In 2023, there are only more than 10 mainstream brands left in the mobile phone market, and most mobile phone manufacturers are not having a good time, but there are also players who are growing against the trend, such as vivo, which won the first place in domestic production in one fell swoop, will achieve soaring growth in 2023, and will have a comprehensive harvest in market share, product matrix and technical reserves, and once again successfully passed through the cycle.
In 2024, even more brutal competition is ongoing. Data released by IDC and other institutions show that although mobile phones** are still declining, the decline has narrowed significantly, and the market sales in the fourth quarter have turned from falling to rising, which is a good start for 2024. However, judging from the rhythm of the intensive release of new products in advance by head brands, the market dominated by head brands such as Apple, vivo, OPPO, Honor, Xiaomi, and Huawei is bound to accelerate involution, and the strong will always be strong. In addition to focusing on materials, chips, systems, screens, charging, satellite calls and other functions, new categories such as AI phone, folding screens, and image flagships have also become a must for leading brands.
So, in the new round of reshuffle, how can mobile phone manufacturers win the market? In the VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) environment, how can mobile phone manufacturers go through the cycle? We can find the answer from vivo, the "king of domestic production" who will be soaring all the way in 2023.
In 2023, Huawei will make a high-profile return with the Mate 60, and Apple will win the first ...... in the market for the first timeThe mobile phone market has experienced the most difficult and volatile year in history. In the fierce competition, vivo bucked the trend and successfully won the first place in domestic production, "the scenery is unique here".
BCI data shows that in the Chinese smartphone market in 2023, Apple will win the sales championship, and the second place is vivo, whose annual sales will reach 445550,000 units (including iQOO), locking in the second place in the market and the gap with Apple, which ranks first, is very small - this achievement can be verified in the annual data of many institutions.
According to Counterpoint data, Apple ranks first in China's smartphone sales in 2023, accounting for 17With a 9% share, vivo (169%) and OPPO (162%) followed; Canalys data shows that vivo shipments in the Chinese mainland market in 2023 will be 4450 million units, second only to Apple.
The cross-verification of data from multiple institutions is enough to prove that vivo will successfully reach the top in 2023 to become the second in the Chinese mobile phone market, and it is a well-deserved "king of domestic production".
More important than sales is the structure of sales, vivo won the first place in domestic production, not relying on impulse products such as thousand-yuan machines, but on popular mid-to-high-end products.
Under the mobile phone consumption trend of "buying new and not buying old", new products are the first growth driver of the brand. In 2023, vivo will release a number of new mobile phone products, covering multiple series and price points, among which the most representative models are vivo X100 series, S18 series, and iQOO 12 series, all of which are popular and popular products.
The vivo X100 series is vivo's flagship of the year, with outstanding performance, a recognizable appearance, and a unique full-range portrait image. Bad product users "vote with their feet", good products "vote with money", vivo official data shows that the cumulative sales of vivo X100 series on the first day of sales exceeded 1 billion yuan, breaking the first sales record of all new phones in vivo's history.
The vivo S18 series focuses on portraits - this is the biggest growth point of the mobile phone market in 2023, mobile phones have become an important device for recording and creating content in their daily lives, and many users change their phones just for better images. The vivo S18 series has an excellent level of portrait shooting, and it also has advantages such as thinness and light compared to conventional mobile phones, so it became a hit as soon as it debuted, and the sales volume on the first day of omnichannel was 143% of the previous generation.
iQOO focuses on young user groups and conducts targeted design optimization for core scenarios such as e-sports. In 2023, while continuing the e-sports style and performance advantages, the iQOO 12 series has made significant progress in terms of image and screen, becoming a representative of a "tent machine" with a long board but no shortcomings, and the first sales of the iQOO 11 series will exceed the first sales of the iQOO 11 series in 3 minutes.
In 2023, vivo will make the explosion a certainty. Vivo, known for its "product manager culture", understands users better, and what it has been doing is to carry out product innovation and iteration around the real needs of users.
Without self-developed underlying technology, product innovation is passive water, even if mobile phone manufacturers can do some unconventional functions, they will be quickly copied by competitors. Real product innovation is inseparable from underlying technical support, and technology-driven product innovation is innovation with barriers.
In November 2023, vivo launched a new technology brand "Blue Technology", covering a number of its innovative technologies, including the blue crystal chip technology stack, blue ocean battery life system, blue heart large model, blue river operating system blueos, etc., covering the key technical fields of mobile phones, directly determining the mobile phone use experience, and also laying a solid foundation for new categories such as AI phone and imaging flagship.
vivo will also release its self-developed image chip V3 in 2023, which will be applied to the vivo X100 series, and for the first time on Android phones, it will realize the 4K movie portrait** and 4K-level "post-shoot editing" function.
