Vivo and OPPO are two companies that cannot be ignored when talking about the Chinese smartphone market. Both companies originated from BBK Electronics, which was founded by legendary entrepreneur Duan Yongping, and both have the reputation of being the king of offline smartphone sales.

However, as the smartphone market entered the second half of the battle for stock, the original online players Xiaomi and Honor frantically counterattacked offline. Most of the offline channels spit out by Huawei were harvested by Xiaomi, which even claimed that it would have a Xiaomi Home in every county by 2021.

All this is not easy for vivo. Its old rival OPPO has successfully gained a lot of online favorability with the help of the Reno and Ace series models created by Shen Yiren. Realme, which competes with Redmi, has gained considerable online voice and product sales with wave after wave of well-received marketing momentum and extremely cost-effective products, making Realme a rising star that cannot be bypassed when talking about online cost-effective mobile phone brands.

As a friendly competitor, where will vivo go in the future as it is facing the hidden danger of losing momentum?

Three-point brand, just to focus on the crowd

Similar to other existing mobile phone manufacturers, vivo also adopts a three-brand strategy. Previously, iQOO executives revealed in an interview that there are three brands within the vivo group, namely vivo, which focuses on offline sales, NEX, which is responsible for the high-end brand mission, and iQOO, which focuses on online sales and competes with Xiaomi.

vivo's brand layout is quite precise. The three market segments targeted by vivo, NEX and iQOO all have a large user base. With vivo's strong voice in the supply chain and capital support, it is not difficult for each of them to occupy a market share. Not abandoning offline channels also allows vivo to provide them with a continuous capital chain.

Unfortunately, although vivo has a good brand layout, the actual effects are not obvious, and it is not highly differentiated from similar competing products in the market.

NEX, the failure of brand high-end development

As the face of the vivo group, the NEX brand not only has the black technology that vivo has devoted itself to research and development for many years, but also has the confidence to not be afraid of low sales. However, in reality, NEX did not help vivo realize its vision of high-end branding, but instead became a product for vivo to show off its skills.

NEX has always adhered to the lifting camera, which looked very amazing in the first generation of full-screen mobile phones, but now it has become a thing of the past. Whether it is because the mobile phone has become thicker or the waterproofness of the mobile phone has deteriorated, the lifting camera is no longer a factor that consumers are attracted to. In fact, this has made the NEX brand a bit outdated and lost the sense of future that it has always emphasized.

vivo, it’s hard to stand out from the crowd with stability

The vivo brand currently has three series, namely the high-end X series, the mid-range S series and the entry-level Y series. Compared with Huawei, the product line covers a more comprehensive range of people.

The X series focuses on high-end photography, and its direct competitors are Huawei's P series and OPPO's Reno series. Compared with the Reno series' "super cup" configuration, which seems a bit stingy, the X series' "super cup" is undoubtedly more expensive.

In addition, the rear dual-color cloud-step design of the X series is particularly recognizable in the current trend of copying Apple and Samsung's rear camera designs, and the plain leather body also makes the X series more business-like.

The S series focuses on selfies. Whether online or offline, this phone is aimed at the same group of people - "selfie fans". The S9 series, which was just launched this year, not only adopts the two-color cloud-step rear camera design of the X series, but also uses the right-angle frame that has re-emerged in the iPhone 12.

From this we can see that vivo's positioning of the S series is a fashionable mid-range phone. The various functions and appearance designs it is equipped with have all been tested by the market and have received good responses among young users. Therefore, this is a series with a suitable unit price and can sell well.

The Y series is mainly aimed at price-sensitive consumers. The overall level of the series is not much different from other manufacturers at the same price, but each model has its own unique selling point, such as 5G or a 48-megapixel camera. They are all taken from high-end or mid-range phones and then used in a model of the Y series. This will not cause product positioning conflicts and can also better control BOM costs.

Compared with Xiaomi 11, which has not increased in price this year, the vivo X60 series can be said to be closer to the high-end due to the price increase. However, due to the large number of low-priced series products as the main sales force, vivo, which has always wanted to break into the high-end market, has encountered considerable entanglements and constraints in terms of brand power.

iQOO is constrained

When iQOO was born, it was not positioned as an online sub-brand focusing on cost-effectiveness, but an online mobile phone brand that fully competed with Xiaomi and OnePlus.

