Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 328: $7500 billion market value and the full-screen era

The Fruit 6S and Fruit 6S PLUS, which were released in September, suffered a very ugly decline in both reputation and sales due to the strong impact of Zhiyun S15MAX.

Even in their home market of North America, sales are mediocre due to lack of innovation.

Although the fruit company relies on its strong brand appeal and the support of many old users, it is still able to sell out its stock in a short time after the product is launched on the market.

But the problem is, just because the early stock sells well doesn’t mean it will sell well in the future.

The sales of early-stage stockpiles came in a wave, which was a concentrated release of purchasing power accumulated in the market for several months. However, after the release of this wave of concentrated purchasing power accumulated in advance, the real test came.

Facing this challenge, the performance of the Fruit 6S was not outstanding, at least it failed to meet the expectations of the Fruit company.

The estimated annual sales volume of 180 million units may not be achieved this year. Even the sales volume of 160 million units estimated by external analysis agencies has become somewhat difficult.

If the subsequent marketing work is not strong enough, it is really possible that the sales volume of 160 million units will not be achieved.

The only thing that made the top management of the fruit company feel relieved was that the company's stock price did not plummet after the release of the phone...mainly because it had been falling for nearly a month before the release of the 6S: investors had actually squeezed out all the water from the fruit company's stock price before the release of the 6S.

Of course, even though fruits have faced difficult times this year, the outside world still believes that thanks to the overall continued growth of the smartphone market, annual shipments are expected to exceed 1.5 billion units this year. At the same time, as the economic levels of various countries continue to grow, people's purchasing power continues to increase.

Therefore, the market capacity of high-end machines is also increasing continuously.

Although most of the newly added high-end market capacity has been taken away by Zhiyun, Fruit can still get a share of the pie, so the sales volume of Fruit phones this year will still increase compared with last year.

It’s just that the growth rate is a bit small and does not meet the general expectations for fruits both inside and outside the country in the first half of the year.

In this incremental market, the growth rate of fruit did not meet expectations, but Zhiyun's growth exceeded expectations. In this comparison, the gap emerged.

As S15MAX continues to be popular, Zhiyun’s stock price has also been rising rapidly.

After its release in mid-August, by mid-September, Zhiyun’s market value had exceeded US$700 billion, and at one point reached a high of US$750 billion.

This shows that Zhiyun's performance in the past month, especially the performance of S15MAX, has exceeded investors' previous expectations.

Since it exceeds expectations, the stock price will naturally go up, offsetting the difference.

Many people even think that if Zhiyun Group continues to develop in this way, and considering the factor of continued inflation on a global scale, Zhiyun Group may even reach a market value of one trillion US dollars in the future.

Therefore, capital from all over the world flocked to the Hong Kong stock market and purchased Zhiyun's shares.

This even includes a large amount of capital from the United States.

In fact, even if Zhiyun switched to listing on the Hong Kong stock market, due to the previous stock exchange strategy and the fact that Hong Kong is an open financial center facing the world with convenient capital inflow and outflow, a considerable portion of Zhiyun's publicly traded shares are still held by various American investment institutions.

For capital, making money does not discriminate by nationality.

Zhiyun’s stock price continued to rise, which also caused quite a stir in the country.

With a market value of US$750 billion, it is the company with the highest market value in the world, and it exceeds the second-ranked fruit company with a market value of US$600 billion by US$150 billion.

The fruit company had a good growth in the first half of the year, reaching 15 billion US dollars at one point. However, in August, after the release of Zhiyun SMAX, the market value of Fruit has been declining, and now it is only billion US dollars.

Apart from Zhiyun and Fruit, the market capitalization of other companies is much lower. For example, Sixin is the third largest smart terminal company in the world, but its market capitalization is less than 200 billion US dollars.

However, only a small part of Sixing's electronics business, namely Sixing Electronics, was listed.

We cannot simply regard Sixing Electronics in the capital market as Sixing Group.

Sixing Electronics, with a market value of US$200 billion, is just a subsidiary of Sixing Group.

