Domestic mobile phone high-end breaking light

Recently, Lenovo Group announced its third quarter of fiscal year 2012/13 (natural year is the third quarter of 2012). During the financial report period as of December 31, 2012, Lenovo’s performance in all regional markets exceeded In the city, turnover, profit before tax, and profitability all set a new record. The profit reached 205 million U.S. dollars, up 34% year-on-year. In the Chinese market occupying the company's core position, Lenovo recorded a consolidated revenue of US$4.1 billion, a year-on-year increase of 17%. Most importantly, Lenovo’s smart phone business in the Chinese market recorded its first profit, which became a domestic mobile phone since the second half of last year. The first good news after being caught in a “bleeding competition” seems to indicate that domestic mobile phone manufacturers will eventually step into a positive cycle of volume growth after successfully regaining half of their market share. However, the development of such things will be so easy. ?

Since Lenovo’s mobile phone business made its first profit in 2013, Lenovo adjusted its operations frequently. First, Chairman of the Board and CEO Yang Yuanqing announced the restructuring of the company through internal e-mails. Lenovo re-classified Lenovo and Lenovo as two business groups. After the segmentation of consumer and business services from the back-end supply chain, the company also It clearly puts forward the strategic goal of borrowing the Think brand awareness to open up the high-end market. Then at the CES held in the United States, Lenovo and high-profile joint Intel released a 5-inch full-HD flagship smart phone K900, and directly positioned the opponent as Samsung's GALAXY Note II, "naked" gestures unprecedented. Not only that, in the following week, Lenovo also announced that in Greater China and Southeast Asia signed the NBA star Kobe Bryant as the spokesman for Lenovo mobile phones, once again resorted to celebrity endorsements to enhance the brand price increase, this series of combination punches It has fully demonstrated the determination of Lenovo to strive for high-end breakthroughs.

Behind the painful determination is the support of Lenovo's PC+ strategy, which is represented by smartphones. Taking the Chinese market as an example, Lenovo’s market share has further increased to 36.7%, which is more than the combined market share of the last five competitors. At the same time, the profit margin also increased by 0.3 percentage points year-on-year to 6.3%. Emerging smart phone business volume surged, succeeding in obtaining 7 million sales in the last quarter. In the fourth quarter of 2012, Lenovo further boosted its market share to 12.3%, and for the first time realized quarterly earnings. At the same time, Lenovo Mobile phones have also begun to enter the Indian, Indonesian, Filipino, Vietnamese and Russian markets. The future looks bright.

The high-end product line still lacks sufficient support Although the Lenovo mobile phone has climbed to a new high in the domestic market and achieved a quarterly profit on the volume scale, industry analysts believe that it can be concluded that it can become a high-end domestic mobile phone. It's too early for the representatives to break. "In terms of the overall price distribution of Lenovo smartphones, except for the K900, which will not be available until April, almost all Lenovo smartphones currently sell for under 2,500 yuan, and even under 2,000 yuan they account for more than 90%. "Yang Qun, an analyst with Warring States policy, said that this situation is not only found in Lenovo, but also in domestic handset manufacturers such as ZTE, Huawei, and Cool. In fact, these manufacturers have also moved to the high-end market after entering 2013. Before and after the release of the Lenovo K900, ZTE and Huawei also released high-end smart phones that were priced at more than 3,000 yuan. Cool was listed at the end of last year. A dual-mode dual-stand-alone smart phone with a price of more than 4,000 yuan, and another veteran manufacturer OPPO also released a smart model with a price of more than 3,000 yuan.

"The problem is that the layout of these manufacturers in the high-end market is still in the test period, high prices can not be simple and high-end equator, consumers still do not have enough recognition of domestic brands to sell high prices." Yang Qun said. The reporter's investigation also found that because most of the current domestic mobile phone manufacturers focus on Android smart phones, leading to the homogenization of their products is very serious, the same hardware configuration, ZTE, Huawei, Lenovo, Cool, dared to set high prices, but there are also new manufacturers are willing to set low The price is based on the popular quad-core smart phones on the market. The traditional products represented by Jin Li as the representative of MediaTek's solutions are priced at less than RMB 2,000. It is also the price of the Xiaomi mobile phone of Qualcomm's solution that is less than RMB 2,000. This kind of fierce internal competition will undoubtedly put pressure on some domestic manufacturers who test the high-end market."

It is even more vigilant that we should be vigilant for Samsung's high school low-rate adoption. While domestic brands try to go high, international brands represented by Samsung and HTC are beginning to follow the "people-friendly line." Taking Samsung as an example, from the end of 2012 so far, it has launched a variety of smart phones that are priced at less than 2,000 yuan, including a dual-mode, dual-standby model specifically tailored for the Chinese market. Moreover, in the high-end flagship products, Samsung's SIII and Note II's official suggested retail price is high, but in the B2C and other online marketing channels, the frequency of price diving is very high, the adjusted price even for parallel phones is no longer With price advantage.

According to data from market researcher Sai Nuo in December 2012, Samsung’s mobile phone shipments in the month rose by 16.9% from November, and sales rose by 24.6%, which is the fastest growing company in terms of market shares except for Apple; Shipment volume of handsets fell 2.6% from November, the fastest decline in sales during the month. It can be seen that if a manufacturer with a brand advantage like Samsung is to launch a price announcement, the attractiveness of domestic mobile phones for consumers will not be so strong. In fact, not only Samsung, but even Apple, currently seems to be planning and launching cheap iPhones to meet more diverse market demands. Recently, a patent application disclosed by the US Patent Office showed that Apple has applied for a patent for an iPhone without a home button and a plastic body. If the news is true, this is likely to be the cheap iPhone that will be released in June this year. According to market predictions, the price of cheap iPhones should start at 399 yuan, which is equivalent to about 2,500 yuan, which is undoubtedly a huge lethality for the current domestic mobile phone manufacturers. "In the product layout of domestic mobile phone manufacturers, products under 1,000 yuan are mainly for running sales, and the real support for profitability is about 2,000 yuan. If cheap iPhones are also locked in this range, the profitability of domestic mobile phones will be renewed. Form pressure," said Liu Zhengyu, an analyst at Izumo Consulting.