A little-known mobile phone manufacturer will sell more than 94 million smartphones in 2023 and earn more than 60 billion yuan in revenue, becoming the fifth largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world in one fell swoop.
This mobile phone manufacturer is the Chinese mobile phone giant Transsion, which is loved by everyone in Africa, with a market share of more than 40%, but its products are not sold in China, and it owns three mobile phone brands: Tecno, ITEL and Infinix.
Apple, which ranks first, will sell 23.4 billion units, but due to the continued sluggishness of the global mobile phone market, its shipments have been **. As the only mainstream manufacturer with positive growth among the five giants, and the growth rate is as high as 27%, it is also due to the fact that it is going out of Africa and starting to conquer cities in South Asia, Southeast Asia, Latin America and other places.
Not long ago, Transsion Holdings released its 2023 performance report, which showed that Transsion achieved 623revenue of 9.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 339%, operating profit increased by 122 year-on-year55% to 674.8 billion yuan, deducting non-net profit increased by 129 percent year-on-year36% to 506.8 billion yuan.
Transsion said in the performance report that benefiting from the upgrade of product structure and cost optimization, the company's overall shipments have increased and the gross profit margin has increased. Transsion's previous annual reports show that the gross profit margin of Transsion's mobile phone products exceeded 20% in 2022. As a comparison, the gross profit margin of Xiaomi smartphones this year is only 89%。
Compared with other mobile phone manufacturers, Transsion is not only a low-key company, but also a low-key founder. Zhu Zhaojiang, the founder of Transsion Holdings, started as an ordinary employee of Bird Mobile and left to found Transsion in 2006, which has been unknown for many years, until Transsion suddenly rose to become the head mobile phone giant, and this Zhejiang businessman was noticed by everyone along with Transsion.
China's mobile phone market can be called the world's most volatile, but it has also given birth to a number of mobile phone giants, and now among the world's six major mobile phone giants, except for Apple and Samsung, all of them are from China.
Due to the cruel competition, the market is now divided, and several giants are industry veterans who have laid a foundation in the era of feature phones: Huawei started as a customized machine for operators (and later became independent of glory), OPPO and vivo followed from BBK ** mobile phones, and even Xiaomi, which rose in the era of smart phones, and now its mobile phone business helmsman Lu Weibing, also from Gionee.
The low-key Transsion is also an old player in the mobile phone market. As the founder of Transsion Holdings, Zhu Zhaojiang was born in Zhejiang in 1973 and worked for Bird Mobile Phones, one of the mainstream players in the feature phone era. Compared with the brand name, everyone is more familiar with the advertising slogan of the Bird mobile phone back then: Bird mobile phone, the fighter in the mobile phone.
In the nineties of the last century, when Zhu Zhaojiang joined Bird, it was in the transition period from pager to mobile phone, and Zhu Zhaojiang, who belonged to the pager department at the beginning, realized this trend, so he decisively asked to be transferred to the mobile phone department and engaged in sales business. After joining the mobile phone business department, Zhu Zhaojiang became the sales champion of Bird in North China in just three years.
With excellent sales ability, Zhu Zhaojiang entered the management of Bird early and became a sales manager. In 2003, he was transferred abroad to be responsible for developing overseas markets, and according to data, in just two years, Zhu Zhaojiang sold 6 million mobile phones in overseas markets.
Zhu Zhaojiang's accumulation in overseas markets also became the spark for Transsion to start a business in Africa, and Zhu Zhaojiang had become the deputy general manager of Bird. In 2006, Zhu Zhaojiang quit his job at Bird and founded Transsion Mobile.
However, at that time, the competition in China's mobile phone market was extremely fierce, and the international giants Nokia and Samsung were still in full swing, and the domestic brands such as Gionee, Tianyu, and the old club Bird were still very strong, and Huawei and Lenovo were also doing mobile phone business at that time.
Therefore, Zhu Zhaojiang, who was previously in charge of Bird's overseas business, simply set his sights on overseas, especially the untapped African market. In 2008, after two years of research and development, Transsion launched its first product, the T780, in Nigeria.
