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

On January 9, Beijing time, the International Consumer Electronics Exhibition (Consumer Electronics Show, referred to as CES) closed. Organizers expect 100000 people to participate in the exhibition this year.

Ansher Sager, chief analyst at Moor Insighs and Strategy, an international research firm, said excitedly that CES is one of the exhibitions that really can't disappear, and there is no place to gather so many people from different places in the technology industry so that people can find each other and meet.

More importantly, CES connects and predicts the future. Some people say that the best part of CES is "innovation". Those great technological products that are likely to enter the market and change the human way of life in the next three to five years will all choose to make their debut here.

As a top exhibition that has been held for 56 years, CES is like an invisible database of human imagination, the rise and fall of the industry, and the company's fortunes.

It knows everything, for example, with the rise of Japanese home appliances in the 1990s, Panasonic and Sharp are often the most popular stars at the exhibition. Ten years later, this status was replaced by South Korean duo Samsung and LG; and the decline of Japanese car companies, BMW, Audi and other traditional German car companies have turned a corner to show their sincerity in embracing the electric era on CES, but Toyota, Honda and Nissan do not even have a shadow and continue to be absent.

It can even gain insight into the reluctance, adventure and sense of crisis that hide during the exhibition, which drive the birth of a number of great companies.

In 1990, Zhou Houjian, former chairman of Hisense, participated in CES for the first time and saw with his own eyes the "heartbreaking" gap between domestic and foreign technology. After becoming director of Qingdao Television Factory in 1992, he firmly pursued the strategy of setting up enterprises through technology, eliminated the "big pot of rice" in the R & D team, implemented the "special zone" system in which bonuses were linked to development results, and substantially increased R & D wages.

Over the next 30 years, whether it is making TV chips or LCD modules, technology investment has formed a kind of "inertia" in Hisense. To this end, they do not hesitate to reduce investment in other areas.

Ren Zhengfei, who made a special visit to CES in 2002, shared his impact on Huawei's intranet after returning home: "to visit this international exhibition, we only had one day to run desperately in the hall before we barely finished visiting a hall. Only after that did I know that there were seven halls, which would take at least seven days. It is an eye-opener to the development of international computers. Find the feeling that China's computer industry is going to sunset, and find the feeling that we will lose all the market if we do not work hard to develop technology. " At that time, Huawei had just begun its journey of internationalization.

The sense of crisis that entrepreneurs feel from CES is finally internalized into the impetus for enterprises to firmly embrace technological innovation.

In fact, when Hisense first participated in CES in 2001, Hisense was not even qualified to enter the main venue of the exhibition (referred to as LVCC) and could only set up a booth in a hotel, a branch venue two or three kilometers away.

Withstanding the desolation is almost the only way for unknown enterprises to go to sea in the early days. Even now, the Venice Hotel, Aria Hotel and Jinsha Exhibition area near LVCC are still the first stops for many small and medium-sized exhibitors to enter CES.

It was not until two years later that Hisense entered the main venue of CES.

In recent years, with the complete technology system and the core position in the industrial chain, Huawei, ZTE, Hisense and Lenovo have become the representatives of the main venues of CES to show the hard power of Chinese enterprises. For such a display, only the booth fee, equivalent to an average of RMB, is about 4 million yuan.

But no one wants to miss such an opportunity. Zhou Houjian encouraged internally that product decision-makers, especially technical leaders, should often go out to participate in worldwide and representative exhibitions, otherwise they would lose their way of development if they were immersed in their daily work all day.

The advancement of Chinese enterprises is also seen in the eyes of the American media.

Visitors who have been to LVCC know that Samsung and LG have occupied the most prominent position in the display area with the posture of "super cup" for many years. In addition to the brand influence factor, CES will select booths according to the number of years of membership and points, while LG has participated in the exhibition since the first CES in 1967, which is insurmountable in the short term of CES's "quack status". But in this year's foreign media reports, Hisense and TCL are considered to be strong opponents to challenge Samsung and LG.

