Remember to pay attention to the star, draw the knife and cut off the water here, and see the undercurrent of technology and business under the clear water.
Jumping out of the path dependence of involution, user-oriented, peer-to-peer innovation, the sea and the sky, enough to break 10,000 volumes.
Brother Shui. According to Canalys data, the global smartphone market sold 293.4 billion, a slight decrease of 1%, has been declining for 9 consecutive quarters.
According to market analyst Counterpoint Research's global smartphone shipments**, global smartphone shipments are expected to decline by 5% year-on-year in 2023 to reach 1.2 billion units, the lowest level in nearly a decade.
It can be seen that there are obvious cyclical ups and downs in this industry, so how can companies go through this ups and downs?As for enterprises to navigate cyclical changes, management scientist Drucker's answer isEntrepreneurs always treat change as a normal and healthy thing, welcome it with open arms, and take the initiative to find opportunities for innovation from it.
Taking market changes and new problems and new needs in society as an opportunity for enterprises to advance and go through cyclical ups and downs, Hu Baishan, executive vice president and chief operating officer of vivo, has the same view on how enterprises can go through the cycle and Drucker, he believes that why enterprises can survive through the cycle until now is essentially to continuously solve social problems, and the better the social problems are solved, the better the enterprise will develop.
According to Counterpoint, global smartphone sales rose 5% year-on-year for the first time in October after 27 consecutive months of year-on-year decline. The Chinese market has taken the lead in picking up, and in October this year, mobile phone shipments in the domestic market increased by 19% year-on-year7%。For the domestic mobile phone industry, it is a year of turnaround. In this regard, Hu Baishan, executive vice president and chief operating officer of vivo, said:"In the past, it was said that the necessities of life were sunshine, air, water and food, but now we have to add mobile phones. So we have always judged that the mobile phone industry is the best industry, and there is no one. ”At the same time, vivo has focused on communication for 28 years, and gradually driven the development of the industry, both in depth and breadth, and has continuously expanded its capabilities to make the industry more professional.
In this industry, which Hu Baishan believes is still a long slope and heavy snow, the market confidence of domestic manufacturers is still very sufficient, which is also supported by market data. In October 2023, 50 new models of domestic mobile phones will be listed, a year-on-year increase of 52%, and it should be seen that the enthusiasm of Chinese mobile phone manufacturers to promote new phones is not discouraged by the downturn in the market, on the contrary, they are still constantly innovating in the cost, yield, thinness, durability and core performance of the straight board machine, such as the image and chip of the straight board machine, to create more demand with better supply, so as to make the Chinese market take the lead in picking up and become the growth engine of today's global mobile phone market.
As the Chinese market with the largest number of head mobile phone manufacturers, and as the forefront of high-frequency iteration of new phones and new technologies, it can be said to be the world's most volatile and crowded mobile phone market, and such a market has also forced the emergence of many excellent products. The vivo X100 series, vivo's annual flagship product, which was launched in November this year, has a cumulative sales of 1 billion yuan on the first sales day, breaking the first sales record of all new phones in vivo's history, and increasing the sales volume of the previous generation of flagship products by 740%. The popularity of vivo X100 series sales is the culmination of vivo's previous ten years of technology research and development.
In fact, focusing on the long-term evergreen corporate culture, as well as the product innovation from user-oriented to goose-like formation, vivo, which has been sharpening its sword for ten years, has made a breakthrough in the high-end market, providing a business path with very high reference value for China's transformation from a world factory to a world brand today.
The global consumer electronics industry has seen a long-term downward trend in the past few years, among which the mobile phone industry has borne the brunt
1. Promote the common development of the industrial chain with science and technology, and set a benchmark for the globalization of Chinese brands
All high-end brands must be supported by super core technologies with competitive advantages in order to gain a foothold.
The development of a company should not only look at the innovation and progress of its own technology, research and development, products, etc., but also see whether it can drive the development of the industry and the first chain in the industry. As early as 2019, vivo established four long tracks of design, image, performance, and system, and deeply cultivated the innovation of these four long tracks, which has raised the industry standard again and again, brought a better experience to the market, and also promoted the development direction of the global mobile phone industry. At the same time, vivo has led the important innovation paradigm of the industry's development direction in the two core performance of these two mobile phones through cooperative research and development, and has become the key to vivo's strategic breakthrough in the high-end market through partnership cooperation.
