Text |Zhang peng.
In a blink of an eye, OnePlus is also ten years old.
Ten years is an important milestone for any tech company. Especially in the cruel field of smart phones, which has undergone several rounds of reshuffle with rapid development, just surviving for ten years is already a big achievement. What's more, OnePlus is still a teenager after returning from a ten-year trip, and its sales and share are still growing.
When I met Liu Zuohu, the founder of OnePlus, it was in the early days of the brand's founding, and I remember that OnePlus had a unique brand concept of "never settle" when it was first established. In fact, there were many brands with such characteristics back then, including Hammer and Meizu, which were loved by many people, especially geeks.
Why did OnePlus become the only brand in the group of start-up brands that really came out after ten years, and it was able to carry the banner of "uncompromising" for ten years, and it also successfully achieved transformation?
I've heard that Liu Zuohu is going to have a fireside chat with fans of the OnePlus community this evening, and I'm looking forward to him sharing his summary of the past 10 years as the creator of OnePlus.
However, as a friend who has watched this brand grow for ten years, I also want to write about my opinion on OnePlus.
OnePlus was founded in late 2013, the brand was officially unveiled in January 2014, and by April, the OnePlus 1 was released.
It was not too early to join the game, the concept of mobile phone entrepreneurship was no longer fresh at that time, and the first product was released only 5 months after its establishment, and the early OnePlus did not cause much discussion in the domestic ** field.
But since the product came out, OnePlus has quickly proven what it means to rely on the product to speak . With flagship-level configuration and high-quality design workmanship, OnePlus is a dream-level product. The OnePlus 1 has set off a wave of craze in China, and with OnePlus's overseas strategy, this trend has quickly spread overseas, and even entered the European and American markets, which domestic brands have never set foot in.
I remember very much that in September 2014, I led Liu Zuohu, Zhang Yiming and several other entrepreneur friends to Silicon Valley to communicate, it was an era when Silicon Valley companies were full of curiosity about Chinese entrepreneurs, and I took them to Twitter, Facebook, Tesla, Pinterest ...... to communicateAnd so on in Silicon Valley star companies, whenever I introduce these Chinese entrepreneurs, including Zhang Yiming, they don't know much about it. The only exception is OnePlus. When Liu Zuohu was introduced to several exchanges, the other party heard the title of founder of OnePlus, and you can clearly see that the senior executives of these big companies in Silicon Valley are all bright-eyed, because most of them already know OnePlus's products and have listened to discussions in the Silicon Valley technology circle.
In 2014, Liu Zuohu participated in the exchange of Geek Park at the Facebook headquarters in Silicon Valley, and OnePlus was already a well-known brand in Silicon Valley.
In less than half a year after the product was released, OnePlus has already won the recognition and reputation of the core population in Silicon Valley.
At that time, the competition pattern of domestic Internet mobile phones happened to be at the end of Xiaomi's dominance, and the market was entering an era of more and more volume. However, in the global market, on the day of the release of OnePlus 1, OnePlus appeared on Twitter's hot topic list, and was later reported by several mainstream **. It's even Time magazine's first review of a phone from China.
At that time, OnePlus was selling overseas on an invitation-only basis. A batch of invitations will be issued initially, and only users who have purchased OnePlus 1 will be able to get a new invitation code. This method has created the spread of OnePlus in the Silicon Valley geek circle.
Looking back at OnePlus's early success, the core secret that made it stand tall as soon as it was born was actually a dream machine.
At the beginning of its founding, OnePlus determined its flagship strategy of "one a year" and the brand concept of "never settle", and made every effort to create a flagship that would not compromise.
The OnePlus 1 was powered by the industry's top-of-the-line Snapdragon 801, with the highest specification of 3G RAM and 4G support. These three configurations alone were enough for it to gain a firm foothold in the market at that time. Coupled with a very reasonable price for users, it has a solid cost performance.
On the surface, everything seems to be very simple, but those who are familiar with this industry will know that even if it is just to find the best configuration from the chain and then assemble it into a flagship machine, it is also a very complex work, which tests the team's design and development ability and chain management experience.
The success of OnePlus's early products has a lot to do with the hardware development and management experience that Liu Zuohu accumulated in the past when he was making Blu-ray machines at OPPO Digital. And more importantly, OPPO Digital was a world-class product at the time, and it was recognized as a legendary product by audio-visual enthusiasts. This historical experience helped Liu Zuohu unlock the confidence that we can make world-class products, and made him choose the goal of facing the global market.
Behind the success of the product and the rapid establishment of the brand, the core is the choice of the target. Today, OnePlus did not choose to roll in China in 2014, but dared to make a dream product from the overseas market, and set up a truly international team to do brand and operate users in an international way, this decision is the most critical solution to the problem.
