Apart from the price war, what will be the future of domestic thousand-yuan phones in 2015?

The scenes of the fierce competition among domestic thousand-yuan phones in 2014 seem to be still fresh in our minds, and a new round of "battle" has quietly begun in 2015. In the past 10 days, some new domestic thousand-yuan phones have entered everyone's field of vision, and more manufacturers are also ready to go.

So, after the price war in 2014, where will the domestic thousand-yuan mobile phones go in 2015, and what new expectations do people have for them? Today, let's take a look at my own views and opinions on domestic thousand-yuan mobile phones.

Apart from price, what else can domestic thousand-yuan phones compete on?

"X99 yuan" seems to have become the conventional pricing standard for domestic thousand-yuan phones, and in my opinion, it will remain the same this year. Of course, I believe everyone is used to the price war among domestic mobile phones. The price of mobile phones, especially the price of thousand-yuan phones, seems to be becoming more and more "insensitive". It's not about how rich everyone is, but that more consumers pay more attention to the user experience of mobile phones. What "bargain price" and "shocking price"... nowadays, they are no longer effective.

So, apart from the price, what else can domestic thousand-yuan phones compete with? In my opinion, the following points are still worth considering for domestic mobile phone manufacturers.

1. Craftsmanship

In fact, for a thousand-yuan phone, whether you sell it for 999 or 899, many consumers will not dwell on the extra or less 100 yuan. Instead, they will consider whether they can buy a better thousand-yuan phone with the extra 100 yuan. Speaking of this, it reminds me of the poll initiated by Meizu Technology before the release of Meizu Blue Note, "Are you willing to pay a little more for a qualitative leap in a thousand-yuan phone?" Judging from the poll results, many netizens still expressed their willingness to spend an extra 100 or 200 yuan to buy a thousand-yuan phone with better craftsmanship and quality.

Although the Meizu Note is a thousand-yuan phone, it retains many of Meizu's classic designs in terms of appearance design, including a round Home button, narrow bezels, and rounded corners. The craftsmanship on the back of the phone is comparable to that of the iPhone 5c. From my actual experience, the workmanship of the Meizu Note is not compromised too much just because it is a thousand-yuan phone.

Therefore, my point of view is that within a price range that consumers can accept, the craftsmanship of thousand-yuan phones can be further improved, and the cost can be appropriately increased. Consumers spend money to buy thousand-yuan phones, and they just want to use them comfortably. If they really spend an extra 100 yuan to buy a thousand-yuan phone with better craftsmanship (quality) than other phones, they will be very happy.

2. Network

I vaguely remember that in early 2014, many domestic thousand-yuan mobile phones were still competing with "octa-core" and "3G" networks, and Honor 3X Play Edition, Coolpad Dazen F1 and others also "joined the battle".

But around April and May, many domestic thousand-yuan phones, represented by ZTE's "Red Bull", gradually transitioned to the 4G era. Since then, the sales of thousand-yuan models that only support 3G networks have gradually been pulled away by 4G thousand-yuan models.

For consumers, the demand for mobile phones that support 4G networks is also growing. Although at the beginning of the rise of 4G networks, many people still have some resistance to the higher 4G tariffs, and the corresponding 4G smartphone models are not too many, mainly some international and domestic brands of flagship and sub-flagship, the price is also relatively high.

But after several months of adjustments, 4G tariffs have been lowered and the number of domestic 4G thousand-yuan models has gradually increased, and consumers' spending power for 4G mobile phones has also shown an "explosive" growth.

Take me for example, I used to use the 2G network, and it was really hard to surf the Internet with my mobile phone. But after using the 4G network, I can get a better Internet experience, and I think it is worth it even if I spend a little more money. Moreover, because the price of domestic 4G smartphones has dropped to 1,000 yuan, many young people like me are also planning to upgrade the phones of my parents and some relatives and friends to 4G models.

Behind the "battle" of various 4G thousand-yuan mobile phones, major chip manufacturers are also playing a "competitive" drama. Among them, MediaTek has made the biggest move in the thousand-yuan mobile phone. With the continuous escalation of market competition and the accelerated promotion and popularization of 4G mobile phones, MediaTek has occupied a lot of low-end and mid-range markets. Of course, the domestic self-developed R&D strength represented by Huawei should not be underestimated, and it is gradually gaining a voice in the domestic thousand-yuan mobile phone market.

As China Unicom and China Telecom have successively obtained the qualification for TD-LTE and FDD LTE hybrid network trials, supporting dual 4G networks has gradually become a development trend in the domestic smartphone market, which also requires the technical level of 4G communication processor chips to be further improved. In order for domestic 4G thousand-yuan phones to support multi-mode and multi-frequency, the terminals need to integrate chips that can support multiple standards and frequency bands at the same time.

In 2015, domestic thousand-yuan mobile phones will probably also fight very hard in the “battlefield” of 4G network.

3. Compete for production capacity

Facing the strong demand in the 1,000-yuan phone market, production capacity is perhaps the most difficult problem faced by many domestic mobile phone manufacturers. In my impression, it seems that every time a new 1,000-yuan phone with good configuration is launched, they have to buy time for their own production lines by pre-ordering.

Of course, as consumers, many people don’t know what the merchants are actually doing by launching pre-order rush purchases. They just enjoy the rush purchases every week. However, there are only a few people who are really “quick-eyed and quick-handed”. After a few rounds of pre-order rush purchases, consumers will definitely lose their patience. There are many cases of “turning from fans to passers-by, and then from passers-by to haters”.

