone in her hand again, and then posted a circle of friends: I heard that it is popular to give S15MAX as a gift recently, but poor me doesn’t have such blessing, so I can only give it to myself!

Then I posted a picture of S15MAX!
In less than a minute, many people liked the post, and one person commented: "An independent and free life is really enviable."

"You are indeed a strong woman!"

“Lisa is awesome!”

"I envy the rich woman!"

Amidst the compliments, someone suddenly said, "Cuihua, you borrowed money from me last year because your father was in the hospital. When will you pay it back? I need it urgently."

Upon hearing this, Lisa raised her eyebrows and deleted the circle of friends directly... She was careless and forgot to group them!

After taking her eyes off the phone screen, Lisa habitually looked in the direction of oncoming traffic and saw bus number 888.

She didn't ride on the bus for long and got off soon, then she took the subway.

There are also a lot of people on the subway, most of them are either sitting or standing playing with their mobile phones.

Lisa took a quick look and suddenly felt a little bad... There seemed to be several people in this car holding S15MAX!

The appearance of S15MAX is extremely unique, and the notch screen can be recognized at a glance.

She thought that not many people were using the S15MAX, but she didn't expect so many people were.

After arriving at the company, Lisa greeted her colleagues with a smile, holding the S15MAX in her hand. Some colleagues asked a few questions and expressed envy when they saw her.

She said you are really rich, you can afford such an expensive phone. But soon she found that there were other people in the company who also had S15MAX.

I don’t know why, but I suddenly feel bad. This S15MAX doesn’t seem to be as scarce as I imagined.

It's only been a few days and so many people are using it.

Lisa naturally didn't know that Zhiyun Group released 15 million SMAX stocks in one go, of which about million were allocated to the domestic market and million were supplied to the foreign market.

In fact, most of these eight million S15MAX units were purchased by users in first- and second-tier cities.

Young people in big cities have more timely access to information and higher spending power. In the early days of the launch of the Zhiyun S series mobile phones, there would be a large number of users in first- and second-tier cities who would be the first to purchase and experience them. Therefore, even in the early days of the launch, there would be a lot of new S series phones in first-tier cities.

The S15MAX is no exception. In fact, because of the special feature of its notch screen, most of the users who accepted and bought it at the first time are young people.

Of course, Zhiyun Group will continue to promote the 3D face recognition strategy in terms of smartphones. Next year, 3D face recognition will be further decentralized to the entry-level models of the S series, and 3D face recognition will be used throughout the entire S series throughout the year.

By then, there will be more people using Zhiyun S series mobile phones with notch screen on the market.

It’s actually a bit difficult to show off with a Zhiyun S series phone these days…

Because the sales volume of this phone is so huge, so many S series phones are sold every year, which also leads to a very large number of phones in stock!

If you walk around the street casually, you will find that at least two or three out of ten people are using Zhiyun S series phones... Of course, there are still very few people using the new models, and many are using the old Zhiyun S series phones.

Although the Zhiyun S series phones are expensive, they have become phones that ordinary people can use...

Of course, the S15MAX with a very unique appearance is still one of the most beautiful ones now. People like Lisa who work in CBD in first-tier cities cannot feel the coolness of showing off.

But in some third- and fourth-tier cities, if someone grabs an S15MAX, it will definitely become a topic of conversation among friends... When you take out an S15MAX at a party, your friends can't help but ask you about it, and even want to come over and touch it.

Expensiveness is one aspect, but scarcity is also an important aspect.

Many people say that they cannot afford it, but that they cannot get it. The pre-order queue on Zhiyun’s official website is already queued up until October, and it is impossible to get it in a short period of time.

In order to attract traffic and organize activities, some online shopping platforms will release a small number of S15MAX at intervals for netizens to buy, but this really depends on luck.

With such a small number of items, a large number of people gathered around to grab them, including scalpers who used professional software to buy them.

Therefore, it is really not easy for ordinary people to successfully buy a small amount of spot goods on these online shopping platforms.

This also leads to the scarcity of S15MAX.

People just like to see something new.

The scarcity brought about by the S15MAX's launch has further increased the popularity of the S15MAX and made more people desire this phone.

The final feedback to Zhiyun Group is that full-payment pre-order orders from all regions and the entire network continue to rise, while various dealer channels and operator channels are also waving checks to grab production capacity.

Even though Zhiyun Group has adjusted the production capacity ratio of the S15 series and significantly increased the production ratio of S15MAX to %, it is still in short supply.

As for further increasing production capacity, this is no longer possible!
First of all, the production of S603 chips is limited. Wafer Fab 603 can only produce so many S chips per month. If there are more, they will be gone.

At the same time, the 15D face recognition module used by S3MAX has limited production capacity at present. It is costly and technologically advanced, and it is very difficult to expand production on a large scale in a short period of time.

Finally, the S15MAX uses an advanced OLED six-inch notch screen, and the production capacity of this screen is also limited.

