Shulou(Shulou.com)06/03 Report--

There is a strange phenomenon in the mobile phone market. Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO and vivo are all domestic first-tier mobile phone brands, but the image of vivo always gives people the impression that it is a bit shorter than Huawei and Xiaomi, as well as its famous OPPO.

As a result, in the promised 5G market, the leading sales of vivo 5G phones surprised users and aroused suspicion. Ask passers-by: "do you know which brand sells most 5G phones?" . Most people will answer: Huawei, Xiaomi, Samsung. Vivo is rarely mentioned. In fact, in the 2019 domestic 5G mobile phone market share data report, vivo ranked second only to Huawei, with a market share of 17.7%, while Xiaomi ranked third with a market share of 10.4%.

Moreover, in the eyes of consumers in first-and second-tier cities (people with high education and high income), although Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO and vivo are all smartphone manufacturers that China has entered into the global TOP5, the brand reputation of Huawei and Xiaomi is obviously stronger than that of OPPO and vivo. When Huawei phones and vivo phones with the same price and function are in front of them, no one will choose vivo over Huawei.

The fact that brand value is not recognized by the middle class is a hard wound for vivo.

Vivo phones have long been known for their appearance, HIFI and camera configurations, with little mention of cost-effective and chip technology. Today, the requirements of the young people in the small town who hold up the vivo flag are no longer limited to the appearance and photo function, but also the lifestyle and identity tags represented by the mobile phone brand. They are not only pursuing cost performance, but also eager to use the phone to reflect their taste and identity.

The brand is not popular, lack of performance-to-price ratio, no functional advantage of vivo began to be abandoned by young people in the town, the trend of the west mountain appears. It never rains but it pours, and high-end mobile phone brands begin to sink, winning hearts and minds at low prices, sharply narrowing vivo's living space. As a result, upgrading the brand image to seize mid-range consumers has become an urgent task for vivo mobile phones.

So, how can the vivo brand systematically upgrade its brand image and improve the research and development technology of 5G mobile phones to gain the recognition of the "freshmen"?

The gains and losses of young people in a small town

The reason for the loss of vivo users is that, on the one hand, the consumption concept of users has changed and the demand does not match.

Most of the young people in the small town pursue stability, have more consumption space, and the consumption demand is more exuberant. They favor domestic brands and are eager to live like the masses of first-tier cities. Among them, domestic clothing, domestic mobile phones, domestic beauty makeup, domestic brand cars are quite favored by young people in small towns, because the prices of these products are suitable and novel and trendy.

This is also the reason why domestic mobile phones such as vivo and OPPO were able to take root and monopolize the sinking market at the beginning.

Penguin Research platform pointed out in the "smartphone & Smart hardware: 2019 Chinese netizens purchasing power report": in terms of education and income, users of the OPPO and vivo brands lag behind Huawei and Xiaomi.

With bachelor's degree or above, 4.9% of OPPO users account for only 5.1%, while junior high school and below account for more than 60%. The proportion of people with an income of more than 8000 yuan, with an OPPO of 5.2% and 6.9% in vivo. While the monthly income is less than 3000 yuan, OPPO accounts for 59.7%, and body accounts for 58.4%.

At the same time, in the gender comparison of the stock users of first-tier mobile phone brands, the proportion of women in OPPO and vivo is about 60%; in terms of age, the users of OPPO and vivo are more young people between the ages of 20 and 29, and the users of OPPO and vivo are basically concentrated in third-and fourth-tier cities, accounting for nearly 65%.

From the data point of view, OPPO, vivo almost monopolized the mobile phone business in the town.

At that time, for the young people in the small town with the label of "washing, cutting and blowing, small trousers, billiards hall, fake mobile phone", vivo was a trendy product with hands, very close to their own personalized needs. Now, with the development of economy, the consumption habits of third-and fourth-tier cities are seamlessly connected with those of first-and second-tier cities, and young people in other first-and second-tier cities begin to live in third-tier and lower-tier cities because of their daily life. The migration of people has also changed the consumption habits of young people in small towns.

User tags reflect the label of the brand, and the awakening of brand awareness among young people in small towns has led more and more users to choose higher-end mobile phone brands, affecting vivo mobile phone sales.

According to the 2019 smartphone market share report, China's smartphone market shipped 97.8 million units in the third quarter, up slightly from 97.6 million in the previous quarter, but still down 3 per cent from the same period last year. Among them, vivo shipped 17.5 million units, its market share fell to 17.9%, and vivo's mobile phone sales fell sharply by 23% compared with the same period in 2018. Similarly, OPPO shipped 17 million units, with a market share of 17.4%, down 20% from a year earlier.