Of course, Xu Shenxue has more than just Zhiyun Group under his control, he also has several important companies, such as Hailan Automobile, Nanmen Aerospace, Wilmar Technology Group, Wecoo Electronics, Wecoo Industrial, Wecoo Trading, and finally Xiannvshan Holdings, which has a layout in the semiconductor equipment and consumables industry.

If all of them were added together, their scale would not be much smaller than that of the Six-Star Group, and might even be larger. It’s just that these companies are not listed and do not need to disclose various operating data to the public, so the outside world does not know much about them.

Just when outside investors were enthusiastic about Zhiyun Group and increased their holdings to push up the stock price, Zhiyun released the latest model of the A series: the A15 mobile phone in mid-September.

Compared with last year's A15, one major change in this year's A14 phone is that it also uses wireless charging technology.

In addition, a new generation of S602 chip is used, and the running memory capacity is increased to 4GB.

This year, Zhiyun's entire S15 series and A15 series all use 4GB of RAM to further increase performance.

The appearance design of the A15 mobile phone is more youthful and fashionable than the mature and stable S series. This year, a royal blue color scheme is also launched, mainly to distinguish it from its own S series.

At the same time, the price is relatively low. The 15GB entry-level version of A16 has a starting price of only 4199 yuan in China, continuing to serve as the gatekeeper of Zhiyun's high-end mobile phones.

However, even if there are some changes, this year's A15 sales will still not be optimistic. Both the group's internal estimates and external analysis agencies have lowered the sales estimates for the A15 mobile phone.

As the sales of the A15 mobile phone may not meet expectations after its launch, it is estimated that the sales of the entire A series mobile phone segment this year will not be able to maintain the scale of million units, and may drop to around million units.

This result is certainly not a success for Zhiyun Group, but it is still very impressive if compared to other companies.

Zhiyun A series mobile phones are still the fourth best-selling high-end mobile phones in the world!

At this year's September press conference, apart from the A15 phone, there were no C series phones or SX series phones.

Because according to the strategy adjusted by Zhiyun Group last year, in order to prevent its own C series mobile phones from becoming cannon fodder in the autumn market war, it also wanted to avoid the double stranglehold of its own S series and Apple's flagship phones.

At the same time, it is also to avoid the concentrated launch of multiple models in the fall, which would lead to excessive fluctuations in production capacity.

Therefore, Zhiyun moved the release of the C series and SX series mobile phones to the spring launch conference.

Therefore, after the release of the A15 series of mobile phones, Zhiyun Group’s layout in the mobile phone field in the second half of this year has been almost completed. The next step is to do its utmost to maintain supply chain production and supply as many S15 series mobile phones as possible to the market.

The production and sales of the S15 series of mobile phones in the next few months are directly related to Zhiyun Group's overall revenue and profits this year.

This year, Zhiyun Group's overall revenue will definitely reach more than 15 billion US dollars, but whether it can reach exactly 15 billion depends on how powerful the S series of mobile phones, especially the SMAX mobile phone, are.

However, external analysis agencies have expressed optimism about this.

Many analysis agencies believe that Zhiyun Group’s overall revenue this year is expected to reach US$350 billion, an increase of approximately US$40 billion compared to last year.

As for net profit, the outside world is also optimistic. Even if Zhiyun Group continues to invest in the semiconductor field, the core business of Zhiyun Group, that is, the smart terminal business, is too profitable!
External analysis agencies believe that Zhiyun Group's net profit this year is expected to reach US$55 billion, an increase of at least US$10 billion compared to last year.

The increase in profits mainly comes from the higher price and more profits of S15MAX! The popularity of S15MAX alone can bring an additional billions of dollars in net profit to Zhiyun Group.

At the same time, with the continued growth of the AI ​​market, the shipments of Zhiyun Group's APO graphics cards and NVIDIA's high-end computing power cards continue to increase. Although the revenue of these computing power cards is average, the net profit is extremely high, which can bring additional substantial net profits.