The product manager culture ensures that vivo can make products that understand users better, and innovative technologies such as self-developed chips help vivo mobile phones continue to break through the boundaries, challenging the limits of performance, imaging, battery life, energy supplement, system, and intelligence, creating infinite possibilities for user experience.
In 2023, the user replacement cycle will become longer, and Huawei's 5G mobile phones will return to ......Many objective factors have led to extremely fierce competition in the mobile phone market. vivo has been soaring all the way, especially in the Chinese market. Products, channels, and brands are the "techniques" for vivo to reach the top of the market, and what is the "way" for vivo to continue to go through the cycle? Luo Chao Pro believes that there are three main points:
The mobile phone industry is the industry that is not lacking in "innovation", some manufacturers will blow up a fancy function at the system layer, some manufacturers will engage in a glass with a novel name as the core selling point, and some manufacturers will take the "friends do what must be done" follow-up innovation ......However, most innovations are not really innovations, and at best they can only be regarded as "different for the sake of being different".
Among the leading manufacturers, vivo is more cautious about innovation, and innovation is only for users.
On the one hand, vivo will not "obscenely" pseudo-demand to "innovate". Taking imaging innovation as an example, the vivo X100 series has advanced imaging features, among which full-range portrait imaging is a major selling point, which seems to be a very simple feature, but it is very attractive to users who love photography. Under the trend of computational photography and AI photography, imaging has become a key point in the innovation of mobile phone volume, and vivo has a full voice in this field.
If product innovation is not user-oriented, the corresponding functions deviate from user needs or are "painless", technology investment is meaningless, and product innovation is worthless;
On the other hand, vivo's innovation is driven by the underlying technology. Long-term investment in technology will form an effect of "innovation emergence", for example, the same image function, vivo's better experience is inseparable from the support of self-developed image chip V3, blue technology blue crystal chip technology stack, and blue heart model.
User-oriented and continuous investment in technology research and development are two sides of the same coin. Technology-driven products are more innovative and competitive, which in turn has better market performance, which in turn provides more revenue and profits to feed back long-term investment in technology research and development. vivo has formed a positive cycle from technology research and development to product innovation to market feedback.
The flowing water does not compete for the first, but the competition is endless. The mobile phone industry has been developing for more than 20 years, and the players who are still standing on the stage from feature phones to the era of smartphones are becoming increasingly rare, and vivo is one of the leaders. The fundamental reason for vivo's successful passage through the cycle is that it adheres to scientific management and pursues "high-quality growth".
For mobile phone brands, there is no growth in quality, no matter how large the share and how many shipments there are, it is just a flash in the pan. In the cruel gladiatorial arena of mobile phones, there are many short-lived brands, all of which have experienced rapid growth and even won the market for a period of time, but they have been unable to succeed or even eliminated. More important than growth is the quality of growth.
What is the high-quality growth of mobile phone companies? Hu Baishan, executive vice president and chief operating officer of vivo, once said that "user needs and user orientation have always been the biggest core of vivo", which shows that all of vivo's business decisions have returned to the core two words "user", which is the "first principle", which seems to be a simple truth, but reveals vivo's scientific business philosophy.
In fact, if you look at the leaders in all walks of life, such as Apple, another strong player in the mobile phone industry, Microsoft in the technology industry, the most prominent ideal in the new forces, and Pinduoduo in the e-commerce industry, they are firmly among the strongest, or they are all "user first, product first". Pinduoduo just relied on the user-first platform policy of "refund only", which made traditional e-commerce platforms mess up and had to follow up.
How does vivo ensure the implementation of the "user first" business strategy?
First of all, there is the pursuit of profit. Hu Baishan, executive vice president and chief operating officer of vivo, once shared vivo's philosophy: "A good enterprise should have the pursuit of profit above profit". It is understandable for mobile phone manufacturers to pursue reasonable profits, and only profits can feed back research and development. As a master of consumer electronics software and hardware technology, mobile phones must invest heavily in research and development to support product innovation. However, vivo does not take profit maximization as the highest pursuit, but attaches importance to technology research and development investment. With large scale, long cycle, and high uncertainty in returns, innovation will be a source of water if mobile phone manufacturers do not adhere to long-termism and invest consistently. vivo has always been a long-term advocate of technology investment. On the other hand, most of the technologies of manufacturers who advocate the direction of "trade, industry and technology" are "take-it-or-leave-it" - this is precisely the consideration of pursuing profit maximization.