Huawei, by contrast, continued to maintain sales growth, shipping 41.5 million units, an increase of 66 per cent year-on-year and a market share of 42.4 per cent. Obviously, more and more young people are abandoning vivo mobile phones and turning to Huawei.

It is worth noting that in addition to the change in users' spending habits and the growing fullness of the smartphone market, sales of vivo phones have declined. The unclear positioning of vivo mobile phones and the loss of offline channels are also important reasons for its decline.

The loss of power of offline channels

From wired phones to smartphones, from Motorola and Nokia in the 2G era, Coolpad and Huawei in the 3G era, to Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO and vivo in the 4G era, and Huawei and Samsung in the 5G era. With the change of the times, not only the function of mobile phone has undergone earth-shaking changes, but also the whole mobile phone market has experienced many reshuffles.

And every time the industry changes, it will create heroes, and vivo was once a symbol of the times.

In 2011, China's mobile phone from the functional phone era into the smart phone era, vivo took advantage of the opportunity to launch vivo X1, complete intelligent functions coupled with novel Hi-Fi functions caused widespread praise in the market, and become a generation of classic models. Subsequently, vivo released the world's first flagship 2K screen phone, the vivo Xplay3S, which proved its ability to make mobile phones. Since then, X3 series, X5 series, X9 series and other models have also come out one after another, tamping the industry position of vivo.

At the same time, the vivo phone, which relied on the huge number of offline stores, The Smiling、Proud Wanderer, was the first smartphone for many young people in a small town.

On the one hand, after years of hard work, vivo has created a huge offline sales channel. In the early days, major brands worked online, while vivo did the opposite, focusing on creating offline channels, from small towns to second-and third-tier cities and even first-tier cities. Vivo offline stores were found in most places.

It is reported that there are about 200000 offline stores under the vivo line, including nearly 4000 experience centers, vivo agent experience stores and specialty stores plus dealer franchise stores, and so on. After a long period of accumulation, the offline stores of vivo can be seen in the streets and alleys at any time reflecting the expansion strength of vivo, which is difficult for other brands to compete with.

On the other hand, vivo has strong marketing strength, in addition to offline advertising, year-round investment in variety show advertising, try moments advertising and other brands to launch customized products, a series of marketing actions to strengthen vivo brand reputation.

Vivo began sponsoring Happy Camp in 2013, and then vivo participated in more than 25 named variety shows in the two years from 2015 to 2016. Including "Happy Camp" and well-known variety shows such as "two days and one Night", "where is Dad going", "I am a Singer", "Mars Intelligence", "complaining Conference", "Strange Theory" and so on.

Moreover, vivo is good at using all marketing channels to increase brand awareness. For example, on January 25, 2015, Wechat launched its first moments ad, and vivo, along with BMW and Coca-Cola, became the first batch of advertisers. Vivo also partnered with Pepsi to launch a customized version of Pepsi. At the same time, sponsor FIFA (International Football Federation) to open up popularity through international sports events and open the way to overseas service.

Huge sales channels and unique products and marketing techniques have established vivo's leading position in the mobile phone market at home and abroad.

At its peak, vivo overtook Huawei, Xiaomi and even Apple to become the runner-up in domestic mobile phone sales. According to data released by IDC, vivo shipped 19.2 million units in the Chinese market in the third quarter of 2016, while vivo grew at an astonishing 101 per cent. For the first time, Huawei, Xiaomi and Apple ranked third to fifth in the Chinese market, second only to OPPO.

It's just that vivo rises fast and falls fast.

The figure has been falling since domestic mobile phone shipments reached an all-time peak of 660 million in 2016, according to a research report by the China Academy of Information and Communication. The year-on-year decline reached a double-digit rate of 12.3% in 2017 and 15.6% in 2018.

The cold winter attack of the market is one of the reasons for the decline in sales. In the overall shrinking market environment in the past three years, many manufacturers have experienced the "dark moment" of declining sales and decreasing share. some brands have changed from the mainstream to the edge, and some manufacturers have directly withdrawn from the market.

The main reason is that as the online brand pattern gradually stabilizes, the major brands begin to focus on this piece of cake offline, and there are many brands coming to grab food.

In recent years, Huawei, Xiaomi, Samsung, Apple and other first-tier mobile phone brands have stepped up efforts to build offline stores. Since 2015, Huawei has built offline channels through the "Thousand County Plan". Now Huawei has more than 53000 retail outlets around the world. After the launch of Xiaomi mobile phones on the main attack line, the number of stores of Xiaomi Home has exceeded 400. another 1000 stores are expected to open within three years.

