Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 357 Four Stars Fall, Everyone Eats
When the issue of mobile phone battery safety was exposed by Four Star, various mobile phone manufacturers rushed to make various attempts to interfere with it, hoping to seize the opportunity to grab the market.

At the beginning, there were only Zhiyun and Fruit Dance, but soon other mobile phone manufacturers quickly followed suit and participated.

In particular, many domestic mobile phone manufacturers were shouting with excitement, buying press releases everywhere to report the incident, and hyping up the battery fire and explosion of the six-star mobile phone as the hottest news at the time.

It is not only popular in China, but also popular all over the world!

These domestic mobile phone manufacturers are participating because they are also major competitors of Big Four.

Samsung sells more than 200 million mobile phones a year, but there are not many high-end phones, that is, the Galaxy series. All the sub-series sell only tens of millions of units. The real high-volume products of Samsung are still the mid-range phones priced at two to three thousand yuan.

This is the case in the Chinese market, and it is similar in other overseas markets.

When a large number of domestic mobile phone brands are impacting the market of two to three thousand yuan, the competitors they face, apart from the Zhiyun C series, are the mid-to-high-end mobile phones of four stars.

So after seeing the problems exposed by Four Star, whether it was WeCool Electronics or other domestic mobile phone manufacturers, or even other overseas brands of mobile phone manufacturers, each contributed their own efforts and carried out crazy publicity!

For a time, six-star mobile phones were about to become the public enemy of the global mobile phone industry, which made them extremely anxious. One moment they said there was no problem with their mobile phones, and the next moment they said that only some batches had problems and they were preparing to recall them.

No matter how the subsequent four stars deal with it, they are finished with this wave.

Other mobile phone manufacturers are all rushing to grab the market share with a smile on their faces.

In the fruit company, some company executives were greeted with rare smiles.

In early September, Fruit held a press conference and officially released the Fruit 7 phone!

Originally, Apple's top management did not have high expectations for this year's Fruit 7 and only hoped to maintain sales as stable as possible.

But they didn’t expect that Four Stars gave them a big surprise!

You should know that in the US market, the only high-end mobile phones now are Apple and four-star Galaxy, and there are only a very small number of Zhiyun phones that are smuggled.

Now that the four-star Galaxy is no longer popular, Apple has taken over the vacant high-end market share!

By the way, the "international version" of the Zhiyun S series sold in Mexico has also seen a significant increase in shipments recently... These Zhiyun S series international version phones will eventually enter the US market through various legal channels of personal carrying or illegal channels of large-scale smuggling.

Many Americans are reluctant to buy Galaxy phones because they catch fire and explode, but they don't like them, or are not used to using Apple phones, nor do they want to use those messy Android phones of other brands. In the end, they choose to spend a high price to buy a smuggled Zhiyun S series phone, or simply go to Mexico to buy it themselves.

In some Mexican cities close to the US border, many mobile phone dealers will open Zhiyun mobile phone stores directly near the border, specifically selling Zhiyun international version mobile phones to Americans coming over, and their business is very good.

In addition to some illegal elements who specialize in large-scale smuggling, there are also many Americans living near the border who make several trips across the border a day to bring back mobile phones in person, and can earn hundreds of dollars a day.

The smuggling of Zhiyun mobile phones on this side of the US border has almost become an industrial chain.

Of course, even so, it cannot affect the absolutely strong position of Apple phones in the US market.

Previously, there was a four-star brand competing for market share and threatening Apple phones.

Now that such a big scandal has broken out in the Galaxy series of Samsung, the sales of Apple phones in the United States have become even better.

The scandal involving the four-star Galaxy series affected not only the Galaxy series, but all four-star mobile phones.

Especially in the Chinese market, major mobile phone manufacturers have taken turns to appear on the market and carry out various promotions. What they are aiming for is not the market share of the Galaxy series, but the market share of a large number of four-star mid-range mobile phones.

This also directly led to an extremely exaggerated avalanche in the sales of Sixin’s mobile phones in China!