All can be called a great consumer electronics company, have a core product series firmly entrenched in the minds of users, in the tug-of-war of the high-end mobile phone market, domestic machines also need such a fist product brand, win the key battle of the market, open up a base for their own brand can operate for a long time, and at the same time bring more profits and innovation capabilities to the upstream and downstream, drive the industrial chain through the cold winter of the economic cycle, and achieve development and upgrading.
In order to build such a fist brand, vivo has carried out a strategic focus on long-track technological innovation. "The so-called long track is a long-term technology track that has a lot of room in the future. Hu Baishan introduced"First, the image track, compared with the SLR camera, there is still a gap in the current mobile phone shooting effect, and the relevant technical investment will continue for 10 or even 20 years;The second is the performance track, which is mainly to improve the application of games and other scenariosThe third is to design the track to further promote the appearance and interaction design to meet people's endless pursuit of beauty;Fourth, the system track, the application of new technologies such as artificial intelligence makes consumers feel that mobile phones are getting better and better. ”
At the core of intelligent hardware performance, at the chip level, the vivo X100 series debuted MediaTek Dimensity 9300, which was developed based on the "all-large core" design concept jointly explored by vivo and MediaTek, which brought a huge breakthrough in core performance. In addition to the collaborative research and development of the main chip, vivo is also deeply involved in the research and development stage of image functional chips.
In terms of imaging functions, in the X100 Pro, a high-end product, vivo continues its strategic cooperation with Zeiss to launch top image configurations such as super telephoto, and translates the strict standards based on Zeiss's traditional cameras to mobile products.
In this environment, through self-developed technology in cooperation with ** chain, it has built its own differentiated capabilities in core areas such as chips, images, and large models, and built a strong competitive advantage of vivo in the high-end market.
Deeply involved in the technology research and development of core components, it has created a number of core technology longboards for vivo, which has become its core competitiveness in the high-end market, and has also made it the locomotive that drives the progress of China's mobile phone industry. Hu Baishan believes that what position the mobile phone industry achieves, what is the position behind the industrial chain. The prosperity of the mobile phone industry is not only a manufacturer and an industry, but the collective prosperity of thousands of first-class chain enterprises behind it.
Behind the explosive products is vivo and local first-class businessmen go hand in hand, cultivating a huge industrial chain cluster of smartphone manufacturing industry in China. For vivo's driving value to the local industry, Hu Baishan commented: "The employment and livelihood of tens of thousands of employees and tens of thousands of partners is the first level of value, and second, the biggest industrial value driven by the rise of Chinese mobile phone brands is that the first chain behind the entire mobile phone is also rising rapidly, and it is common to advance and retreat with Chinese mobile phone brands, because when Chinese brands choose the best business, they must give priority to domestic first business under the same conditions." ”
Every year, the sales volume of Chinese mobile phone brands overseas far exceeds that of overseas brands. Hu Baishan emphasized that in the past two years, when the capital market was still very hot, China's first chain was also born similar to BOE, Tianma, Huaxin Optoelectronics and other manufacturers, although the process has not yet reached a very advanced level, but they are also driving the development of China's semiconductors.
In addition, among all Chinese enterprises going overseas, mobile phone companies are also the most competitive overseas. This industry is driving the overseas of China's manufacturing industry and the globalization of the brand, and it has also played a very good head goose effectThe advantage of Made in China is that the basic raw materials come in and the finished products go out. In recent years, there have been more and more global brands, and more and more added value has been generated. "The reason why we can generate such high added value is because the mobile phone 2C brand has a very high market share in the country. For example, the clothing, footwear and hat industry has moved to other countries and regions, because the proportion of Chinese brands in the clothing, shoes and hats industry is very low, if it can be as high as the proportion of mobile phones, I believe it will not move to Southeast Asia and Mexico so quickly," Hu Baishan analyzed the demonstration effect of the global rise of mobile phone brands on the transformation and upgrading of China's entire manufacturing industry from OEM to brand.
2. Export the blue technology system and explore a new technological blue ocean
The term "black technology", which originally meant knowledge that overrides the existing technology of mankind, has become synonymous with disruptive technology in the field of science and technology today.
