Meizu press conference compared with Xiaomi: a more aggressive Meizu

Although before the press conference, Meizu Technology Vice President Li Nan had told netizens that only one product, Meizu MX4, would be launched at the press conference, this still could not stop the enthusiasm of the "kerosenes" (Meizu fans). An hour before the press conference, a queue of more than ten meters long had formed at the door.

A month ago, a similar scene also took place at the nearby National Convention Center. On July 22, Xiaomi held a press conference to release the Xiaomi Mi 4, MIUI V6 (later held a separate press conference) and the Xiaomi Mi Band.

As the former and current leaders of China's smartphone industry, Meizu and Xiaomi have an inseparable relationship. The founders of both companies also have a history of hostility: Huang Zhang claimed that Lei Jun once approached him as an angel investor and used his relationship with the leaders of Zhuhai High-tech Zone to obtain Meizu's business secrets.

After Xiaomi became popular, Huang Zhang also banned netizens from discussing Xiaomi and related topics on the Meizu forum. Although Lei Jun did not respond directly to this, netizens have already started to make fun of him: "Does Lei Jun still remember Huang Zhang by the Daming Lake?"

With a difference of more than a month, how is Meizu's new product launch different from Xiaomi's? What development direction do the two launches reveal?

A more aggressive Meizu

On February 12 this year, Huang Zhang posted his first Weibo: Hello everyone! I just returned to Earth from Mars. I will be open-minded and accept the world. Everyone knows that our marketing is terrible. From today on, I will tell more people that in addition to Xiaomi phones, there are better Meizu phones to choose from.

The first step of Huang Zhang's change after his comeback was to move from forums to broader social platforms. Secondly, Meizu completed a 2 billion yuan financing by the end of June to "implement the employee stock option system." The second purpose of the financing was to increase the intensity of market promotion and strengthen the emphasis on social media.

"Change" became the keyword after Huang Zhang's comeback.

Huang Zhang started posting on Weibo and occasionally interacted with Zhou Hongyi to talk about products and audio. Flyme started to be updated once a week. Meizu also became more active in marketing, the most recent of which was the invitation letter for the press conference: made of aluminum alloy in the shape of a puzzle. The invitation letter also came with a small game, which was reportedly played by more than 500,000 users.

Of course, this invitation letter easily reminds people of the invitation letter of Xiaomi 4 - austenitic 304 stainless steel plate, through which Xiaomi also successfully planned the "artistic journey of a piece of steel plate".

At the Xiaomi 4 launch conference, Lei Jun spent a lot of time talking about the craftsmanship of Xiaomi 4. He even used the phrase "feeling like baby skin" to describe the metal frame of Xiaomi 4. He wanted to convey to users that Xiaomi is not unfocused on design, but that Xiaomi 4 spent a lot of money on craftsmanship.

However, these promotional texts were severely criticized at the Meizu press conference. Meizu President Bai Yongxiang, Li Nan, and Flyme director Yang Yan all mocked Xiaomi and other competitors to varying degrees during the keynote. For example, when talking about the performance of MX4, Bai Yongxiang borrowed Lei Jun's famous saying "If you don't agree, run a test?" "Thank you to our friends for developing this test software for us." When talking about the camera, he used "I went to Tokyo for tuning" to mock Hammer. In addition, he borrowed promotional texts from other mobile phone manufacturers, such as "XXX's Art Journey", "Austenite 304", "CNC Lathe", "Considering that we are a small company", etc., all of which were full of mockery. Bai Yongxiang even gave a "haha" to the design of Xiaomi 4.

When talking about smart hardware, Li Nan shouted, "Why should we be killed by copies and low prices? World, I don't believe it!", implicitly criticizing Xiaomi's plagiarism and the low price of the Xiaomi bracelet.

Huang Hao, a TV journalist, sighed after watching the Meizu press conference: "Meizu must have studied the press conference rhetoric of many brands before starting to work hard to develop today's public ridicule skills!"

In addition to the keynote at the press conference, Meizu has become more aggressive in terms of products, software, and ecology. It no longer stays in the forum as a small and beautiful mobile phone manufacturer, but chooses to go out and declare war on mobile phone manufacturers.

MX4: Full of sincerity

As the first product after Huang Zhang's comeback, Meizu MX4 gave everyone enough surprises.

The MX4 is made of aviation aluminum-magnesium alloy. The front of the phone uses a 5.36-inch FULL HD+ screen with a PPI of 418. The screen border is only 2.6 mm and the screen-to-body ratio is 80%. In order to increase the drop resistance, the MX4 also uses a new screen glue suspension technology. It is equipped with an intelligent 8-core processor and adopts the Little.Big architecture to intelligently allocate processing performance. The camera is 20.7 million pixels. It supports China Mobile and China Unicom dual 4G and has a battery capacity of 3100mAh.