Needless to say, the Galaxy series has been strongly suppressed by the Zhiyun S series in China. Its sales volume was not high to begin with, and now it has been reduced to zero. The vacant market share has been directly swallowed up by Zhiyun mobile phones, and some market share has been snatched away by the MAX series of Vico Electronics and even some high-end flagship phones of other brands.

The avalanche in the mid- and low-end markets is even more troublesome. Affected by battery explosions and fires, coupled with overwhelming publicity, countless consumers have simply given up on four-star mobile phones... There are so many mobile phone brands, and in addition to four-star, there are plenty of other brands to choose from.

Even if you don’t want to use the Yun OS-based phones from Zhiyun or Wecoo Electronics, you can also use a large number of Android phones from other domestic mobile phone manufacturers.

This caused a huge collapse in the sales of Sixin's mobile phones in China... They were selling well in August, but they stopped selling after September.

Similar situations have also occurred in other overseas markets. Sixin is facing a global crisis of trust... Users feel that Sixin phones are no longer safe.

The reason why four-star mobile phones are starting to sell poorly is that the sales of Fruit, Zhiyun Mobile, Wecoo Electronics, and even other domestic mobile phone brands have increased to varying degrees.

It can be said that the four-star family is dead, while the others are all laughing!
Even LG, which belongs to South Korea, has quietly participated in this feast of market division. They have seized the four-star market in South Korea and the four-star market overseas.

LG, which had already declined and fallen out of the top ten in global mobile phone shipments, has surprisingly shown a rare trend of stopping the decline and rising again.

The huge crisis in the four-star sector has also caused many manufacturers to take it as a warning.

----

On September 8, Xu Shenxue held a "Product Quality and Safety" meeting at the group headquarters, at which he emphasized and reiterated the importance of product quality and product safety.

We must adopt a zero-tolerance attitude towards any issues that may cause quality defects or even safety hazards, and require all-round quality supervision of all partner companies in the supply chain to prevent any problems from occurring.

The company's specific responsible departments should maintain high-frequency attention, go to the front line more often, and use their eyes to observe more.

In order to ensure the quality and safety of the products, the company has officially established a "Product Safety Testing Laboratory". All products of the group must undergo various safety hazard tests in the safety testing laboratory before they are officially launched on the market to ensure that there are no safety hazards before they are launched on the market.

You should never rush a product to market without completing various rigorous tests.

Especially things like batteries!
At a later safety conference in the battery field, Xu Shenxue personally rejected the proposal to use 40-watt fast charging.

"The current 20-watt fast charging is sufficient for the time being. There is no need to increase the battery safety risk for a few selling points just for the sake of a short-term fast charging."

"Forty-watt fast charging, we'll talk about it after the technology is further improved and the safety is further enhanced!"

"What we want is the ultimate battery safety and stability, not whether it takes 20 minutes to fully charge or 10 minutes to fully charge."

"At the same time, we need to once again strengthen the encryption of batteries to prevent third parties from replacing batteries and causing security risks as much as possible."

"And we need to increase the encryption of charging ports. The current encryption technology is still a little poor. There are too many cracked charging cables on the market. Poor quality charging cables will lead to charging safety risks. We still need to pay attention to this and apply various encryption technologies. Don't let outsiders crack it every time you update it for a few months."

"The company has a large group of top technical elites in the field of encryption, can't it be that they can't defend against those half-baked people like Hua Qiangnan? I feel ashamed for you if I tell anyone!"

Speaking of this, Xu Shenxue is also quite helpless. The company launches a new generation of charging cable encryption standards every year, but each time it will be cracked in a month or two to three months, and then a large number of cracked versions of low-quality charging cables will appear on the market.

I don’t know whether the experts at Huaqiangnan are too awesome, or the encryption engineers in the company are too lame…

The emergence of a large number of cracked and low-quality charging cables not only affects the company's business revenue of spare parts such as data cables, but also affects data security and battery safety.

Xu Shenxue is still quite cautious and takes this seriously.

"Battery safety cannot be neglected at all, otherwise today's four stars will be tomorrow's Zhiyun!"