In the PC business, with the launch of the self-developed WZ4000/U chip, Zhiyun's PC business has obtained a stable source of high-performance chips. In the first half of this year, shipments gradually returned to the level of previous years, which brought additional profit growth.

In terms of semiconductor design, the hot sales of the W806 chip have boosted the development of Zhiyun Semiconductor's chip business as a whole, and net profit has further increased.

In the semiconductor manufacturing business, as the 18-nanometer process began to take on external foundry orders this year, it brought in certain profits. Although the profits were not high, it was finally a good sign.

Another major profit growth point is the Internet and software services. This business is relatively complicated, including all kinds of miscellaneous software, but the more important thing is the increase in revenue of Zhiyun APP Mall, and the profit has also increased accordingly.

This is mainly due to the increasing number of Zhiyun phones and Weiku Electronic phones that use the Yun OS system, and the mobile Internet infrastructure around the world is also developing better and better.

These have driven the overall development of the global mobile Internet. For example, the mobile game market was less than 20 billion last year, but this year it should reach 25 billion US dollars... and the mobile game market has developed, and it is not only the mobile game companies that make money, but also the major APP shopping mall channels that collect tolls.

The Zhiyun APP Mall covers the two major brands of Zhiyun and Weiku, with an annual shipment volume of more than 500 million.

This directly makes Zhiyun APP Mall the largest APP mall in the world, and also attracts a large number of content creators from all over the world, including both corporate and individual developers. This further makes Zhiyun APP Mall the APP mall with the most ecological content in the world.

The huge inventory of mobile phones, rich ecological content, and the fact that Zhiyun mobile phone users generally have higher spending power have also brought rich revenue and profits to the Zhiyun APP Mall, which is expected to reach US$8 billion in revenue this year.

The gross profit margin of this part of the Internet business is very high... After all, running a toll station doesn't cost much and you can make money without doing anything.

The growth of business in many aspects and the increase in profits have led many investors to believe that although Xu Shenxue is still lavish and spends money without regret, he is still stubborn and insists on investing money in the semiconductor manufacturing field. At the same time, he has also launched a large number of illusory and messy project research and development, resulting in a large amount of funds being consumed by research and development.

However, Zhiyun Group, which is a large company with the world's top earning ability, can still maintain a net profit of about US$55 billion this year.

It is still the most profitable company in the world and a favorite of many investors.

Of course, it would be better if Xu Shenxue spent money less lavishly and did not invest tens of billions or even hundreds of billions of dollars in the semiconductor field at every turn.

Unfortunately, Xu Shenxue didn't listen to them!
----

Zhiyun Mobile’s big moves are basically over, but the heat in the smartphone market has not decreased!
After all, Zhiyun is not the only mobile phone manufacturer in the world, there are others.

Not to mention the Apple iPhone, although the 6S sold very well it did not meet expectations.

In early October, Samsung also released its new flagship of the Galaxy series, the Galaxy Note 5, a -inch large-screen phone.

However, this phone did not cause any waves. After all, it is still a traditional large-screen phone with front fingerprint recognition.

Among similar mobile phones, Zhiyun's S15 Pro and Fruit 6S have both been greatly impacted by the S15MAX this year and have become less popular.

This four-star Galaxy NOTE5 is also common, so the response after its release was mediocre and the sales volume was poor.

On the contrary, the Bluemax 7 Pro released by Vicoo Electronics in the following days, also in early October, attracted considerable market attention. (The model number in the previous article was written incorrectly, it was 7Pro instead of 7S)

Because this Xiaolan MAX7 Pro uses a notch screen... Even though this phone does not have 3D face recognition, there is no need for a notch screen.

But Bai Qiwen did it.

A 2-inch LCD notch screen, plus a 15D face recognition, let me ask you, does this look like the SMAX?

You definitely can’t afford S15MAX, and even if you can afford it you can’t get it.

But my Little Blue MAX7 Pro is in sufficient stock, and the starting price of the 64GB version is only 4199 yuan!
How about it? Do you want to try one and have fun?
It’s all facial recognition anyway, and my 2D is only one D less than the S15MAX’s 3D, so it’s not a big problem!
At worst I can give you a discount. Double Eleven is coming soon, and I can give you a coupon worth 3999 yuan, so you can get it directly for yuan.

