Meizu Blue has been released, but has Meizu figured it out?

For a good product, why must I rely on low prices to win the market? Can't I just build barriers with high-quality products and get considerable profits?

At the press conference, Meizu showed off its hard polycarbonate shell, 3050mAh battery, 5.5-inch 1080P full HD screen, 13-megapixel 5-megapixel camera, and octa-core 64-bit processor. I wonder what kind of machine this would have been two years ago.

Is it Meizu's strength that they can make such a machine for only 999 yuan? It has nothing to do with Meizu, but the strength of the supply chain manufacturers. MediaTek's eight-core chip has evolved from last year's A7 to a 64-bit version, Sharp's 5.5-inch 1080P screen has compromised color reproduction to achieve a brightness of 450 nits, and the 13-megapixel camera is steadily becoming more and more popular. What is the driving force behind such a high-speed evolution? They have always been able to make a stable income and carry out guaranteed technological innovation in a positive profit cycle.

No matter how powerful Chinese manufacturers are in the market, their “weapons” are all provided by a few fixed foreign supply chain manufacturers. No matter how turbulent the industry is, no matter how thrilling the market landscape has been, upstream manufacturers are waiting for you to come to them, unless one day the industry ecology encounters an asteroid impact and the entire industry outlook has a big decline. But this is a low probability event.

Therefore, "Instead of standing by the river and envying the fish, it is better to step back and weave a net", just like Huawei, is the inevitable ultimate choice for every Chinese mobile phone manufacturer?

Lei Jun said, "Focus on what we are good at, and don't do what we don't understand." Even when he had already started to hit the "patent wall" and was planning how to "climb over the wall" to avoid a bloody head, he did not forget to proudly announce that "all patents obtained by Xiaomi in the future will only be used for defense." As a pioneer, Xiaomi's huge market success has made a number of supply chain manufacturers dare not underestimate the power of Chinese companies, and has also reduced a lot of resistance for latecomers like Hammer when negotiating with Japanese and Korean companies. Xiaomi is a living fairy tale.

Motorola and Nokia giants have fallen one after another, and HTC and Samsung are also experiencing "rise and fall". Without exception, they were all hardware giants. What's the use of having many invention patents? Can you lead the market segment manufacturers in all key areas at the same time? Hardware vertical integration is actually just hardware differentiation. When the products made by this differentiation are not as good as the homogeneous products formed by professional division of labor, hardware differentiation loses its fundamental value.

Xiaomi's existence is not necessarily unreasonable. What is unreasonable is your thinking, which cannot keep up with the times.

On the way back to the company from the National Convention Center, a very impressive interview kept replaying in my head. The interviewee was the public relations director of the mobile phone manufacturer Da Q, which was selling mobile phones at 699, 799 and 999 yuan. She said, "Lei Jun has a long-term vision. We are now learning from him to sell the machines so cheaply. We are determined to first sweep away those white-label manufacturers in Shenzhen, because we are looking at the future." "Smartphone hardware, even smart hardware and smart home, will definitely be insignificant in value in the future, and will definitely be replaced by Internet services, big data, and cloud computing." "Hardware is just infrastructure. When the volume is increased and the conditions are met, you will see what we are ultimately selling. Isn't Internet thinking about creating volume for free and then selling users as commodities?"

"But Xiaomi still relies on the profits from mobile phone hardware to survive, and there are 3 billion yuan of net profits hidden overseas," I was puzzled. "Where will smartphone hardware be in the value chain in the future? How can you be so sure?"

I seem to understand what Xiaomi's model innovation is all about, but sometimes I can't help but doubt myself. However, just because I don't understand something doesn't mean that the manufacturer doesn't understand it. The truth is sometimes in the hands of a few people.

I have gone too far. Finally, let me say something reliable: before a company does anything, it must think clearly about why it does it, even if the action is "imitation".

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.