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

Since the birth of electronic TV set in 1927, every stage of global sales has been a leader in new technology. From CRT to rear projection, from plasma to LED, Sony, Panasonic and Samsung take turns to dominate the global TV market.

The television industry has always been dominated by technology, following the law of technological innovation and maturity, and the natural decline of product prices from high to low.

Until the emergence of Xiaomi TV, bombarding the market with low prices, the market law was once broken. The market wind has changed rapidly, and the idea of technological breakthrough has been replaced by competitive low prices. Domestic brands have been dragged into the quagmire of price war, which also increases the difficulty for the high-end in the future.

Xiaomi's investment in the TV industry is not just a product, but a model.

In October 2013, the first Xiaomi TV went on sale, and only 18000 units were sold at the end of the year. In that year, the total sales of the domestic color TV market was about 47 million, and the market share of Xiaomi TV was only about 0.03%.

At that time, China's per capita disposable income was only 18311 yuan, and the price was still the primary consideration for most domestic consumers to buy televisions. In China, Hisense, TCL, Skyworth and other rising stars have left the slightly outdated Changhong behind. Although Japanese and Korean high-end brands are unrivaled in the global market share, it is difficult to maintain the forefront in the Chinese market.

In the minds of many consumers, the big names of Japanese and Korean TV belong to the real high end. Sony and Samsung have entered the industry early, leading the world in patents and technology, and strong brands, from which they have gained a higher premium.

At that time, the technology of domestic brands was still growing, foreign brands were "high and low", and there was a huge gap in the market.

With the launch of Xiaomi TV 2, Xiaomi TV sold more than 300000 in 2014, a 16-fold growth rate. The cost-effective way of playing Xiaomi Internet + is suddenly enlightening.

MIUI TV, which is deeply customized based on Android, transforms not only rice noodles, but also the entire group of traditional TV users, as well as those who "surf the Internet".

The ambitious Xiaomi, as a newcomer in the TV industry, has neither technical background nor strong brand appeal, and has chosen its usual low-price playing method without suspense.

The first generation of Xiaomi TV 47-inch 8.4mm narrow frame, only 2999 yuan, millet-style slogan repeated at the press conference: "Young people's first TV"; perhaps consumers wait and see for the new brand, resulting in the listing of the first generation of Xiaomi TV is not as expected, while the second generation Xiaomi TV, the price of 40-inch ultra-narrow frame smart TV is reduced to 1999 yuan, this time Lei Jun quickly made a lot of friends.

In 2013, Internet TV accounted for less than 1% of the domestic market. In that era of rapid development of the Internet and market gaps in the smart TV industry, Xiaomi TV slaughtered product prices in the Internet mode.

The Internet ecology can become the main channel for Xiaomi TV to make money, and the demand for hardware profit can be reduced to a minimum, which almost replicates the way its mobile phone is played, which is also the usual mode of Xiaomi.

It is difficult for opponents to build an Internet ecology that can rival Xiaomi in a short period of time, and there is a relative shortage of profit points other than hardware. The reason why the first echelon domestic brands such as Hisense and TCL were able to bring down Changhong lies in the great progress in exclusive technology until it surpassed, while Xiaomi did not crush the market with technology, but dragged its competitors into an unfamiliar battlefield with extremely low prices.

The price is the appearance, the supporting point is the Internet ecology. As Xiaomi TV became the top seller in China in 2019, Xiaomi model has become the object of competitive imitation in the industry, and product price has become the focus of the industry.

This has indirectly led more and more colleagues to put the order of technology research and development after driving down the price of products.

The first echelon of domestic traditional TV brands began to make up for the shortcoming, each built an Android-based TV OS ecology, the profit point increased, and the price of its hardware finally fell further.

The price scuffle is becoming more and more fierce, consumers and brands are focused on the price of products, but fewer and fewer people pay for technology, technology and quality, and TV products are gradually "fast food".