Let’s take a look at the Xiaomi 4 released more than a month ago. It is equipped with a Snapdragon 801 quad-core 2.5GHz processor, 3GB of memory, 16/64GB of flash memory, a 5-inch 1080P Sharp/JDI OGS full-laminated screen, a 3080mAh battery capacity, and 8 million/13 million front and rear Sony cameras.

In terms of overall configuration, MX4 and Xiaomi 4 have their own merits; but the price of 1,799 yuan is 200 yuan lower than Xiaomi, which made the audience at the press conference crazy.

"I thought it would be 200 yuan more expensive than Xiaomi, but it turned out to be 200 yuan cheaper than Xiaomi. I feel like I'm losing out if I don't buy it..." said a netizen who watched the live broadcast of the press conference. Such pricing has a strong impact on Xiaomi, OnePlus and Honor.

In the next three months, Meizu will release three more products, one each month. In addition to the known MX4 Pro, there will also be a 4G thousand-yuan phone. Li Nan revealed on Weibo that the Meizu MX4 Pro "is more difficult to develop, and the upgrades in all aspects are too drastic, so the price will also go up."

However, according to Xiaomi insiders, Xiaomi will not launch any new products in the second half of the year. Meizu MX4 competes with Xiaomi 4, the upcoming 1,000 yuan phone competes with Redmi, and MX4 Pro seizes the high-end phone market. In terms of the richness of models, Meizu is better.

Flyme 4 VS MIUI 6: Much inferior

In addition to mobile phone hardware, software has become a new area of ​​competition for manufacturers. For a mobile phone manufacturer, ROM does not only represent a customized operating system, but also assumes the functions of multiple mobile Internet portals: application distribution, games, themes, cloud services, reading, life services, O2O... In addition to increasing revenue, these services also tightly enclose users in their own ecosystem.

Like Xiaomi's MIUI, Smartisan and OPPO's Color OS, Flyme is a deeply customized system based on Android by Meizu. The newly released Flyme 4 has been redesigned in terms of icons and interactions, and has added new services such as Flyme reading, Internet calls, SMS, security center, voice assistant, beauty camera, cloud storage, etc. It also supports floating windows and quick wake-up.

In addition, according to Yang Yan, the person in charge of Flyme, Flyme has cooperated with many manufacturers: the security center cooperates with Tencent and LBE; the voice assistant cooperates with iFlytek; the cloud storage cooperates with 360 to provide 40T free space; the input method cooperates with Sogou... Flyme is becoming more and more open and is beginning to join forces with other manufacturers to strengthen itself.

However, Xiaomi, which has been working on MIUI for 4 years, is much ahead of Meizu. On August 16, Xiaomi held a press conference for MIUI 6. MIUI 6 has been improved and upgraded in terms of design, tools, photography, cloud services, efficiency, security, and services. MIUI director Hong Feng revealed that the number of MIUI users has exceeded 70 million, and the monthly turnover is enough to cover all expenses of Xiaomi.

In terms of user experience, MIUI is easier to use, more user-friendly, and more powerful than Flyme.

In addition, MIUI has also expanded the number of MIUI users through third-party adaptation tools such as Patchrom to flash non-Xiaomi phones and Xiaomi system. Hong Feng predicts that in the next few months, the number of MIUI users will exceed 100 million.

Flyme has not disclosed relevant data on the number of users and active users, and the only compatible third-party model is the Samsung S4. Therefore, it will take some time for Meizu to catch up with Xiaomi in customized ROM.

Smart hardware: Xiaomi started early, Meizu started late

Meizu also announced at the conference that it has begun to develop smart hardware in addition to applications and Internet services. The "CONNECT TO MEIZU" project will provide market resources, online and offline channels, and marketing promotion for smart hardware entrepreneurs. At the same time, Meizu brought LifeKit to make system-level integration for these hardware. The first batch of CONNECT TO MEIZU smart hardware products are InWatch, BroadLink, and drone manufacturer Ghost.

Xiaomi started its layout in smart hardware much earlier. On July 22, the 79-yuan Xiaomi Mi Band was released. Together with the previously released Xiaomi routers, boxes, TVs, tablets, power banks and other products, Xiaomi's layout in the field of smart hardware is much ahead of Meizu, and it will also have a greater first-mover advantage in the future diversified market competition.

It is also important to note that Meizu's smart hardware is in cooperation with other manufacturers, and compared with Xiaomi's own products, it has much less freedom in design, pricing and promotion. Although LifeKit is a system-level integration for hardware, it lacks the appeal of Apple and Google in the industry, and it is not easy to promote. Xiaomi can gain greater control through self-construction or investment, and with the software services provided by the "Lei Jun system", the integration of hardware and software is more competitive.

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.