Behind the war of words between Meizu and Smartisan: the smartphone dividend is no longer

Last Friday, the two most independent-minded CEOs of domestic smartphone manufacturers officially exchanged fire on Weibo, with online trolls and quality issues once again becoming their powerful weapons to attack each other.

After his Weibo was flooded with messages with the number "1799", Luo Yonghao, the founder of Smartisan Technology, was the first to say: "Sooner or later, you will pay for what you have done". Unlike other manufacturers who were harassed by similar messages, Luo Yonghao announced a reward of 200,000 yuan to catch the trolls behind the scenes. This move directly pointed out that Meizu hired trolls, because after Meizu MX4 announced the price of 1799, a large number of 1799 replies appeared under the Weibo of its competitors.

A few hours later, Meizu Technology Chairman Huang Zhang said on his Weibo that compared with Hammer and Xiaomi, they would definitely lose in terms of hype, and their products were "several blocks behind". In response, Luo Yonghao posted another Weibo, saying that Meizu's new product MX4, which is priced at 1,799 yuan, is a cheap product.

Surprisingly, although Lei Jun did not make any statement, Xiaomi Vice President Li Wanqiang directly accused Meizu of "increasing marketing expenses 10 times" and said that he would use the Redmi brand to make a Redmi flagship phone priced at 1,499.

As of the time of Tencent Technology's publication, this debate has not produced any substantial results. Luo Yonghao is still tirelessly forwarding users' praise for his Hammer phone and attacking his competitors; Huang Zhang has not made any further statement on the matter, but the employees and fans of the three companies have entered an excited state of competition.

Industry insiders believe that behind this war of words, which seems to be caused by marketing tactics, is the overall slowdown of China's mobile phone industry. At the end of September, IDC released a monthly tracking report stating that China's smartphone shipments fell 14.1% month-on-month in July 2014.

GfK analysts said that China's smartphone market is moving from an incremental era to an inventory replacement era. This means that consumers will no longer simply buy products to meet their needs, but will be more picky about performance or price, and competition among manufacturers will become more intense.

The slowdown in the growth of China's mobile phone industry is much greater than the industry had expected, but the increasingly mature and complete industrial chain has gradually lowered the entry threshold. As a result, the anxiety brought about by industrial competition has become the best reason to trigger a debate.

Meizu and 1799

The "troll attack" that made Luo Yonghao angry was that a large number of users replied "1799" in the comments of each of his Weibo posts, and this number happened to be the price of Meizu's new product MX4.

It is reported that after Meizu released its new product, in addition to Hammer, other mobile phone manufacturers such as Xiaomi, OnePlus and other manufacturers have also encountered similar attacks, and the scope is very wide.

Before Luo Yonghao joined the war, Meizu had already engaged in a round of verbal battle with Xiaomi, and the focus of the dispute between the two sides was the issue of Internet trolls. On September 17, Zhong Yufei, director of new media at Xiaomi.com, posted a picture saying, "Recently, Meizu has organized and instigated real and fake users to flood the Weibo accounts of major mobile phone manufacturers," including Xiaomi, Huawei and Hammer.

Later, OnePlus CEO Pete Lau also released two pictures taken from the OnePlus community forum. The pictures showed that a large number of newly registered users participated in the reply, but the content was only praise for Meizu, which seemed to be an attack by the Internet trolls.

According to Luo Yonghao's Weibo, he had warned Meizu Technology Vice President Li Nan to "be honest" via text message, and Li Nan's reply was "remind Meizu fans to calm down." But the effect was apparently not obvious. Xiaomi Technology Vice President Li Wanqiang forwarded Luo Yonghao's Weibo and said, "It is said that Meizu has increased its marketing expenses 10 times."

Although screenshots show that Li Nan admitted to hiring KOLs (internet celebrities, or Weibo accounts) for marketing, Meizu has never admitted that the massive flooding of other manufacturers' Weibo and community posts was related to itself. On September 17, Li Nan admitted on Weibo that the purpose of hiring KOLs was to "let more people know the advantages of Meizu products."

He also said that unlike other manufacturers, "we will not imply that our users are the water army of our competitors", meaning that the 1799 screen-sweeping was mostly initiated by users of various brands and had nothing to do with them. In a series of information released later, Li Nan also mentioned that Meizu does not have the same promotion resources as Xiaomi, "but we have the cutest netizens" and other views.

There is currently no more reliable evidence as to whether the 1799 was initiated by Meizu officials, but industry insiders generally believe that the screen-sweeping of 1799 was most likely guided to a certain extent by someone, which then led netizens to follow suit.

Industry concerns behind the war of words

What worries Luo Yonghao is not just the attacks by the online trolls. Meizu's next new product will compete head-on with the Smartisan smartphone. It is almost certain that Meizu will complete the layout of multiple price products by the end of the year, and its high-end products may enter the 3,000 yuan price range where the Smartisan smartphone is located.

Since Huang Zhang's "return" at the beginning of this year, Meizu has changed its previous strategy of releasing one new product per year. Huang Zhang once announced that it would release four new products in the last few months of this year. Although releasing new products at this frequency will affect consumers' timing of making purchasing decisions, it is clear that Huang Zhang can no longer tolerate Meizu's loss of market share.

Based on data provided by a third-party research institute, Tencent Technology calculated that Meizu's shipments in 2013 accounted for only about 1% compared with the top ten domestic mobile phone manufacturers.

Industry insiders generally believe that the best way for Meizu to break through the existing market and reach the masses is to speed up the pace of releasing new products and upgrade the hardware standards of the industry as a whole. Li Nan once told Tencent Technology that the company will launch products in different price ranges around 1999 yuan. According to insiders, the configuration of Meizu MX4 Pro will be more advantageous than that of MX4, and the price will be in the upper range of 1999 yuan.

Such a price obviously poses a threat to the 3,000 yuan price range of Hammer smartphones. It can be seen that the situation of Hammer Technology is not optimistic. At present, the production capacity of Hammer smartphones is still insufficient. Although Luo Yonghao claimed on Weibo that the production capacity problem will be solved soon, the official website shows that the product still needs to be pre-ordered and is not in stock.

What Smartisan and Meizu need to face at the same time is the objective fact that the overall growth rate of China's smartphone market is slowing down. Research organization GfK predicts that the retail volume of China's smartphone market will reach 393 million units in 2014, with a year-on-year growth of only 12%, while the figure in 2013 was 82%. Some analysts said that market competition will become increasingly fierce, and the entire industry will face a major reshuffle in one or two years, and quite a number of companies will be forced to leave.

Huang Zhang and Luo Yonghao, who are well versed in marketing, now need to quickly expand sales and gain a foothold by relying on the number of users before the industry reshuffles. These two Internet mobile phone companies that focus on word-of-mouth marketing obviously regard marketing as their core competitiveness, which is also the main reason why the 1799 incident fermented rapidly.

An industry executive who wishes to remain anonymous predicted that as the growth of the smartphone industry slows further in the future, similar wars of words will continue to occur repeatedly, "after all, the current situation of letting a hundred flowers bloom will not last forever."

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.