At the same time, due to factors such as brand posture and configuration of cutting-edge technology, such as relatively high hardware costs and lack of profit points other than hardware in the Chinese market, foreign big-name televisions are gradually marginalized in the domestic middle and low-end market.

Among the top 10 domestic TV sales in 2019, only two foreign brands, Philips and Sony, ranked 8th and 10th, with sales of just over one million units, about 1/10 of Xiaomi's, according to Oveyun.

Xiaomi TV not only drags its domestic counterparts into a price scuffle, but also allows foreign brands to further tilt their focus to China's high-end market.

With the traditional domestic TV brands Internet ecology, online channel construction and other shortcomings to make up, who has no absolute advantage in this price war, and some "micro" began to prevail. True and false 4K, the old structure of new tractors and other mixed industry chaos occur frequently.

To some extent, this is a performance after the manufacturer's cost has been reduced to the extreme.

In Q3 in 2022, Xiaomi's Internet service revenue was only 7.1 billion yuan, only about 10% of the total revenue, and hovered between 7 billion yuan and 7.3 billion yuan for the sixth consecutive quarter, obviously without the help of hardware growth.

Internet revenue, as a fulcrum for Xiaomi TV to maintain low prices, may not be as powerful as expected.

No one who once followed Xiaomi's model has successfully turned the Internet ecology into a major revenue force, and technology research and development has been given renewed attention.

Consumer pressure, once the pursuit of cost-effective brands have an upward demand, high-end tide swept through, low-end products gradually reduced to an innocuous spray.

Millet-style inner roll, once triggered domestic counterparts "actively downward", price scuffle, undoubtedly solidified part of the user "taste", the brand is difficult to get out of difficulties.

Now, brands who are good at going down have to think about how to move up.

Xiaomi model, can not move high-end to high-end, but also means to enter the home market of foreign brands.

Before 2016, Samsung also actively laid out mid-and low-end products in the Chinese market, but as the price war intensified, the prices of domestic brands fell further, and online channels were already weak, coupled with the lack of Tizen system ecology, Samsung TV gradually fell short of its ambition and completely withdrew from the price war stage, and then ranked among the lowest in the Chinese market for a long time.

Price war, Samsung, Sony are squeezed out of the low-end market, but also stimulate its complete move towards high-end. The industrial chain behind them also revolves around the high end and becomes a virtuous circle.

The high premium of high-end products brings higher profits for the industrial chain, and theoretically the investment in R & D can also be higher than the industry average, in order to create cutting-edge technology and consolidate high-end positioning. This is the industrial chain logic of high-end brands.

Xiaomi model is completely different, the hardware price is reduced to the extreme, the profit of the industrial chain is also reduced, which indirectly suppresses the technological progress of the industrial chain.

The cost-effective model is essentially unsustainable, prompting brands to rise; consumer pressure, the overall contraction of the market, brands to increase demand has become more urgent.

Global TV sales in the first three quarters of 2022 were 143 million, down 4.4 per cent from a year earlier, according to Omdia. TrendForce released data at the end of last year and expects to ship 202 million televisions worldwide last year, down 3.9% from 2021 and the lowest in nearly a decade.

The overall shrinking of the TV industry is a foregone conclusion, while domestic brands, which have an absolute share advantage in the domestic market, have not shown a strong performance similar to that of domestic one-sided in the global market.

In the first three quarters of 2022, Xiaomi TV ranked fifth in the world with 6.5% market share, while Samsung led the global TV sales list with a market share of more than 20%.

Obviously, the "Samsung model" is better.

The freshness brought to users by intelligent television has long been gone, and the expansion of the Internet has become a regular standard. As mentioned earlier, early Xiaomi and follow-up domestic brands have failed to change the relatively low share of Internet revenue, but the brand has been damaged in the price war.

Another drawback of the Xiaomi model is the hidden danger of quality control after extreme price compression.

