Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

In the middle of the fourth quarter, mobile phone manufacturers once again opened the moment of new product competition to welcome a round of sales peak on the eve of the Spring Festival.

On November 24, OPPO released three new Reno9 series products. As the main force of OPPO's mid-to-high-end product line, Reno series contributed considerable sales data.

Liu Bo, vice president of OPPO and president of China, said in an interview with the media that Reno series has accumulated 70 million users worldwide, and the brand repurchase rate exceeds 56%. OPPO will continue to build Reno series in three aspects: appearance, image and smoothness, bringing high-end experience to the mid-range product line.

This year, the decline of the domestic mobile phone industry has become an unavoidable challenge. Liu Bo believes that in the face of market fluctuations and competition, we should maintain a normal heart. Neither aggressive expansion when the industry environment is good nor conservative retreat when the market is under pressure. OPPO has no significant inventory clearance pressure this year and is expected to grow slightly in sales next year.

At the same time, OPPO continues to push forward the research and development of underlying technologies such as chips and operating systems to enhance resilience under market fluctuations. He revealed that OPPO's self-developed Mariana X chip is still chasing orders after placing more than 10 million orders, and there will be more action in the future.

In the face of market fluctuations, we must maintain a normal heart. Recently, market research organization IDC released the report on China's smartphone market in the third quarter of 2022. According to the report, China's smartphone shipments in the third quarter were about 71.13 million units, down 11.9% year-on-year, and the market remained depressed.

The overall decline in the market is a huge challenge for all mobile phone manufacturers. Liu Bo admitted that OPPO naturally faces market pressure, but overall, mobile phones are still an industry worth investing in for a long time.

He pointed out that the number of smartphone users in China is about 1 billion, and if calculated once every three years, the annual capacity is 330 million. Even considering the existence of the second-hand market, the market will remain at a scale of 250 million-270 million. "The future is relatively stable. Rational analysis of the market is neither pessimistic nor optimistic in good times. "

On the premise of stable total volume, Liu Bo said that the average unit price of mobile phones from 2020 to 2022 is in an increasing state, so the sales scale of mobile phone market can still stabilize at the level of more than 900 billion yuan. In addition, the data shows that users 'mobile phone usage is still increasing, indicating that the necessity and practicality of mobile phones for users is still very strong.

In fact, compared with this year's decline in sales, last year's mobile phone industry was generally faced with a shortage of chips, many manufacturers chose to add orders to stock up, so that in this year's market tightening appeared inventory backlog.

Before serving as president of China, Liu Bo was in charge of the supply chain for many years at OPPO, so he exercised relative restraint in adding orders. He revealed that OPPO has always maintained a sound financial strategy, cash is always sufficient turnover, there is no need to sell goods to get cash to promote business.

"There is no significant inventory clearance pressure this year. "He said that OPPO should accurately predict the demand and market conditions. Last year and the year before last, there was not a little margin, but it maintained relative restraint and rationality.

"Mature markets do not have opportunities like incremental markets. They need to rationally analyze changes in enterprise capabilities, changes in product competitiveness, and changes in supply markets. For us, this set of analytical methods and strategies is relatively mature, so we look better and more stable. "

For next year's expectations, Liu Bo still maintains restraint and rationality. He revealed that OPPO will be relatively stable in the Chinese market next year, expecting a slight increase in turnover, not just excessive attention to quantity. "For mobile phone manufacturers, on the one hand, it depends on the quantity, on the other hand, it depends on the customer unit price and GMV. OPPO's current plan may not make a big breakthrough in sales figures, more is the unit price of visitors, average unit price and turnover scale. "

Reno series brand repurchase rate exceeds 56%. In addition to restraint, OPPO is also emphasizing internal basic capacity building, such as stable output of products.

Liu Bo said that OPPO's product line is getting clearer and clearer. On high-end products, it will adopt dual flagship strategy, releasing image flagship Find X series in the first half of the year and folding flagship Find N series in the second half of the year, with price range of 4K+; Reno series products will be released during summer vacation and Spring Festival, with price range of 2.5K to 4K. Meanwhile, OPPO will continuously strengthen Reno products in the future. In addition to appearance, flagship features will sink in images; Series A focuses on the market below 2000 yuan, launching three models of high/medium/low, one iteration per year.

In addition, after Yijia announced its return, OPPO also repositioned it: the pioneer brand with the main performance. One plus products will focus on performance, some of the pioneering designs of the past will be retained, and the rhythm will be distinguished from OPPO.