Among them, the top US technology media CNET rated Hisense UX as "CES2023 Best TV", believing that Hisense is competing with high-end televisions such as LG's OLED TV and Samsung's eye-catching MicroLED TV, while CNN Underscored added Hisense UX to the "CES2023 Best list."

Answer paper

Zweig has said that all the most important historic moments need time to brew.

Before the arrival of these highlights, Chinese companies had been brewing for more than a decade until their efforts were "seen" in 2010. At CES this year, Zhou Houjian, chairman of Hisense, boarded the CES theme podium and became the first Chinese entrepreneur to give a keynote speech in CES43 years.

The title of his speech is "from made in China to created in China-- Technologies and products in New Markets". In this year, China became the largest manufacturing country in the world, and the position of Chinese consumer electronics manufacturers in the global electronics industry began to jump.

A total of 305 Chinese enterprises participated in the CES exhibition in 2010. By 2016, there were more than 1000 exhibitors, accounting for almost 1/3 of the total exhibitors.

The US media Wired believes that China has developed from a copycat country to an "innovation center." Taxi drivers in Las Vegas found that one out of every four pedestrians on the street was a Chinese face.

Organizers who have insight into this trend and business opportunities immediately announced that the Asian Consumer Electronics Show will be launched in May 2016, which will be held in Shanghai, China.

Of course, the home of this technology event is still Las Vegas. Every Chinese enterprise participating in the overseas exhibition is trying to open up the situation here with leading products and technologies.

After experiencing the products in the Huawei exhibition, the CNN reporter predicted: "China's top smartphone manufacturers are ready to prove that they can compete side by side with Apple and Samsung at the top end of the market."

Hisense, which wants to build a global brand image, paid a high price for huge advertisements for the bodies of light rail trains outside the main CES building and leading to the pavilion. The strength behind this marketing decision comes from a clear product planning path and the continuous support of technological innovation.

Laser TV is a key to the high-end development of Hisense display industry, and another main product, ULED TV, helps Hisense grow into a representative of global high-end super-picture quality TV brands.

Along these two clear paths, Hisense launched a new generation of display technology ULED X platform on CES in 2023, as well as high-end large screen products such as 110in UX based on this platform, and the first 8K laser TV was also officially unveiled.

But the road is not plain sailing. Mia, an employee of Hisense USA, remembers that at the beginning of 2012, a prototype of DLP mixed light source laser TV technology, which embodies the prototype of Hisense laser TV, was exhibited on CES in the United States, which was the first time that Hisense publicly demonstrated the technological route of laser TV. It was only a year later that LG officially unveiled a similar product.

Prior to this, the Hisense R & D team has gone through four years of repeated experiments before figuring out this technical route. "Hisense doesn't mean to give up if you don't do one thing this year. We will hand in the answer paper for every step invested." Mia said.

Since 2012, CES has witnessed the technological jump of Hisense Laser TV from monochrome to bicolor to tricolor, from 1080p to 2K to 4K to 8K, as well as the continuous expansion of LTV's global circle of friends. Today, in overseas markets, ordinary Chinese televisions sell for $300 to $500, while Hisense laser TVs sell for $3000 to $5000.

The laser TV product created by Leica and Hisense was unveiled at CES in 2023. The entry of the world's century-old image hall-level brand makes the future of laser TV more interesting.

As for ULED, according to Playplay, at present, the reputation of LED TV circle in North America is quite good, and a number of products have been tested by local third-party evaluation institutions to get a relatively positive response, and it is also a cost-effective brand popular with locals. Data show that ULED's sales in major overseas markets grew by more than 30 per cent from January to October 2022.

On CES in 2023, foreign visitors said directly to the staff: "Hisense,I saw you at World Cup." As part of its globalization strategy, Hisense sponsored the 2022 World Cup, which just ended in Qatar.

It can be said that CES not only witnessed the development history of global consumer electronics, but also witnessed the rapid development of China's electronic information industry.

According to CES organizers, the number of Chinese exhibitors reached 485 in 2023, much higher than the number in 2022. With the entry of new energy vehicles, the differentiation of household appliance head brands is becoming more and more obvious, and technological innovation from China is playing a more and more important role on the CES stage.