Secondly, the forward-looking layout of leading the industry. vivo's innovative technology layout covers self-developed chips, AI, imaging, systems and other fields, and insists on being a leader rather than a follower, in terms of image and chip technology, when most domestic brands are still directly using the public version of the solution, vivo has taken the lead in the layout of self-developed image chips and constantly updates and iterations, and the V3 chip released in 2023 with three iterations allows it to have a dimensionality reduction blow at the point of "image".
Finally, actively explore new things. vivo took the lead in strategically investing in large-model AI mobile phones and taking the lead in self-developed image chips, which required a lot of courage. At the end of 2022, on the basis of having a leading offline channel network, vivo took the lead in cooperating with Meituan Flash Sale to explore take-out mobile phone sales, allowing users to wait for a shorter time when buying a mobile phone. This kind of exploration of instant retail may not bring much sales, but it can bring more choices to users, bring a better shopping experience, improve store operation efficiency, and create unexpected marketing effects.
The implementation of the strategic direction in place depends on the enterprise system and culture, the former can learn from each other, and the latter is the "hard power" integrated into the blood. vivo will implement the scientific business philosophy, relying on the unique corporate culture: "duty", conscientiously do a good job in products, serve users well, and honestly invest in technology is the embodiment of the values.
In fact, most of the corporate culture of enterprises that go far and do big is very simple, because the more simple the truth, the more vitality it has, and it can be said that the road is simple. Shen Wei, the founder of vivo, once shared his understanding of the value of duty at an event, he mentioned, "duty is the attitude of pursuing the long-term in everything and not just seizing the day", "duty is the practice of thinking, saying and doing things that are highly consistent", "duty is the sobriety of insisting on independent and deep thinking and not blindly following the general trend".
The corporate culture of this division has penetrated into all levels of vivo products, organization, and operation, and it has an invisible force to ensure that vivo's strategic policy is implemented in place, to ensure the strong combat effectiveness of the vivo team, and to ensure that vivo sticks to itself in an uncertain environment, and has become vivo's "anchor" in the face of stormy waves.
Judging from the data of major institutions, the decline in mobile phone shipments in 2023 will be significantly narrowed, and Q4 will reverse the trend of 7 consecutive quarters to achieve growth, and major institutions have also said that the mobile phone industry is expected to recover in 2024.
In addition to the Chinese market, going overseas has become an important means for domestic brands to grow. In 2023, domestic brands such as Transsion will conquer the overseas market, and their sales will increase significantly against the trend. Domestic mobile phone brands that have experienced the test of fierce competition in the Chinese market and have world-class competitiveness in their products have opportunities in overseas markets.
The greater opportunity lies in the new possibilities that technological innovation brings to mobile phones. In 2023, we will see innovations in the mobile phone industry, such as satellite communications, titanium, glass, and eye-protection screens, which have become the selling points of corresponding products to a certain extent. What is more worth looking forward to in 2024 is the "new category" of mobile phones, such as AI large-scale model mobile phones, new generation imaging flagships, folding screen mobile phones, etc., these new categories are the direction of mobile phone evolution. If mobile phone manufacturers seize these opportunities, break through the boundaries of traditional smartphones, and create a new generation of mobile phones, they can attract more users to change their phones and form a larger-scale replacement wave.
In the face of a more fierce war in the mobile phone industry in 2024, vivo has prepared everything. As a leading brand in China's mobile phone market for many years, it has significant advantages in technology, products, channels, and brands. More importantly, vivo has insisted on large investment in technology research and development for many years, so that vivo has a forward-looking strategic layout in key technology fields such as chips, AI models, imaging, communications, batteries, and systems, and many technologies are ahead of the industry, which has become the basis for vivo to stand out in the new wave of mobile phone technology change.
For example, with the help of technologies such as the blue heart model, vivo is expected to further release the advantages of AI, help the product, and take the lead in the new wave of AI phone; For another example, after "image" has become the commanding heights of competition in mobile phone products, vivo relies on self-developed image chips and other technologies and years of accumulation of deep cultivation of images, which will make the long board of "image" play a greater advantage ......
In 2023, vivo will buck the trend and successfully reach the top of the "king of domestic production". In the face of a more competitive market in 2024, "will be at the top of the mountain, at a glance" may be enough to describe vivo's state of mind at this moment.