Therefore, iQOO not only has a digital series priced against Xiaomi's digital flagship, but also a Neo sub-flagship series priced against OnePlus' T series. In addition, the Z series competes with the Redmi Note Pro series, and the U series competes with the Redmi Note series.

iQOO's series layout basically covers all types of online mobile phone buyers. However, although iQOO is positioned as an online mobile phone brand, it cannot achieve the same degree of completion as Xiaomi or OnePlus in new product development. This is because it cannot affect the sales of vivo's true flagship X series. After all, the latter's recent products have also included online users in the target group.

In terms of mobile phone positioning, although iQOO has a digital series and a higher-end digital + Pro series, it still has a huge gap with the vivo X series "super cup" in some core components.

And because iQOO is positioned towards mobile gaming and e-sports, the main functions of any series with slightly higher configurations are all related to gaming. While establishing an image for itself as an e-sports phone, it also lets go of some consumers who don’t play games much.

Whether in the creation of brand image or in the restrictions on product positioning, it can be seen that vivo has a strong control over the online brand iQOO, which is equivalent to dancing with shackles. However, this does not help the brand's long-term competitiveness, but instead limits its development speed.

Sales volume is hampered: the brand’s main highlight is unclear

According to canalys' global smartphone sales report, vivo's sales were inferior to OPPO both in 2020 and in Q4 at the end of the year, and its overall ranking fell out of the top five.

The problems faced by vivo are not caused in the short term. In the past two or three years when the competition in the smartphone industry has become fierce, the product features of vivo, both online and offline, have gradually decreased. Sometimes it is even difficult to figure out what the characteristics of the vivo (including NEX and iQOO) brand are.

NEX's lifting camera? It has become an outdated full-screen mobile phone design and has caused quite a few functional defects in the phone.

iQOO's e-sports or online high-end phones? Not really. E-sports phones have become a battleground for Black Shark, ROG and Red Magic. As for online high-end phones, it's out of the question. The online high-end phones made by OnePlus and Xiaomi are far from comparable to iQOO, which is tied up, in terms of workmanship and component combination.

As for Vivo, which is mainly fighting with Honor and OPPO, it faces a more difficult problem. First of all, before being sold, Honor relied on Huawei's brand power to make great strides and expand its offline channels at a rapid speed. In addition, it has Huawei's technical support in camera and signal. Vivo's different series of products may not necessarily have the upper hand when facing Honor.

OPPO quickly attracted a large number of offline consumers by taking the lead in 5G and returning to the positioning of lightweight 5G mobile phones with the Reno series. In addition, by poaching talents from the Meizu Flyme team and creating a new Color OS system, it also won the hearts of a large number of online consumers. Now, users of the sub-brand OnePlus are clamoring to use Color OS every day, which is the best endorsement of their new system.

It was not until last year that vivo launched the newly designed Origin OS operating system. However, due to the tight deadline, it basically only optimized the launcher, and other parts were not changed much, which is not very attractive to gamers. Offline, it is not as good as OPPO in 5G and thinness, which are most easily perceived by users. In terms of mobile phone appearance design, the stable X series is also difficult to compete with the OPPO Reno series that dares to use new materials. Therefore, the cold sales are not unexpected.

Summarize

vivo is a veteran in China's mobile phone industry. However, your competitors in the business world will not go easy on you just because you have enough experience. So if you want to achieve good results, you still have to improve your own skills.

The problems faced by the NEX brand are similar to those of the current Xiaomi MIX series. The core of both brands is to break through the high-end smartphone market dominated by Huawei's Mate series, Apple's iPhone and Samsung's Galaxy Note series, but they have difficulty standing out due to the lack of differentiation. The root cause is the lack of self-developed technology.

Huawei has become the king of mobile phone imaging thanks to its years of research and development in imaging technology. Its strong signal performance also makes it an almost insurmountable mountain in the communications field. Apple has become synonymous with high-end mobile phones with its A series of self-developed high-performance chips and closed but easy-to-use iOS system. Samsung's Galaxy Note series has become the king of stacking materials among Android phones with its self-developed and exclusive components.

However, due to the lack of self-developed technology, vivo's products, whether NEX brand, vivo brand or iQOO brand, lack technological advantages other than brand power, which makes vivo's products appear less outstanding.

The future of the mobile phone industry is destined to belong to companies with strong self-research capabilities, and the news of vivo's self-developed chips that has been announced before may be vivo's only way out.

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.