“To build a global high-end brand, it takes several years, countless investments, and the continuous replacement of multiple generations of excellent products and maintaining advantages. Everyone knows how difficult it is.”

"But it only takes one cell phone battery explosion to ruin a high-end brand!"

"Battery safety issues must be taken seriously again!"

It is obvious to all that Xu Shenxue attaches great importance to the safety of lithium batteries. Even when he first started developing smartphones in 09, he already attached great importance to the safety of lithium batteries.

This is also the core reason why Zhiyun Mobile has been very conservative in the field of fast charging for many years and has to use encryption on the charging interface... It is because they are afraid that the mobile phone will catch fire and explode.

If a Zhiyun phone catches fire or explodes on a large scale, it will be global news in minutes... just like the current fire and explosion of the four-star phone!
Just thinking about it makes my scalp tingle!

This kind of security issue is much more serious than phone lag or other quality issues.

Soon, the group's vice president Gu Zhiming personally led a team to inspect the company's core battery suppliers Desay Technology and BYD Battery, and supervised production in the battery field.

Ensure that every mobile phone battery produced by Zhiyun complies with Zhiyun’s internal technical management standards and is highly safe... As for why we are talking about Zhiyun’s internal technical standards, it is because in many fields, Zhiyun’s internal technical standards far exceed the legal standards of various countries.

If one day, Zhiyun really gives you a product according to the legal technical standards of various countries, it will be really over... The legal standards are used to ensure the lower limit. Large companies cannot make products according to the lower limit. How can they make high-end products if they do so!

So although they are both mobile phone batteries and comply with the legal standards of various countries, Zhiyun’s mobile phone batteries are safer than those of other mobile phone manufacturers!
Because Zhiyun Group's safety standards in the battery field are higher, far exceeding the industry average.

Immediately afterwards, Group Vice President Gu Zhiming convened a supply chain conference, where he spoke for more than two hours about quality management. He then announced the establishment of a quality and safety inspection team to conduct secret inspections of the supply chains from time to time.

Once the quality and safety inspection team finds problems, suppliers will face huge fines. In serious cases, they may even be kicked out of the supply chain and held legally liable for breach of contract. The claims then could be astronomical.

------

While the four-star brands outside were struggling with battery fires and explosions, major mobile phone manufacturers outside were taking advantage of the opportunity to grab a large market share.

Zhiyun's S series of mobile phones also took advantage of this opportunity to once again increase sales.

Soon, Zhiyun Group officially announced that the total sales of the S16 series of mobile phones have exceeded million units since their launch, making it the world's best-selling mobile phone.

In fact, among these 60 million mobile phones, 40 million were produced in advance, and only about 20 million were produced and sold after they were officially launched on the market.

This is also the consistent style of Zhiyun's sales of the S series of mobile phones. Because new models are extremely popular when they are first launched on the market, they prepare as many mobile phones as possible and distribute them globally in advance, and then sell them directly when they are launched on the market.

Thanks to people's enthusiasm for the new Zhiyun phones, these stocked phones are often sold out within a few days and then enter a long period of out-of-stock status, with only as many as the factory produces being sold out.

In order to better meet market demand, Zhiyun Group is also gradually increasing the production capacity of the S16 series of mobile phones, with a planned monthly production capacity of more than million during the peak period.

The three foundries responsible for the OEM manufacturing, namely Weiku Industrial, BYD and Luxshare, have their S16 production lines running at full capacity 7 hours a day, 24 days a week, continuously producing the S16 series of mobile phones.

A large number of mid- and upper-stream supply chain manufacturers have also entered the most intense production period of the year. More than 200 production bases across the country have all entered overtime production mode. Under Zhiyun Group's efficient supply chain control module, production capacity is accurately calculated to the hourly level.

The locations of the various production bases are also doing their best to ensure that these production bases are operating at full capacity, from power supply to transportation security and so on.

Because the production bases of many supply chain manufacturers are the economic pillars of the local area, whether the GDP can meet expectations this year depends to a large extent on whether these leading companies that have entered the Zhiyun supply chain can complete their production tasks.