"OPPO is completely aligned in the whole R & D end, marketing end and sales end. In the future, the output of products will be more stable, including the smooth operation and consistency of each module. "

Among the several series, the Reno series, which is positioned at the middle end, has always been the granary of OPPO.

According to the domestic smartphone report released by CINNO Research in the first half of this year, OPPO topped the sales list. Among them, OPPO Reno8 series, OPPO A57 and other popular products shipped more than 2 million units in a single quarter, becoming an important force for OPPO to occupy the top spot. The Reno8 series in particular helped OPPO maintain its leading position in the domestic mid-market ($200-$400) in the second quarter.

Liu Bo introduced that Reno series has several characteristics. First, the color; second, the image; third, the smooth experience. Take fluency as an example, starting from OPPO R7 with 3G large memory, R9 with 4G large memory, this Reno9 uses 16G large memory, leading the industry. In addition to hardware, Reno also has many changes in software, including memory scheduling, application quick start, background keepalive, etc.

"Say it's mid-range, but the experience must be high-end. Liu Bo said that on the Reno9 series, OPPO has given Qualcomm 8 series SoC, Mariana X chip, flagship camera sensor, 16G +512G large storage specifications, etc., and many flagship products of these configurations are not necessarily used.

Statistics from OPPO show that Reno series has accumulated more than 70 million users worldwide, and the brand repurchase rate of users exceeds 56%, which is equivalent to more than half of Reno users buying OPPO phones for the second or even third time.

In the context of the lengthening of the user replacement cycle, mobile phone manufacturers naturally want users to speed up the replacement. However, Liu Bo stressed that OPPO sees a high demand from users for the durability of mobile phones. The Reno9 series has been enhanced in hardware configuration and specially optimized for long-term use in software. It may not need to be replaced for three or four years. In the short term, the user's replacement cycle seems to be lengthened, but when the user changes the machine, he will still choose OPPO.

In addition to sorting out clear product lines and stabilizing granary Reno series, OPPO is also promoting the research and development of underlying technologies according to established strategic plans under the challenging industry situation to maintain resilience during market fluctuation cycles.

Self-developed chips and ecosystems are two of the representative technologies, and may also be the most difficult bottleneck for the mobile phone industry to overcome.

In December 2021, OPPO released the first NPU chip Mariana X for self-developed images, which was successively installed in Find X5 series, Reno8 series and Reno9 series this time. Liu Bo revealed that Mariana X chip orders have exceeded 10 million. In chip research and development and chip adaptation, OPPO investment personnel are still increasing.

The Reno9 series released this time is equipped with Mariana X, which can play an advantage in low-illumination scenes such as dark light and backlight; In addition, Mariana X chip and mobile phone SoC combination, together with OPPO custom sensor and portrait algorithm matrix, jointly constitute Reno9 series dual-core portrait photography system, which can support dual-core 4K ultra-clear night scene video, dual-core 4K HDR video, chip-level App camera enhancement and other functions.

He said that with the Mariana algorithm, OPPO will change more in terms of images next year. "This year's chip is the first step, we will take the second step, and we will continue to iterate hardware and software. "

In terms of operating system, in August this year, OPPO released Pantanal, a smart cross-end system. As part of ColorOS, Pantanal enables people-centric, cross-device, cross-system coherent services. Pantanal will also have a lot of new features in ColorOS 13.1 next year.

Liu Bo admitted that although optimistic about the current industry and situation, but in the self-research chip and operating system pressure is very high. He revealed that three or four years ago, when OPPO discussed doing Mariana and Pantanal, it had been determined that a large amount of resources should be invested, but later found that the budget needed to be added and continued to invest.

"Although there is pressure to do the underlying technology, we still need to constantly explore what technology can bring to users. "He said that in the future mobile phone market, in addition to attractive selling points, it is also necessary to do a good job in basic experience and the most essential things, which is what OPPO currently attaches the most importance to.

For example, Apple's battery life is excellent and there are some underlying technical support. Power consumption, heat generation, performance these seemingly simple things are the most difficult to make breakthroughs, want to really do, need to invest a lot of research and development.

"What we've done in recent years has been more of a bottom-level technology. In the future, we hope to become more capable and confident through these efforts. The experience brought by these underlying technologies needs to be felt by users in use, and then in Reno, Find and folding products, we will slowly see our results. "Liu Bo said.

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