Huawei, Xiaomi, Jian Zhi Vivo offline stores, to vivo to form a huge competitive pressure, the loss of offline share of vivo also lost power offline. With the competition for supremacy and the fierce competition in the mobile phone market, vivo needs to rethink how to maintain its product position.

The confrontation of "Product + Sub-Brand"

With the surging Internet mobile phone market in recent years, the competition among Xiaomi, Huawei, Coolpad, vivo, OPPO and other mobile phone manufacturers is becoming more and more diverse, from product features to brand reputation. Natural selection survival of the fittest, vivo changes with the changes in the market, once the "camera phone" honor gradually dimmed, in the sub-brand building also lagged behind.

1. The label of camera phone is aging

There is a saying in the e-commerce market, "those who get women win the world."

With the awakening of female market spending power, the position of female users in the mobile phone market is becoming more and more prominent. Female audiences have a high switching rate and do not have strong requirements for the performance of the mobile phone, only for the appearance and photo function of the mobile phone. and willing to spend money to buy love. As a result, women's mobile phones have become popular for a while, and all kinds of products that focus on photography mobile phones are flocking in.

At the end of 2016, vivo launched the vivo X9 series, featuring the "front 20 million soft light dual camera", which not only provides the top front dual camera combination on the market, but also equipped with the second generation Moonlight soft light. The powerful photo function and the slogan "illuminate your beauty" make the vivo X9 series the "best photography" phone, which is also praised by many users as a powerful selfie weapon, vivo has opened up the camera phone market.

The vivo X9 series made the vivo photo function popular, while the vivo X20 deepened people's impression of vivo as the "best camera phone".

In 2017, vivo concocted and launched the vivo X20, 24 million photosensitive unit with the fastest 0.03s extreme focus, which still has extremely high pixel performance in the face of backlight and night scenes, and the slogan "backlight is also clear" is also popular and widely circulated. It is worth mentioning that vivo also won the "Best camera phone of the year" award from the Swan Award, the highest mobile phone award in China, for its X20.

Vivo is so honored for taking pictures on its mobile phone because there is a "technical army" behind it. It is reported that in the camera module, vivo cooperates with module giants Ofeiguang, Shunyu Technology, Qiu Titanium Technology and Xinli International; in the camera chip, it cooperates with Samsung; in the camera lens, it cooperates with Da Liguang; in 3D face recognition, it cooperates with Skyvision Technology.

"camera phone" used to be the tag of vivo, but now it is being replaced by Huawei.

Nowadays, when it comes to taking pictures on mobile phones, people's first reaction is Huawei. The recent hot tags such as "shooting the Moon", "Telescope phone" and "Leica Quad Photo" are the reasons why Huawei P30 Pro has become a popular camera phone.

The Huawei P30 Pro is claimed to be a "telescope" because the P30 Pro uses a four-photo design (a 40 million-pixel movie camera, a 40 million-pixel super-photosensitive camera, a 8 million-pixel telephoto camera, and a 3D deep camera), stretching the line of sight of users through 40 million super-light sensitivity and 8 million super-zoom on the 20 million ultra-wide-angle machine, thus shaping the zoom ability of Huawei phones to the peak.

In addition, Huawei has also satisfied users' photo demands such as macro, backlight, dim light, smart beauty and anti-shake. The word-of-mouth spread of Huawei P30 Pro, coupled with brand value, makes Huawei the representative of "camera phone".

With the development of science and technology and the changes of the times, the trend of mobile phones replacing cameras is becoming more and more intense, and cameras have become the main selling point of many mobile phone manufacturers. Under this general trend, the quality of the mobile phone camera will affect the user's judgment on the mobile phone brand.

For mobile phone manufacturers, the competition of each mobile phone function reflects their own comprehensive strength, and the labels such as "waterproof", "camera phone", "cost-effective", "fast charging" and so on highlight the strength of the brand. It is also the only magic weapon to attract minority users. Now, vivo, which loses the tag "camera phone", is tantamount to losing its right hand.

two。 The sub-brand lags behind others

The blooming of sub-brands is the current situation of the domestic Internet mobile phone market. Huawei & Honor, OPPO&realme, Yijia, Xiaomi & Red Milk, POCOPHONE, Black Shark, Meitu are one step ahead to expand their territory. In 2019, vivo and its subsidiary brand iQOO arrived long overdue.

In the Internet market, when the parent brand is slow or stagnant, the sub-brand acts as a "lead line", leading the parent brand to expand outward, and the parent brand will also give financial help to the sub-brand, as does the mobile phone market.