In fact, in September 2014, less than a year after its founding, OnePlus turned a profit. The OnePlus 1 also gained a good reputation, with 1.5 million shipments reaching by the end of 2014. OnePlus successfully took the first step on the highly competitive track of smartphones, and it stood firmly.
After accumulating the first seed users, OnePlus began to explore ways to grow.
OnePlus in its start-up period is a company as clean as a blank sheet of paper. The brand tonality is concise, the product only has a flagship, the degree of customization of the system is not high, and it is convenient to brush the machine. Many people feel that no feature is OnePlus's feature, and such a product will be more loved by enthusiasts.
But in reality, OnePlus is a company with a lot of product ideas. For example, when the OnePlus 1 was released, it equipped the OnePlus 1 with a back cover made of Kevlar, nylon, wood, and bamboo to improve the texture and feel of the phone. At that time, these materials did not have mature solutions in the industry, and they were completely explored by OnePlus.
I once had a conversation with Liu Zuohu** about the innovation of these details, is it really important?Because it seems that other companies are leaving the phone case to solve the problem, why are you so reluctant to settle on this matter?」。Liu Zuohu said at the time that the brand is the result of long-term communication with users with products. Looking back now, this perspective explains why many of OnePlus's later product choices were different.
In the objective world where products have to be compromised, how to communicate with users on the brand concept?The answer may be to follow the objective ability development, constantly find the place that the user cares about in the product, but is unable to compromise, do the best, and surprise the user.
Although this kind of "not going to be" started with what some people call "heap configuration", making phone cases, the point is that this gradual climbing process has not stopped. For example, the OnePlus 7 in 2019 is the first model in the industry to be equipped with a 2K+ resolution and a 90Hz screen. Here, OnePlus resolutely decided to go to the high brush,On the one hand, it already has the strength to jointly develop with upstream screen manufacturers,Or is it that the team determined the user's demand for high brush in feedback channels such as the OnePlus community the year before,And in the subsequent research, it was also proved that the high brush screen is the first reason for users to choose OnePlus 7。
OnePlus has gone from giving users an affordable dream configuration, to the innovation of the material feel of the back shell, to the world's first launch of a 90 120 Hz high-brush screen, and the ...... of low-light shooting capabilities like recent black technologyAlong the way, you can see that as OnePlus can recoup its profits every year, it is also doing more and more in-depth hardware compromises. This long-term and stable product pursuit and way of doing things is the most effective communication with users.
In terms of software, functions, and design, OnePlus has chosen the same development side**: communicating with users and appreciating each other with users.
From day one, OnePlus has launched the OnePlus community to collect user ideas and product feedback. By the end of 2014, the total number of posts in the OnePlus community had reached 8.5 million, and these users came from all over the world. The community has provided a lot of constructive basis for OnePlus's product development in the future.
At that time, maintaining communication through the establishment of user communities was a must for smartphone manufacturers. Only in this way can we feel the water temperature on the demand side and grasp the trend of the market. But at the same time, how to remove the noise from the huge user feedback and prevent the product from being too bloated in order to meet small needs is another problem.
By 2015, many vendors' user communities had ceased to exist in name only. Because with the growth of user scale, relying on user communities to give mobile phone feedback can easily lead to focus deviation, and more general representative user surveys have begun to replace community feedback.
But for OnePlus, the significance of the user community is especially important. Because OnePlus spread from the Geek circle in the early days, this part of the user often has a deeper understanding of smartphones, and this part of the community users come from all over the world and has a high degree of diversity. OnePlus has always been fully confident in the quality of its user community.
In other words, the relationship between OnePlus and users in this community is mutually appreciative. This is the essential difference between it and many other brands' product communities, and this kind of heartfelt mutual appreciation rather than giving users some room to express themselves will lead to completely different results in product selection.
One thing that I was very impressed by was that at that time, OnePlus chose CyanogenMod as the Android system of the overseas version of OnePlus 1, because the smoothness, stability, and power consumption control of CM were very good at that time, and it was well-known in the Android enthusiast community.
In the development period, Yijia has made more product innovations based on the flagship configuration and based on the feedback of the user community, and has also grown into a brand with a unique temperament. OnePlus during this period has formed a strong product core, and it dares to choose and make trade-offs on many issues. This is true from the design of software functions to the selection of hardware configurations.
This allows OnePlus to often go one step faster than other manufacturers in terms of product and technological innovation.
For example, in 2015, OnePlus began to develop its own hydrogen OS. At that time, they worked with EICO Design to design a very flat UI for the hydrogen OS. At that time, the trend of flattening was actually just beginning, and there was still a lot of controversy in the industry about whether this direction was correct. However, OnePlus decided on this direction, and in the end, it turned out that although there were many deficiencies in the functionality and stability of hydrogen OS at that time, these deficiencies were quickly corrected in the frank communication with users. In terms of the design concept of the UI, this kind of very advanced "uncompromising" has won the appreciation of users.