But the sense of crisis of innovation has never been far away. Liu Xianrong, general manager of Hisense Laser display Company, discussed with his colleagues: what are we going to show next year CES? What is the exhibition the year after next? "this is what we are thinking about every day. No one provides us with a reference. We must lead."

Be a winner

Through the observation window of CES, the ups and downs of enterprises, the adjustment of business layout and even the temperament of an enterprise are revealed.

Some of the former household appliance giants took the initiative to exit, betting on building industry solutions; some transformed upstream display technology and photovoltaic new energy; Hisense extended from hardware to software, from television to covering a full range of household appliances, from single brand to multi-brand, from B2C to B2C, B2B two-wheel drive.

Careful people may find that in the past 10 years, the Hisense exhibition area has expanded from more than 800 square meters of the main venue to more than 1300 square meters.

Every business expansion has its own logic, such as making software because of the importance of seeing TV content. In 2012, Hisense decided to develop its own operating system. "it cost hundreds of millions of dollars, but we don't hesitate to do it." Lin Lan, chairman of Hisense, has said that only by having his own overseas platform, can he "seriously compete with Samsung and LG, and become a player with a real say in the entire global TV market."

Since then, Hisense TV overseas operation platform VIDAA was launched and launched in Asia, North America, Europe and Africa and other markets.

Unlike most domestic TV brands that cooperate to build content platforms when going out to sea, Hisense is one of the few Chinese TV brands that make great efforts to build their own content platforms overseas. In the same year, VIDAA took the lead in passing NETFLIX NRPD compulsory certification and NRTV recommended certification, becoming the first NETFLIX recommended product in China.

Since then, ConnectLife, based on the Internet of things platform independently developed by Hisense, can create an one-stop kitchen solution for consumers, such as intelligent steam ovens with built-in intelligent cameras, which can achieve "real-time cooking" function and intelligently identify food types.

What outsiders rarely realize is that B2B industry going out to sea is becoming the next breakthrough in Hisense's globalization. At CES in 2022, business display, medical display, intelligent transportation solutions and broadband multimedia and other business sectors focused on the stage, becoming the largest exhibition area, the most abundant products and the largest number of exhibitors in previous CES exhibitions.

If it were not for the high profile on CES, many people may not have found that a home appliance company can be the first in the domestic market share of urban intelligent transportation for many years, and its products and solutions are used in 169cities across the country. Since then, Hisense also won the intelligent transportation project in Ethiopia, which was evaluated by industry insiders as "an important beginning for China's intelligent transportation technology standards to systematically move towards overseas markets."

As for other B-terminal technical capabilities, such as the precision medical industry represented by Hisense CAS (computer-assisted surgery system), it has served more than 100 level III and above hospitals across the country, serving more than 20,000 patients; Hisense color ultrasound product HD60 Taishan series fills the gap in Shandong Province and has been used in clinical use in more than 30 level III hospitals, with a cumulative diagnosis of more than 50,000 cases.

This year, Hisense conference machines, digital signage and other B2B products continue to demonstrate Hisense's technological breakthroughs in the B2B field.

"it's always been exciting for us to be on CES," Lin Lan said in a CES keynote speech. "We compete with our industry competitors, which promotes the progress of all of us."

At the recent World Cup global customer conference, Lin Lan proposed in a speech with the theme of "To Be The Top Player" (becoming the number one player) that Hisense will take black and white electricity as the cornerstone business in the future, take customers as the center, carry out globalization, high-end, intelligent and scene-oriented upgrading, and will take three years to increase Hisense's global brand price index to 100, becoming a well-known high-value brand.

Among them, the most important thing is to continuously create innovative and intelligent products through technological research and development; at the same time, cultivate the second growth curve of Hisense to achieve the sustainable growth of Hisense business.

From hardware to service, from B2C to B2B CES witnessed the continuous improvement of Hisense globalization, and technology leadership is its constant pursuit.

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