This is a huge production involving millions of people. It requires not only the Zhiyun Group, but also the concerted efforts of various supply chain manufacturers, and even the cooperation of external places and enterprises to complete.

After all, with a monthly production of 30 million mobile phones, it is necessary to strictly control supply chain inventory costs and keep spare parts inventory as low as possible.

The entire supply chain is like a huge and sophisticated production machine, operating efficiently in strict accordance with the production plan. Of course, this high-pressure full-scale production cannot continue forever. According to the situation in previous years, it is basically crazy overtime every day in the first three or four months after the launch.

After three or four months, the production task will enter a stable period, although sales will gradually decrease and output will also gradually decrease.

That is to say, around January, the production line of the S series will calm down and enter a stable production period. Although it will be large-scale mass production, there will be no need for crazy overtime.

After another two or three months, around April, the production and sales volume of the S series mobile phones will decline further. At this time, the management and workers on the production line will have a relatively relaxed time of the year, and those who need to take vacation will take their annual leave.

During this period, the technical department began to make advance technical preparations for the large-scale mass production of the next generation of S series mobile phones, and adjusted, upgraded and improved the production lines.

After a two-month delay, which is around June, the S series production line will complete the technical upgrade and modification to meet the production of the next generation of S series mobile phones. It will restart from the initial trial production to large-scale mass production, prepare for the mass production of new models in advance, and gradually increase production capacity.

By August, the entire S series production line will reach its peak state, and then maintain it until December or even January to meet the huge shipment demand of the new models in the initial stage of listing.

This is the annual cycle of the S series mobile phone production line, which is almost the same every year.

It is precisely because of the cyclical characteristics of the S series production line that in order to better utilize the production line and balance the conflict between production capacity and sales, Zhiyun Group will gradually put the C series, A series and SX series into the spring launch conference.

In the second half of the year, just dealing with the S series was enough to exhaust the entire Zhiyun Group's supply chain and run at full capacity. If other series were to be worked on at the same time, it would be even busier.

With the support of Zhiyun Group's efficient and huge supply chain, Zhiyun Group has directly increased the production capacity of S16 mobile phones to million units per month, even if this peak product cannot be maintained for too long, at most it can only last for two or three months... After three or four months, market demand will decrease, and at the same time, the people in the supply chain and production lines will have reached their limits... In fact, both the semiconductor and consumer electronics industries are labor-intensive industries.

In the semiconductor industry, wafer fabs are extremely ruthless places. These factories treat a large number of highly educated engineers as ordinary workers and operate in a 7/24 production mode. Even engineers with PhDs have to work night shifts.

So some people say that it is easy to save money working in Zhiyun Microelectronics... On the one hand, the salary is high, and on the other hand, there is money but no time to spend it!
Not to mention the consumer electronics industry chain. When producing world-class industrial products such as the S16 mobile phone, many processes still rely on manual labor. This is a typical labor-intensive industry.

Moreover, during its peak period, this production line operated 7/24, working in three or even two shifts, so the workers on the production line had a hard time.

But human physical energy is limited, and even if the salary is high, it is difficult to withstand working overtime for several consecutive months!

Taking into account many factors, the production capacity of the S series will gradually decrease after the initial three or four months of explosive growth at the beginning of its launch.

But this is still a huge achievement... Globally, only Zhiyun Group can carry out this level of large-scale mass production with ultra-large capacity, and no other manufacturer can do it.

Even if they could, they wouldn’t be able to sell so many phones!

The prerequisite for explosive production capacity is that product supply exceeds demand.

The production capacity of 30 million mobile phones per month brings huge revenue and profits to Zhiyun Group.

For other mobile phone manufacturers, it would be a huge loss...

----

Zhiyun Group announced sales of 60 million mobile phones in the first month of listing, which left many industry insiders silent and could only sigh.

The Zhiyun S series is still as powerful as ever, leaving people with no hope of catching up!

But ordinary people don’t feel too much about this... After all, people like Zhiyun phones and they are a big hit every year.

What people are more interested in is whether the 16D face recognition of this year's S3 standard version works well.