In November this year, vivo released the "blue technology" relying on its own unique technical system and technical advantages, giving a new brand to its own technical system, which not only represents Chinese technology companies, especially the head companies in the mobile phone industry, while establishing their own position in the fierce global competition, they have begun to show more and more strong technical confidence. The industry-leading product strength of vivo X100 series is actually the most systematic technological innovation paradigm.
vivo is a user-oriented enterprise, as Shen Wei, founder and CEO of vivo, once said"At any time, competition-oriented, cost-oriented, parameter-oriented, efficiency-oriented, etc. must not override user orientation. ”By 2023, vivo's global users will exceed 500 million, and the huge user demand has also become a beacon for vivo to explore in the no-man's land of cutting-edge technology. From the launch of an independent DSP image optimization chip in 2017, to the launch of the world's first micro-gimbal system in 2020, to the continuous iteration of the current self-developed image chip and algorithm, vivo's X series products in recent years have been guided by user needs, constantly iterating the technology and experience of the mobile phone industry, and have walked out of an innovative paradigm of integrating hardware and software and working together with the best businessmen.
After decades of development, vivo's set of effective innovation methods has gradually taken shape in recent years, and has become more and more mature, and recently carried out a systematic summary and review, and finally relied on the summary to explain a set of "blue technology" technology pool based on vivo's years of independent research and development and innovation experience and accumulation, so as to get out of the homogeneous involution of peer stockpiling, and to fly in the sky.
The core technologies incorporated into Blue Technology by vivo include four dimensions, Blue Core Technology Stack (to achieve the integrated design of underlying software and hardware), Blue Ocean battery life system, Blue Heart Large Model, Blue River Operating System, etc., which involve very basic core technologies at all levels of smartphone software and hardware. The debut of vivo's "Blue Technology" not only declares the confidence of vivo's independent innovation, but also further promotes the integration and development of the industrial chain, and jointly promotes the technological progress and ecological development of the industry with partners through the wild goose array.
Hu Baishan said when introducing vivo's experience through the economic cycle, first of all, vivo chose a good industryThe mobile phone industry is the best industry in the field of technology, with the best business model, and the natural attributes of going through cycles. As one of the most powerful user portals, mobile phones have strong user stickiness and can penetrate into people's lives. At the same time, the mobile phone industry also has a deep technical heritage, with the continuous development of AI, 6G, XR and other technologies, mobile phones, as the carrier and application platform of these technologies, will inevitably usher in greater development space and opportunities.
In a wider range, the development of vivo enterprises is essentially to continuously solve social problems, such as mobile payment, travel taxis, etc., and in the future, the mobile phone industry is the best application platform for generative large models, which can solve greater social problems, Hu Baishan revealed that humanoid robots are industries that vivo can enter in the future, and vivo blue heart model continues to iterate, which will make the robot have a strong "thinking" ability. Secondly, mixed reality (MR) will allow robots to have strong spatial awarenessWithin three years, Vivo will have MR mass-produced products on the market. The limbs of humanoid robots account for 20% of the entire technical architecture, and vivo can complement the corresponding capabilities. In the future, vivo will be an overall solution provider for social problem solving. The output value of the mobile phone industry can increase tenfold.
These new forms of technology will also inject new impetus into the weak economy as it emerges from the bottom of the cycle. Zhou Zhang, a science and technology strategy expert, believes that the mobile phone industry is driving industrial economic innovation and is incomparable to any other industry"The mobile phone industry is the most complex emerging manufacturing cluster in history, and the mobile phone software and hardware ecology drives the innovation of the mobile Internet, coupled with the IoT ecology, the mobile phone industry is actually driving the entire consumer electronics industry. ”
Third, the 28 years of planting have ushered in the fruitful results of the high-end market
The famous German-American philosopher Herbert Marcuse arguedThe emergence of the entrepreneurial economy is not only an economic and technical problem, but also a cultural and psychological one. In fact, whether it is vivo, or other evergreen enterprises, are essentially culture-driven, values play a role that is tantamount to an engine, behind its scientific research technology and excellent product strength is decades of sticking to the "duty" and "doing it from the heart", and the common progress with users, businessmen and society, has become the biggest driving force for vivo to continuously promote product iteration and technological progress in the past 30 years**.