After entering the African market, Zhu Zhaojiang realized that the consumption level here is limited, and the most important thing for Transsion is to be cost-effective. Therefore, in the early days, Transsion mainly did not play technology, but relied on high quality and low price to capture the market, and brought the functions such as dual SIM and dual standby and first-class camera that have long been popularized in China to the local market.
The ultimate localization and high cost performance have become the killer features of TRANSSION to stabilize the first place in the African market. As Transsion's local competitor, Samsung has actually set up a factory in Nigeria as well. However, at that time, Samsung did not launch customized models for the African market to meet local needs, but directly sold low-end machines in other markets to Africa.
Transsion, on the other hand, has improved a number of features to suit the preferences of the locals. In a research report by Guoxin ** in 2021, it was mentioned that Transsion's technical analysis of black people's facial contours, * compensation, imaging effects, etc., solved the problem of beautifying dark people's photos; In response to the huge difference in self-payment between different operators in Africa, mobile phones with dual SIM and even four SIM and four standby have been launched; In response to the problem of difficult charging in Africa, a feature phone with a standby time of more than 20 days has been launched.
While maintaining its advantages in the African market, Transsion has been actively going out of Africa and exploring emerging markets in recent years, especially in the past 2023, which is a year of counterattack for Transsion.
According to a report released by IDC, Transsion achieved strong growth in several emerging markets in the second half of 2023, maintaining the first place in smartphone shipments in Africa, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the Philippines. According to the Canalys shipment report, Transsion achieved 23% growth in Africa in the fourth quarter of 2023.
Many people's first impression of Transsion is the title of "King of African Mobile Phones" in the industry. But in fact, in recent years, Transsion is going beyond Africa and has begun to blossom in Asia, Africa and Latin America and third world countries.
According to a recent report by Alpha Factory, Transsion's internal data shows that in the first three quarters of 2023, the revenue of Transsion's African business has dropped to 35% of the total revenue, while the South Asian market has accounted for 21% of the total revenue, reaching the first market share in Pakistan, Bangladesh and other countries.
In 2019, Transsion was listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, and in four years, its revenue increased from 2534.6 billion yuan has grown to more than 60 billion yuan now, with a compound annual growth rate of more than 30%.
According to Transsion's official website, the overall shipment of Transsion mobile phones in 2022 will reach about 15.6 billion units, this figure even surpassed Xiaomi's smartphone shipments that year, ranking third in the world. However, this includes not only smartphones, but also many feature phones, with smartphones as the caliber, Transsion ranked sixth in the world in 2022.
Transsion's 2023 annual report has not yet been released, so the overall shipment volume has not yet been disclosed, but this year, Transsion's market ranking in the global smartphone industry has risen again. According to IDC data, Transsion will ship 94.9 million smartphones in 2023, ranking fifth in the world with a market share of 81%。Especially in the fourth quarter, Transsion's global smartphone shipments reached 28.2 million units, a year-on-year increase of 686%, jumping to fourth place in the world for the first time, surpassing OPPO and vivo.
Despite the amazing sales, Transsion is not known in China, as a Transsion employee expressed to the city, "Transsion is only sold in poorer countries", and the main products are also the lowest thousand-yuan machines, feature phones.
A Transsion employee working in Southeast Asia told the city that most of the Transsion mobile phones are only about 1,000 yuan in Chinese currency, and the most expensive folding screen they sell is only about 4,000 yuan in Chinese currency. And the same **, you can basically only buy entry-level flagship phones in China, and the price of most brands of folding screen mobile phones is more than 6000 yuan.
A person in the communications industry who works in Africa told the city that most of the local black people use Transsion mobile phones, "Apple and Samsung brands of mobile phones** are still relatively expensive, and Transsion mobile phones basically do not exceed 1,000 yuan." Moreover, the local consumption power is limited, and they will buy second-hand mobile phones, and many second-hand mobile phones that are eliminated in China end up in the African market."
However, the low price has also led to the low profit margin of feature phones, and in recent years, Transsion has been working hard to expand into markets such as South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, and has made smartphones a business center. A Transsion employee working in Indonesia told Shijie that Transsion is already among the top four in the local market.