The production and sales volume of this year's S16 series mobile phones is even higher than that of last year's S15d series. There is a reason for that... that is, this year's S16 standard version mobile phone is also selling very well!
In order to boost sales of the entire S series of mobile phones, Zhiyun Group has introduced the black technology of 3D face recognition to the entire S series, allowing the S16 standard version priced just over 3 yuan to also have D face recognition function.

Many people are very interested in this and are ready to buy one.

This includes a large number of users of Zhiyun's older mobile phones, many of whom are even die-hard users of old antique phones such as S10 and S11. They used to think that their phones could still be used for a few more years, but the S14 series and S15/S15 PRO, the two generations of mobile phones in the past two years, have not had any major changes that would make them make up their minds to spend a few thousand dollars to replace their phones.

Now with the S16/S16 Pro, things are different... 3D face recognition plus a full screen with notch sounds pretty good.

As for why I didn’t change to S15MAX before...what else could I do? S15MAX is too expensive.

The S16 standard version, which costs more than yuan, can be purchased by many ordinary workers. Even young people who are short of money can buy it in installments.

However, most ordinary workers would not be willing to buy the MAX series, which starts at 8,000 yuan, even if it is paid in installments.

Therefore, after the launch of S15MAX last year, it did not stimulate much demand for replacement of mobile phones among ordinary working-class people.

This year's S16 standard version takes on this important task. After seeing the S16, many people with average incomes are excited and grit their teeth to buy a new phone.

At the same time, many users of other brands of mobile phones, if they have a little more money, may also buy an S16 phone to experience what it feels like to have the world's top high-end mobile phone.

I used to hear people talk about how great the Zhiyun S series of mobile phones are, but I’ve never actually used them. At the same time, I still have some thoughts about them.

Now that I have a suitable opportunity, I can buy one and try it out.

All these factors combined led to the S16 series of mobile phones being shipped wildly around the world after they were officially launched in mid-August. The million units in stock were sold out in a short period of time, and the market entered the old global shortage state again.

However, ordinary people's attention to the sales of Zhiyun phones is only average.

After all, so many years have passed, and people have become accustomed to the hot sales of the S series mobile phones, and even think that this is as it should be.

So the hot sales of the S16 phone is not news...if one day it stops selling, that would be news.

In addition to the hot-selling S16 mobile phone, Apple's release of the new generation of Fruit 7 mobile phone also attracted a certain amount of attention.

This is a mobile phone with a glass back panel and wireless charging function... It is different from the Fruit 7 in Xu Shenxue's memory, but more like the Fruit 8.

Although this phone seems average at the moment, its sales are still very good, especially in the US market where the Zhiyun S series phones are lacking. Fruit phones are still the only dominant player with huge sales.

However, in other third-party markets, such as Japan, ASEAN, Europe and other markets where Zhiyun participates in the competition, the sales of Fruit 7 are somewhat disappointing.

Many third-party analysis agencies believe that it will be difficult for the Fruit 7 to reverse the decline of Fruit phones this year. Coupled with the huge impact brought by the use of 16D face recognition in the standard version of Zhiyun S3, this will lead to a continued decline in shipments of Fruit phones in the second half of this year.

I'm afraid that the shipment volume of Apple phones this year may not even be able to maintain 150 million units. Many analysis agencies have given data of around 140 million, which is a lot less than last year... This is probably because they have seized some four-star market shares, otherwise the situation would be even worse.

The sales volume of Apple phones continued to decline in the second half of this year, mainly due to the severe impact of the S16 standard version and S16 PRO.

Last year and even in the first half of this year, although the Zhiyun S115MAX was very popular all over the world, it was too expensive. Therefore, although it had an impact on the fruit phones that mainly target the 6 to 6 yuan market, it was not too fatal... At that time, the competitors of the Fruit 15S and the four-star Galaxy S15 series actually continued to use the S standard version and S Pro version with press-fingerprint.

As for the S15MAX, they have created a new ultra-high-end market...

However, in this year's S16 series, even the S16 standard version with a price of just over 3 yuan uses D facial recognition and a notch screen design, which has dealt a heavy blow to the shipment volume of Apple phones. Of course, the four-star Galaxy series and some so-called high-end phones of other brands are also affected.