In fact, Huaxing Technology's initial monthly production capacity was only more than 5 million pieces. Then they expanded production while stockpiling goods. Now they can reach 12 million pieces per month, but this is the production capacity limit in the short term. If they want more, they will have to wait until November and December.

It is difficult to expand production of a mobile phone like S15MAX on a large scale in a short period of time, as it uses too many new components and has too high technical requirements.

Therefore, even if there is huge market demand, we can only wait and see until the production capacity of various components such as screens and 3D face recognition modules increases before we can increase it.

So for Zhiyun Group now, there is helplessness amidst happiness!

Demand for S15MAX is strong, but there are no more units to sell.

The sales of the S15 standard version and PRO, which have sufficient supply, are average... It’s not that they are selling poorly, but in fact, they are still in short supply.

The main reason is that the supply and demand imbalance is different from previous years, which can be seen from the scalper market.

The standard version 15GB of S16 from Huaqiangnan can now be purchased for only an additional yuan.

As for last year's S14, even one month after it was on the market, scalpers dared to increase the price by yuan.

If we go back further, when the S10 was released a few years ago, the supply was more scarce and scalpers’ premium was more serious.

Even three months after the S10 phone was on the market, scalpers dared to increase the price by five or six hundred yuan, and the S10 Pro even increased the price by a thousand yuan. If you hesitated for a moment and asked the scalper again, the scalper would have already sold the goods, so there would be no share for you!

The S series books from the early years were hard currency in the Huaqiang South Market and were very strong.

However, this year's S15 standard version and S15PRO have only been on the market for half a month, and the standard version with 16GB can be purchased for an additional yuan... This would have been unimaginable in previous years.

For scalpers who have hoarded a lot of S15 standard and Pro versions, this summer may turn into winter!

Similarly, this also proves that the sales of S15 and S15PRO are average... You know, the production capacity of S15 and S15PRO has actually been reduced, and some S603 chips and other spare parts have been temporarily given to S15MAX for use.

Even under such circumstances, the price in the scalper market could not be maintained.

Assuming that Zhiyun Group continues to maintain 15% of the total production capacity of the S15 and SPRO versions, it is estimated that the prices of these two mobile phones will fall below the official website price in the scalper market one month after they are launched on the market!
There are risks in doing business, and being a scalper also has risks.

Now many scalpers who have hoarded a lot of S15 and S15PRO are thinking of shipping them out as soon as possible. They are not looking to make money, but just want to recover their capital first.

Then find ways to source S15MAX and sell it for another two thousand yuan!

Nowadays, S15MAX is a super hard currency in the scalper market, comparable to the S10 mobile phone of that year. Ordinary people will try to set alarms to buy it, or wait in line for orders.

But for rich people, they are too lazy to rush to buy, and they will not queue up for orders. They will directly find scalpers and buy at a higher price!
Increasing the price by one or two thousand is no big deal.

Especially the S15MAX 128GB version, which has a smaller production volume and is more scarce on the market. Because the price of this version is too high, Zhiyun did not expect to sell many of it, so the early stock and even subsequent production were actually very small.

But what is the mentality of rich people when they buy Zhiyun phones?
Don’t look at the price or parameters, just buy the top-of-the-line one!

They not only want the S15MAX, but also the 128GB version.

This has resulted in a small stock of this version of the phone, and even fewer in circulation on the market, and a more serious premium. Many wealthy people who are not short of money directly offer more than 15,000 yuan to buy this phone...

Many people saw this and thought they were crazy!
It’s just a mobile phone, is it that serious?

But, rich people would also say, it’s just a few thousand dollars, so what?

The global popularity of S15MAX and the super high premium brought by some scarce versions have pushed S15MAX to the top of news searches time and time again.

The global popularity of S15MAX has made other mobile phone manufacturers envious and extremely jealous, and some even hate it!

One by one, they quickly launched full-screen mobile phone projects, striving to make a full-screen mobile phone in the shortest time possible... and it has to be the kind with a notch screen.

As for 3D face recognition, if it is not available, just use 2D face recognition, and then pair it with a rear fingerprint or side fingerprint.

But if you want to talk about the fastest one, it has to be Weiku Electronics!

According to inside information, a new flagship 'Little Blue MAX 7S' has been prepared long in advance and is scheduled to be launched in September. It adopts a large and ugly notch screen design. In order to reduce costs, it still uses an LCD screen and a rear fingerprint.

Just wait until S15MAX creates market heat and opens up the notch screen and full-screen market, and then Weiku Electronics will let this Little Blue MAX7S rush in to grab the market.

By then, they will be the second notch screen mobile phone in the world!

As for why it uses a notch screen design even though it doesn’t have 3D facial recognition... there’s no reason, it’s just for this unique appearance.

The Xiaolan MAX7S is sold with this notch screen.

(End of this chapter)