According to the data, TRANSSION's sales network has covered more than 70 countries and regions around the world, ranking first in African shipments for many years, and forming a cliff-like lead over the second place Samsung, with a market share of more than 40%.
According to Transsion's official website, in the "2023 Most Popular Brands among African Consumers" list released by African Business, Transsion's three mobile phone brands, Tecno, Infinix and ITEL, ranked first and 30th respectively, among which Tecno has ranked first among the selected Chinese brands for many years.
Transsion, which has quietly counterattacked, has attracted attention in recent days because of its bold year-end bonus, and a "Notice on the Distribution Measures of Transsion Holdings 2023 Year-end Bonus" issued by Transsion shows that the company's management has determined that the company's performance coefficient is 13. That is, all employees will receive an additional 30% year-end bonus on the basis of the normal accounting year-end bonus, which also makes Transsion the latest "fairy company".
On social **, some netizens posted a PPT of Transsion's 2023 autumn recruitment announcement, saying that the comprehensive salary of undergraduates joining Transsion is 31.38 million yuan in the first year, the comprehensive salary in the first year of master's is 36.43 million yuan, and the doctor's salary is not capped. A Transsion employee who was sent to the Philippines also told City Boundary that the local salary of undergraduates who joined Transsion could reach 330,000 yuan.
(Netizens posted the Transsion Autumn Trick ppt.) ** Little Red Book).
This salary level is not high compared with the domestic giants going overseas, but the threshold is much lower, and many fresh graduates who graduated from double non-bachelor's degrees can be hired. A Transsion HR revealed on social ** that Transsion's overseas employees will basically not lay off employees, because they are mainly in third world countries and the conditions are more difficult.
But the transmission that mainly relies on selling thousand-yuan machines or even hundred-yuan machines is actually not as "profitable" as the outside world imagined.
In the mobile phone industry, the higher the selling price, the greater the profit margin, even if the gross profit margin is lower, the profit of the expensive mobile phone is much higher than that of the low-end machine. Because the main products are mainly low-cost volume products, in fact, to a large extent, it limits the profitability of Transsion.
According to the report of the above-mentioned Alpha Factory, the average sales unit price (ASP) of Transsion mobile phones is only more than 500 yuan. According to the financial report, Transsion's revenue in 2022 will be 4569.6 billion yuan, including 15.6 billion units, with an average mobile phone contributing less than 300 yuan in revenue.
At present, only Xiaomi is listed among the mainstream mobile phone manufacturers in China, but even Xiaomi, which focuses on "cost performance", is much stronger than Transsion in terms of profitability. In November 2023, the third-quarter financial report released by Xiaomi Group showed that the overall revenue of Xiaomi Group in that quarter was 708900 million yuan, adjusted net profit of 59900 million yuan. Xiaomi's revenue and net profit in a quarter are equivalent to Transsion's revenue and net profit in a year.
In the overseas market, the treatment of Huawei and Xiaomi employees is generally higher than that of Transsion, and even some former Transsion employees said that if they switch to Huawei after two years of work in Transsion, their salary can be directly doubled.
One of the main reasons for the rise of Transsion is that there are many unexplored market gaps in Asia, Africa and Latin America, which have not yet been occupied by giants, and the leading mobile phone manufacturers are more focused on mature markets with higher value, such as China, the United States and Europe. According to IDC data, as of the third quarter of 2023, the average price of China's mobile phone market has reached 3,480 yuan, and the value of the high-end market has been further highlighted.
However, as the smartphone market tends to become saturated, manufacturers such as Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo are now increasing their investment in emerging markets, which may also put pressure on Transsion. According to Canalys data, in the fourth quarter of 2023, Xiaomi, OPPO and Realme grew rapidly in the African market, achieving year-on-year growth of 88%, 156% and 105% respectively.
Transsion, which has risen by extremely low prices, has successfully counterattacked in terms of shipments, but if it wants to catch up with the leading manufacturers in terms of overall revenue and profits, it still needs to continue to make efforts in intelligence and high-end.