You know what, quite a few people were tempted or simply fooled offline and bought one...

After all, many consumers really cannot tell the difference between 3D face recognition and 2D face recognition, and only know the concept of "face recognition".

The salesmen in Weiku Electronics' offline channels have thrown their consciences to the dogs in order to get commissions. They even boast that their own Little Blue MAX7PRO also has facial recognition... Yes, it is the most popular and hottest facial recognition now. Brothers and sisters, do you want to give it a try?

This facial recognition is very easy to use. It is very convenient to unlock. You don’t even need to point your face at it. You can just hold a photo to unlock it…

Zhiyun’s facial recognition phones cost tens of thousands of yuan, which is a clear rip-off. Our Xiaolan phone is based on word of mouth and regular customers, so our facial recognition phone can be bought for only four thousand yuan.

To give benefits to consumers is the consistent purpose of our Xiaolan Mobile Phone!
Well, the salesperson who said these things would definitely not say that except for the W806 chip which is a top-notch component in their mobile phone, all other components are saved as much as possible and are all parts of backward technology.

Especially the relatively expensive components such as running memory and flash memory, which are at least two generations behind the components on Zhiyun S series mobile phones!
This broken thing, if made with rice, would cost at most 1999 yuan. Any more would be an insult to Mr. Lei Jun!

Therefore, the reviews of this Xiaolan MAX7 Pro phone are somewhat polarized... In the offline market, consumers generally give very good feedback: yuan for facial recognition, full-screen phone, cheap and affordable, and also comes with a rear fingerprint...

But online, I got badly criticized... Many technology enthusiasts accused me of copying: It’s okay if they copied, you copy the Zhiyun S series water machines every year anyway, we’re used to it... But at least you could copy it more realistically!

You don’t even have 3D facial recognition, what the hell are you doing with that notch screen? It’s so ugly!

And this crappy 2D facial recognition, how dare you use it when its security is so poor? How dare you call it "facial recognition"?
However, the opinions of these technology enthusiasts are irrelevant, as few of them will pay for the Bluegogo phone anyway.

Weiku Electronics is playing the shameless and conscience-feeding dog mode here, and other mobile phone manufacturers are swallowing their saliva after seeing this.

No matter how much people criticize it, this Little Blue MAX7 Pro is a really good buy. It is estimated that its sales volume in a full year will reach several million units.

Don’t think it’s a small amount. For domestic mobile phone manufacturers other than Zhiyun, including Weiku Electronics, it is not easy to achieve sales of several million units at a price of more than 4,000 yuan.

Therefore, other domestic mobile phone manufacturers, and even many traditional foreign mobile phone manufacturers, such as LG, have also launched new projects one by one.

Make money, don’t be shabby!
Therefore, in recent months, many mobile phone manufacturers have been working overtime to catch up with the progress, trying to follow the trend and launch similar full-screen mobile phones with "notch screen + 2D face recognition".

They are sure to take advantage of this wave of popularity!
In response to this, the two major domestic screen manufacturers also smiled!
Especially BOE, they are one of the screen suppliers of Xiaolan MAX7 Pro. The -inch LCD notch screen has a good display and is cheap and affordable, which is very suitable for mobile phones priced around yuan.

They now have mature technology and ready-made production lines. As long as mobile phone manufacturers place an order, they will immediately arrange production and shipment for you, and will never delay you from taking advantage of the popularity!

The same is true for Huaxing Technology, which is controlled by Zhiyun. Their special-shaped screen technology is better, and they can also provide the market with LCD special-shaped screens larger than six inches, whether you want bangs or a water drop shape, etc.

Of course, their LCD screens are also more expensive, and they mainly target the mid-to-high-end market.

It is foreseeable that by November and December, a large number of Android phones with "bangs or water drop full screen + 2D face recognition and identification + rear fingerprint / side fingerprint" will emerge on the market.

The full-screen era has officially begun!

(End of this chapter)