In the "vivo living room" on December 21, when we talked about how technology companies can adhere to the way of steady operation in the era of change and go through the ups and downs of the cycle, Hu Baishan talked about the importance of corporate organizational capabilities and values, he said"The first is the company's scientific governance system, the company's scale was 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 The second is the innovation system, this year is a year of full flowering and fruition of vivo's innovation system, and there are good results on the four long tracks. The third is that there will always be fluctuations in cultural values and the industry, but we always bury our heads in the cause, first do the right thing, and then do the right thing. Therefore, we are identifying what is the right thing, the ability that the mobile phone industry must build, that is, the basic ability of the long track. ”
Adhering to the concept of "science and technology illuminate a better future", vivo has been actively practicing social responsibility for a long time, creating social value, continuing to help different groups of people, winning multiple awards in public welfare, launching a number of public welfare activities, and cooperating with relevant institutions and associations to call on the society to provide a more inclusive and diverse workplace environment and care for the hearing impaired.
The process of pursuing profits by enterprises itself is also promoting the welfare of the public, which is the most important and invisible hand of the market economy, and it has been promoting the progress of human society. Doing a good job in the main business, creating jobs, and at the same time driving the industry, and through the exploration of technology and product forms in the future no man's land, driving the progress of China's science and technology and the transformation and upgrading of the industrial structure may actually be the more important "public welfare" that the enterprise has been promoting, and it is also the starting point of a great enterprise.
One of the characteristics of a long-lasting enterprise is that it can create a bold goal of its own life, as a stimulus that can survive multiple generations of leaders. More importantly, does the company have the ability to continue to set bold new goals long into the future?In the book "Evergreen Heritage", Citibank's bold goals are mentioned in relation to its success. In the nineteen-nineties, Citibank was still known as the City Bank, but President Steeman's almost absurd goal of "becoming a great national bank" has led to Citibank becoming a great world bank today.
After more than 20 years of development, vivo has grown from a regional private enterprise to a mainstream player in the global mobile phone industry, and is also driven by such a bold goal - to create great products driven by design, and "committed to becoming a healthier and longer-lasting world-class enterprise".
Driven by the bold goal of becoming a world-class enterprise, vivo has not only won the recognition of consumers, but also made vivo a sample of China's economic confidence observation by absorbing global talents, carrying out long-term R&D investment planning, and uniting the strength of the first chain to promote product innovation.
In January 2023, Shen Wei delivered a speech entitled "Immerse Your Head in the Cause, Grow the Evergreen Foundation", and clarified vivo's approach: stick to the original intention, adhere to long-termism, and "bury your head in the cause". Insist on doing the "hard but right thing". This correctness not only includes the correct technical direction of the mobile phone industry, but also contains the positive effect on users, businessmen and even society, and goes hand in hand with the times, which is the long-term pursuit of a great enterprise.
Wang Gao, a professor of marketing at China Europe International Business School, said: "This year's microeconomic 'feeling' will be a little worse, which is mainly a lagged reaction to the impact of the three-year epidemicChina's economic growth model is changing in 2023, and what is more gratifying than the data is that manufacturing and technology companies have become the engines of economic growth. The extension of mobile phone intelligence in the industrial chain can create huge growth space.
As the head goose of the mobile phone industry cluster, vivo is flanked by innovation driven by the demand of 500 million users on one side, and innovation with industry chain partners on the other sideThe evergreen corporate culture of putting users first and working together with industry partners, the first-class strategic capabilities driven by long-termism, and the organizational execution driven by the corporate culture are making vivo a model of evergreen enterprises in China.
The prosperity of China's science and technology depends on the cultivation of more evergreen enterprises and the popularization of entrepreneurial spirit. Immersed in the cause, unswervingly to overcome the commanding heights of technology, vivo as a leader in evergreen enterprise corporate culture, for the Chinese technology enterprises that are constantly overcoming the technical bottleneck, is also a very good model, with long-term accumulation of technical heritage and hardware strength, leading the development of the industry, and even in the moment of technological change in the hardware interactive interface, once again standing on the front line of leading the industry change.