Not to mention other brands, even Zhiyun Group’s own A series of mobile phones have been significantly affected.

The A15 mobile phone launched in March this year continues to use classic designs such as press-on fingerprint, back cover glass, wireless charging, etc. Its sales in the first half of the year were barely acceptable, but sales plummeted after August.

In the entire month of August, only 800,000 units were sold, which is a terrible sales volume even for the A series of mobile phones.

No matter how bad the A series performed, its annual sales volume last year was still around 30 million units. Although expectations have been lowered this year, sales are still estimated to be 20 million units.

But now it seems that the sales volume of Zhiyun A series mobile phones this year will not be enough to reach 15 million units!

Because many potential users directly add a few hundred yuan to buy the S16 standard version, only some users who are dissatisfied with the press-fingerprint function and the notch screen will continue to resolutely purchase and use the A series mobile phones... This is also the reason why Zhiyun Group still maintains the A series mobile phones and continues to use the press-fingerprint function in the A series mobile phones.

Always give different users more choices.

In order to cover more user groups, Zhiyun’s mobile phone product line is actually very comprehensive. It is mid-to-high-end, selling for more than 3,000 yuan, focusing on youth and fashion, and gradually adopting the C series with aluminum alloy body.

Today, the A series focuses on press-on fingerprint and glass back cover, and is an alternative to the S series, priced at more than 4,000 yuan.

There is also the SX series, which focuses on clearing out inventory and promoting small screens, while also selling nostalgic sentiments, and is priced between three thousand five hundred and four thousand yuan.

Finally, the S series standard version, priced from 5,000 yuan, is a major volume product used to suppress high-end models of major brands.

The S series Pro, which starts at 6,000 yuan, raises the average selling price of the S series standard version while meeting the needs of large-screen users.

The MAX series, which starts at 8,000 yuan, is an ultra-high-end series that was newly created last year. It is equipped with all kinds of advanced technologies and has explosive performance. Apart from being expensive, it has no other disadvantages.

The MAX Pro, which starts at 10,000 yuan, is a large-screen version of the ultra-high-end series that meets the pretentious needs of some groups.

From more than 3,000 yuan to more than 10,000 yuan, Zhiyun mobile phones have comprehensive coverage.

At the same time, the product line covers the S series with the most advanced 3D face recognition and notch screen, the A series with front-facing fingerprint and rear cover glass, the SX series with front-facing fingerprint and aluminum alloy body, and the C series.

Even in the SX series, there are now the S15X, which features a 15-inch three-section aluminum alloy body, and the SXL, which features a -inch integrated aluminum alloy body.

It can be said that Zhiyun Group has taken into consideration various user needs.

Zhiyun Group has never relied solely on one S series mobile phone to sell its mobile phones all over the world and achieve sales of more than 300 million units.

It is true that the S series is the core product, but the C series, A series and SX series are equally important... Even if the sales volume is smaller, Zhiyun Group will not give up but will continue to promote development.

At a time when the Zhiyun S16 series of mobile phones, together with some older S series mobile phones, continue to gain ground and ship like crazy around the world.

Four Star was also forced to swallow the bitter fruit and finally announced a large-scale recall worldwide.

However, the first summons did not involve the Chinese market... because they believed that the batteries used in the Galaxy NOTE7 phones in the Chinese market were produced by Factory B, rather than the batteries of the NOTE7 phones that had problems before, which were all produced by Manufacturer A.

But...in fact, there are problems with the batteries produced by these two factories.

Therefore, this caused great dissatisfaction among domestic consumers!

Well, the sales avalanche of Four Star in China is even more severe!
A group of domestic mobile phone manufacturers happily took over a large share of the mid-range mobile phone market from Four Stars and started a new round of rise!

The biggest beneficiary is naturally Weiku Electronics!
Weiku Electronics' Little Blue MAX series and Little Blue Digital series are mainly aimed at this market and have benefited greatly from this turmoil.

Warwick and OV also benefited greatly!

(End of this chapter)