On the one hand, the growth of vivo offline channels has slowed down, and the establishment of iQOO sub-brands has added new channels. As mentioned earlier, Vivo offline channels lost power, basically in the stage of slow growth, and strong competitors are pouring in. The establishment of sub-brand iQOO can not only help vivo expand online channels, but also help vivo cover some of the new people, such as people in first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

On the other hand, competitors such as Xiaomi, Huawei and OPPO have launched sub-brands one after another, which makes vivo feel more pressure. Glory is the "ancestor" of mobile phone manufacturers to set up sub-brand path, and it is also the most successful example so far. After the successful breakthrough of Glory, Yijia became independent from OPPO, and then the red rice brand was run independently by Xiaomi in 2019.

The growing sub-brands have expanded the user coverage of mobile phone manufacturers, and their market share has also expanded. Vivo also realized that only by setting up sub-brands to subdivide the population and expand the scope of services, can we grow quickly and not be opened by competitors.

It is understood that iQOO launched the mobile phone, the main hit of "high-performance" and pricing is very "close to the people". Such positioning can help vivo to remove the "idol" label, the future does not rule out the possibility that vivo can enter the market beyond the current positioning. As it grows stronger and stronger, iQOO will slowly begin to lay out more price ranges and higher-performance research and development.

However, glory, red rice has matured, one plus, black shark ready to go, and iQOO fledgling competitiveness is obviously insufficient. In terms of performance-to-price ratio, vivo is not as good as Xiaomi; in photography, vivo is not as good as Huawei; and in offline channels, OPPO is also better than vivo.

In the 4G era, vivo nearly lost itself in the fierce competition for brands, but the 5G market is another world.

5G inflection point

To tell you the truth, since entering the 5G era, vivo has become more and more popular.

As we all know, 2019 is the first year of 5G, and 2020 will be the outbreak year of 5G mobile phones. Since the issuance of domestic 5G license, the changes brought about by 5G have become more and more intense. with the rapid development of 5G industry, mobile phone manufacturers have also accelerated the pace of launching 5G mobile phones.

IDC, a well-known international research company, predicts that global shipments of 5G smartphones will reach 123.5 million in 2020, accounting for 8.9% of total smartphone shipments, and this proportion is expected to rise to 28.1% by 2023. At the same time, China Mobile Terminal Company pointed out that the market size of China Mobile's 5G mobile phone will exceed 100 million in 2020, more than 10 mobile phone brands will launch 5G mobile phones, and 100 5G mobile phones will be launched one after another.

In the wave of 5G mobile phones, vivo is at the forefront of the launch, launching two flagship 5G phones in a month and winning the quarterly championship in 5G sales.

According to IDC, a research firm, vivo took the first place in the market share of Chinese 5G mobile phones with 54% in the third quarter of 2019. At the same time, vivo's iQOO Pro 5G, vivo NEX3 5G, vivo X30 series and other products are highly recognized and won a good reputation in the industry.

According to the latest running data of Anbunny Androd flagship mobile phone performance ranking, vivode's three flagship products have won the top three. The vivo iQOO Neo 855 speed version ranks first with an average running score of more than 500000. Vivo iQOO Pro 5G and NEX 35G are not far behind, ranking second and third, respectively.

The reason why vivo is at the top of the list is that vivo has planned ahead of time in terms of 5G and made the layout early.

Since 2016, vivo has successively set up 5G R & D centers in Beijing and other places, participated in the standard-setting work of the standards association 3GPP 5G and invested heavily in the research and development of 5G prototypes. Fully prepared in 5G technology, processor system, camera function, mobile phone configuration, performance-to-price ratio and so on.

The application of vivo iQOO Neo 855, vivo iQOO Pro 5G and NEX 35G marks the basic maturity of vivo in 5G technology research.

However, in the 5G market, brands such as Huawei and Samsung have more professional, mature and complete teams, and have stored a large number of patents on core technologies such as screen, memory and chip, which is a far cry from that of vivo. Moreover, one of the main reasons for the high sales of vivo 5G phones is the low price. With the development of 5G phones, the price advantage of vivo will soon disappear, and the deficiency of technology deficiency will be more prominent at that time.

To put it simply, the biggest problem with vivo is that there is always an empty day for the family, and there is no new channel to break through, even in the 5G field, which is limited by technology and lacks the strength to compete with its competitors. Whether vivo can break this situation in the future depends on whether it can consolidate its technical capabilities and find its own allies. After all, weaving a gorgeous coat is not a long-term solution, but the way to survive is to have the hard power to make chips.

(official account of Liu Kuang / tr. by Phil Newell) ID:liukuang110

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.