This temperament of OnePlus is essentially derived from the product confidence formed by mutual appreciation between it and users.
In the long-term communication and interaction with users, OnePlus can dare to make trade-offs in product design, which is another kind of compromise on top of the flagship configuration.
From the back cover of various materials, the visual design of hydrogen OS, the three-stage mute button, to the resolute use of high-resolution, high-brush screens, and the MEMC function for the screen, these are all product features made by OnePlus in the process of communicating with users, and also shaping OnePlus's unique brand temperament.
In the end, throughout the entire development process of OnePlus, it did not fall into the trap of volume configuration volume**, and did not give up the uniqueness of the product in order to reduce costs and selling prices. In the process of development, it maintains a healthy virtuous circle.
Last year, OnePlus launched the new Ace series of phones,** positioned as a sub-flagship, elongating the entire product line. This is a noteworthy change.
Because in 2015, OnePlus experienced a similar decision, when, in search of growth, in pursuit of growth, at the same time as the launch of the OnePlus 2, OnePlus also launched the **lower light flagship OnePlus X. However, under tremendous development pressure, the team lost focus, resulting in mass production issues before the OnePlus 2 went on sale, delaying the delivery cycle and ultimately missing a critical time window.
I once talked to Liu Zuohu about how did you review this matter internally?Liu Zuohu believes that the team is still dominated by the anxiety of market share and growth, and there are too many things to take into account, and in the end the product is not polished. This review made OnePlus decide to focus and focus for a long time later. This philosophy has dominated the direction of OnePlus for quite some time.
Seven years later, OnePlus is once again trying to stretch its grounds, but this time it has reaped tremendous growth. After the release of the Ace series, OnePlus achieved a 9% year-over-year increase in total domestic sales in the third quarter of last year6%, up 44In the first half of 2023, OnePlus's mobile phone sales increased by a full 335% year-on-year, making it the fastest-growing mobile phone brand in the industry during the same period. And this is achieved in the context of the overall shrinking environment of the smartphone market.
It was interesting to see two moves that looked the same, but one win and one defeat.
Because for a long time, some people will think that the ultimate fate of a manufacturer that only makes flagships is at most small and beautiful.
There have been many brands that have been praised in this track, but most of them have declined or even disappeared in the process of industry development and reshuffle.
The business logic in this is very simple, because not being low-end means that the quantity cannot be increased, and it is limited to small;To be low-end means to compromise on the product, to compromise, and no longer beautiful.
For small factories, sales and income cannot go up, whether it is R&D investment or bargaining power in the first chain, it is much lower, and it is impossible to form a competitive advantage through scale effect. This minus will eventually make their individuality defeated by low cost performance.
In fact, in any industry, making products is always an art of compromise, but in the past decade, the cruelty of the mobile phone market is that it is a decade with too many constraints and almost no room for personality to shine.
But OnePlus managed to get rid of this fate after 10 years of development.
Analyzing the success of ACE, in fact, its biggest advantage is still that the product is extremely accurately defined. As a sub-flagship, ACE is not a reduced version of the flagship launched in order to suppress **, but is built on the refinement of user needs, sticks to the core performance, and is a capable but powerful product.
In addition, the integration of OnePlus and OPPO is another important reason for the success of the Ace series. The integration of R&D resources, the integration of the first chain, and the integration of marketing channels have brought more abundant resources to OnePlus, and at the same time, OnePlus has a stronger after-sales guarantee.
And what is rare is that in the era when other major mobile phone manufacturers are sub-brands, mainly used to cover high-end and low-end products, and sub-brands actually lack a real soul. OnePlus and OPPO still maintain a relatively independent brand and product relationship, or OnePlus has unique values and aesthetics, which allows OnePlus to still stick to its own "uncompromising" path.
The success of Ace and the growth of sales are the result of OnePlus's aesthetic consistency but change in capabilities.
This is precisely why I think that OnePlus is a valuable sample in itself. Because he has lived a different story in a mature market like a smartphone that seems to have completed the reshuffle and almost only giants remain.
Today's OnePlus may still not be a big manufacturer in terms of sales, but it can be a big factory in terms of products and aesthetics. In the course of 10 years, OnePlus has completed the cold start of "flowering outside the wall", realized the brand concept of "no compromise" with its products, realized mutual appreciation with users in communication, and completed "seeing the world, seeing all beings, and seeing yourself" in 10 years.
Entering the next decade, I hope that OnePlus will also treat this company as a product, be different, and carry out the "no compromise" to the end.