In May 2022, Xiaomi TV was exposed that the screen fell off automatically and sent two times in three days, which once aroused widespread concern. In recent years, problems such as black screen and motherboard have also been complained by many Xiaomi TV users, and there is even a joke spread on the network: overinsurance will be bad.

Brands involved in the price scuffle often have similar quality control problems, but some brands can improve the problem to some extent by relying on their own production lines. And the full OEM model, quality control initiative is divided into two, coupled with the extreme price compression, there is no doubt that the situation is even worse.

The frequent occurrence of quality control problems is extremely disadvantageous to the promotion of brands, while heavily relying on the integration of third-party resources and maintaining fast-paced product iterations only with "micro-innovation" is not very helpful to technological development.

Compared with the data of the past four years, it is not difficult to find that although the overall market continues to shrink, the ranking of the top 10 global market share has hardly changed. In other words, relying on cost-effective tactics at home, it is difficult to "eat everything with one move" in the global market.

Xiaomi TV, which has often won the top spot in the domestic market in recent years, has been suppressed by TCL and Hisense in the global market. In the first three quarters of last year, TCL ranked third with 11.7 per cent, while Hisense ranked fourth with 10.1 per cent, continuing to keep ahead of Xiaomi.

The exclusive technological breakthrough has become a stepping stone to the high-end market of Hisense and TCL.

TCL has launched new display technologies with technological breakthroughs such as quantum dots and Mini LED. Hisense is also the main promoter of Mini LED, and it is even more dust-proof in the field of laser TV, accounting for 49.5% of the global laser TV market share in the first half of last year.

In terms of price, Hisense laser TV's flagship product is close to 100,000 yuan, the 8999 yuan flat screen TV flagship is "only" 85 inches, while Xiaomi 86-inch flagship ES Pro sells for 7999 yuan, and red rice 86-inch EA Pro costs 5999 yuan.

The introduction of red rice hit low, but also failed to let Xiaomi brand confidently rush up, but let Xiaomi's TV product line slightly bloated and chaotic.

Red rice A, X, MAX series are relatively easy to remember, while Xiaomi brand TV models include transparent, master, quantum dots, murals, digital, EA, ES series. This "machine sea tactic" reveals Xiaomi TV's chaotic product thinking.

Users are easy to get confused when choosing and buying, and it is easy to remember the wrong model even if it is recommended to others, so their discrimination and memory are being tested.

The confusion of the product line is only a manifestation of Xiaomi model. At most, Xiaomi is not ready to go high, and its high-end influence is limited.

Xiaomi users' perception of the value of the brand and the "Xiaomi model", which has long been heavily dependent on the supply chain, lead to a relative lack of exclusive technology, which may be a long-term drag on the high-end process of Xiaomi TV.

The aftershocks of the price war spread to the high-end, not special television industry, and manufacturers with comprehensive strength have always been the protagonists.

Compared with the "Xiaomi model", the "Samsung model" won easily because of its advantages in technology, brand, global channels and long-term important role in the upper reaches of the supply chain.

Similarly, Hisense, TCL and other domestic head brands also pay attention to all-round development. The difference is that the price war has directly stimulated the traditional domestic brands to make up for the shortcomings of the Internet, and its low-end product line already has a strong cost-effective basis, while brands with exclusive technology routes are undoubtedly more out of the list.

High and low ends are strong enough, in the context of consumer pressure is undoubtedly dual preparation, "Hisense, TCL model" seems to be more sustainable.

And the product moves towards high-end, the brand temperament also needs to keep up with. Although the controversial advertising language catches the eye, it runs counter to the high end, which is not good for growth. The ranking of global TV sales has been solid in the past four years, and domestic brands may need to devote more attention to the improvement of their overall strength.

Like the road when it comes, it depends on the accumulation of technology step by step, rather than loud slogans.

This article is from the official account of Wechat: photon Planet (ID:TMTweb), by Xiong Xing

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