The Redmi series of mobile phones, which were only available for reservations but not for real, made consumers wait for several months from the release to the unlimited purchase. Recently, the Redmi 2 was released, and it is estimated that consumers will have to wait at least one or two months before they can "happily" buy it; of course, the situation of competitors is not so good either. Meizu Note, which had to "cancel orders" due to production capacity constraints, was also "hit" by insufficient production capacity.

In the context of relatively transparent hardware costs, the production capacity of thousand-yuan phones has repeatedly become the focus of everyone's attention, which shows its importance in the mobile phone industry chain. Being able to make a thousand-yuan phone is not the same as having it in stable mass production. Once there is a problem with production capacity, it will affect the sales of the entire mobile phone, and it is more likely to be squeezed out in the fierce market competition.

4. UI (ROM) design

UI (ROM) design may be a link that many domestic manufacturers who produce thousand-yuan phones tend to overlook. Except for a few manufacturers with independent R&D teams, many other manufacturers choose to "take shortcuts" in mobile phone UI (ROM) design in order to save costs and sell their products as soon as possible.

This may seem like a clever move, but most of these manufacturers will still be dragged down by such "shortcuts". Due to the lack of deep adaptation, many third-party ROMs are not suitable for some domestic thousand-yuan mobile phones, not to mention the specific user experience.

Huawei, Nubia, Meizu and other companies rely on their own R&D teams. Although it takes some time to adapt the ROM of their own thousand-yuan phones, the user experience will be quite good in the end. In addition, with some more down-to-earth features such as yellow pages, phone number tagging, and WiFi sharing, you will feel very comfortable when using these domestic thousand-yuan phones.

Improve the premium ability of thousand-yuan phones

Many of my friends are most concerned about the "price/performance" when buying a mobile phone, but is this really the case? Which domestic thousand-yuan mobile phone can be truly considered the "most cost-effective"? 799, 699 or 599, I feel that there seems to be no definite answer to this question. However, behind these "tempting" low prices, the appearance design, hardware configuration, manufacturing process and overall user experience of the thousand-yuan mobile phone are marked with a huge question mark.

Low price may have become a synonym for low quality. An industry insider once said that many domestic thousand-yuan mobile phones are now competing on hardware configuration and parameters, and trying to minimize costs, resulting in a decline in the overall use of mobile phones, and product design is also getting worse and worse, even far inferior to the design of the previous non-smartphone era.

Manufacturers of thousand-yuan phones that have similar appearances, designs with almost no new selling points, and blindly compete on low prices, trying to use "simple and crude" methods to make profits, can only see consumers' "favorability" for their products and even their brands gradually decline.

However, not all manufacturers of domestic thousand-yuan phones are obsessed with "cost-effectiveness". They have seen another way out for domestic thousand-yuan phones. And this way out is to rely on quality and brand premium to improve their "combat effectiveness".

Before Huawei Honor entered the 1,000-yuan phone market, its brand had a good reputation among domestic mobile phones. After Honor "independently" announced its entry into the domestic 1,000-yuan phone market, Honor did not "lose value" because of its focus on the 1,000-yuan phone market. Instead, it achieved success by relying on its investment in 1,000-yuan phones.

From this point of view, the domestic thousand-yuan machine market can introduce the concept of "quality" into it, so that more domestic thousand-yuan machine manufacturers can gradually move away from the bad ideas surrounding "cost-effectiveness". Use higher product quality to break the monopoly of the "cost-effectiveness" theory on the thousand-yuan machine market and increase the premium ability of domestic thousand-yuan machines. At the same time, as consumers, we can also use thousand-yuan machine products with better design and better experience.

How to deal with the relationship with the same brand's models priced at 2,000 yuan?

As mentioned above, it is understandable to improve the quality and increase the product premium of domestic thousand-yuan mobile phones. However, this will inevitably lead to another more "acute" problem: how to properly handle the relationship between thousand-yuan mobile phones and two-thousand-yuan models of the same brand?

At present, most of the so-called high-end models rely on hardware advantages to distance themselves from thousand-yuan models, and the configuration of thousand-yuan models is also steadily improving. Although there are still some differences between the two, in terms of actual experience, thousand-yuan models are also sufficient for daily use.

For example, the three domestic brands Meizu, Honor, and Xiaomi have been competing fiercely. Many consumers are confused about whether to choose a 1,000 yuan phone or a 2,000 yuan phone. A few days ago, a friend asked me how to choose between the 999 yuan Meizu Note and the 1,799 yuan MX4? Because the screens of these two phones are both 5.5 inches 1080p, and the other configurations and appearance designs are also similar, with only some differences in body materials, cameras, etc., but the price difference is as much as 800 yuan.

Since it is difficult to distinguish the two in terms of hardware, can we consider using some "soft power" to distinguish the two? For example, in terms of system, the 1,000 yuan machine provides a basic user experience; if consumers want to experience better and more personalized customized content, they need to buy a more expensive 2,000 yuan model.

There can also be some divisions in terms of mobile phone after-sales service, such as users of thousand-yuan phones are equipped with unified customer service representatives, while users who purchase more expensive models can get better VIP seat treatment, etc. Of course, the final and most intuitive aspect will still be reflected in the price.

Keep the price of 1,000-yuan smartphones within a reasonable price range as much as possible and ensure that they have good quality within this range; at the same time, further improve the "soft power" of the higher-priced 2,000-yuan models to widen the gap between the two. Only in this way can a relative balance be achieved.

From the above aspects, the competition in the domestic thousand-yuan mobile phone market in 2015 will still be very fierce. Under the current situation of relatively fixed hardware configuration, whoever can gain better reputation from users and provide differentiated user experience will undoubtedly attract more consumers' attention. Who will have the last laugh in the domestic thousand-yuan mobile phone war in 2015, let time tell.

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.