“The personal computer disruptor
China's personal computers have ushered in a new disruptor. 2001 has just passed. With the help of TCL, the computer brand that launched the Pentium 4, its image in the minds of the public has gradually transformed from a home appliance brand to a personal computer brand. AMD surpassed Intel in CPU clock speed for the first time in the Pentium III era, which led to Intel facing increasing competitive pressure from AMD.
Intel launched Pentium 4 at the end of 2000. By the third quarter that just ended, Pentium 4 had become the mainstream of the market, accounting for 34.6% of the PC market. Under such a situation, Intel and Zhou Xin's Xinxin Can the Pentium M chip jointly launched by science and technology be recognized by the market?
There was a saying in the computer circle in the past that 486 made Compaq, Pentium created Dell, Pentium 3 created Lenovo, can Pentium M make Xiaomi computers? At the press conference that just ended yesterday, Xiaomi used national production and ultimate cost-effectiveness as its selling points.
Purely in terms of configuration, Xiaomi computers are indeed comparable to Lenovo computers priced at 8,000 yuan. However, as a new player in personal computers, whether Xiaomi computers can combine these better-performing accessories to achieve theoretical performance remains to be seen. is an unknown quantity.
But no matter what, Xiaomi Computer, backed by Zhou Xin, will undoubtedly become a new player in the field of personal computers this winter and a strong competitor to domestic brands such as Lenovo, Founder, and TCL. From my personal emotional point of view, even if the price is two thousand yuan more, I am willing to pay for this purely domestic computer, let alone the ultra-low price of 4,000 yuan."
The next day, the front page headlines of almost all technology magazines and newspapers were about Xiaomi computers. Everyone's attention was focused on the ultimate cost-effectiveness. As for the difficulty of national production, we will talk about it in the second page.
"Let's talk about Xiaomi. This will be Lenovo's biggest competitor. How can we resist the impact of Xiaomi in the personal computer market?" Lenovo held an executive meeting overnight. Not only the executives were in the meeting, but also the middle management below. Meeting with employees.
Lenovo hopes to brainstorm and come up with some solutions to compete head-on with Xiaomi. The price of 4,000 yuan is not only flipping the table, it is also digging into Lenovo’s foundation.
"I think we also have to lower prices. The current price really has no advantage over Xiaomi. Lenovo is a computer brand with a history and foundation, but Chinese consumers don't have much loyalty to products at this price. It can be said.
For a product like a computer, which costs several thousand dollars, what they value most is always the price-performance ratio. According to the price announced by Xiaomi Computer yesterday, even if their accessories are made in China, I believe their profit will not exceed 200 yuan at most.
Of course, I know that we can’t lower the price to this level, but we can still lower the price. Xiaomi sells the same configuration for 4,000, and we can sell it for 6,000 at most. With Lenovo’s complete dealer system in China, we can resist Xiaomi computer shipments. This wave of impact came.
In addition, Xiaomi's appearance as a disruptor is not necessarily a bad thing. Lenovo can resist it, but some domestic brands cannot. We can completely use Xiaomi to sweep the second-rate computer brands on the market into the garbage heap one by one. "
"It's okay to reduce prices, but to what price? A computer priced at 8,000 yuan can be reduced to 6,000 yuan. Can a computer priced at 4,000 yuan be reduced to 2,000 yuan? In other words, what should we do with computers priced at 4,000 yuan?"
"We will still lower the price to the cost price. Now that Xiaomi has opened an opening, we can lower the price of 4,000 yuan to 3,000 yuan and the price of 3,000 yuan to 2,500 yuan, putting pressure on other computer brands, which is just right. Clear out the inventory.”
"Dealers may not agree to such a price reduction."
"Forcing them to agree, we are originally a strong party. Since we have become Lenovo's dealer, we must cooperate with Lenovo's overall strategy. If we do not reduce prices, our sales will be seriously affected."
"I agree with Mr. Yang's point of view on price reduction. I also believe that we should reduce prices, but blindly reducing prices will not achieve our goal. We must focus on differentiated competition.
We can focus on LCD monitors, Pentium 4, Windows and LCD monitors, and make these three standard equipment for Lenovo. There is still a lot of room for price reductions for LCD monitors. "
In July last year, Lenovo signed the largest single purchase letter of intent in the history of China's personal computer industry with six major LCD giants: within the next six months from the signing, more than 600,000 sets of Super A-level units will be purchased from the above-mentioned manufacturers. Tube LCD display, worth more than 1.8 billion yuan.
"We should not compare with Xiaomi in terms of performance, but should focus on areas where they don't have, such as LCD monitors, Lenovo's nationwide outlets and nationwide repair services. We should focus on these."
Not only is Lenovo formulating its own breakout strategy, hoping to survive this round of shuffle brought about by Xiaomi, other computer brands are under even greater pressure.
Compared with the color TV industry, the personal computer industry has a shorter history, and no one has played this way before.
There are already people queuing up in advance at Xiaomi's offline stores in order to be the first to grab Xiaomi computers.
No matter in which era, cost-effectiveness is a powerful tool to impress consumers, not to mention the emotional blessing of national products.
Xiaomi Computer supports both offline and online purchases. Since NewPay has been launched in China, and Xiaomi Computer’s offline stores are only open in first- and second-tier cities, there are a larger number of third- and fourth-tier cities, and even stars. There are even fewer stores scattered in counties and cities in China.
Therefore, on the morning of the opening for purchase, the 100,000 computers prepared by Xiaomi's official website were sold out within 10 minutes. Consumers who entered Xiaomi's official website a little later could only see a few words: "Currently sold out, replenishment" Hit." Then his heart dropped.
Xiaomi, headed by Hu Zhengming, does not want to play tricks, but as a new brand, it is true that production capacity is insufficient. Xiaomi Computer itself only prepared 200,000 units, and subsequent factories would produce them one after another. Unexpectedly, all 200,000 units were consumed within a week.
So much so that every week on the day when Xiaomi releases its products, Xiaomi’s official website feels overcrowded due to so many visits.
Consumers still don’t know the term monkey trick, let alone hunger marketing. Some consumers know this concept, but they don’t associate it with Xiaomi.
"Xiaomi computers are hard to find, and executives are targeting Lenovo
So far, Xiaomi computers have been officially launched for a month. In this month, you can see from Xiaomi's official website that Xiaomi's nationwide sales have reached 300,000 units. Among these 300,000 units, except for the 200,000 units that were first stocked, The other 100,000 units are manufactured in factories and sold one at a time. Xiaomi’s strong sales capabilities can make every friend feel the envy of them.
Every week on the day when Xiaomi computers are released, a large number of consumers wait in front of the computers early to grab the goods, because they know that even if they don't use them, the 500 extra price is more than enough to resell them.
In the face of Xiaomi's fierce attack, some executives of personal computer brands said that Xiaomi was competing maliciously, using its supply chain advantages to push prices to the extreme and denying its peers a way to survive. They also said that Zhou Xin's wealth was not for the purpose of making money, but they To run a business, a certain amount of profit is necessary.
Faced with such remarks, the vice president of Xiaomi Computer publicly stated that we can keep the price so low because we have mastered the core technology. All the core chips of the computer are produced and sold by ourselves. He further expressed that the reason why our peers feel that The pressure is huge because after so many years of development, they are only the integrator of the supply chain and have not mastered the real core technology.
Regarding Xiaomi’s vice president’s public remarks on Weibo, some netizens believed that the target was directed at Lenovo, which has been criticized by Chinese consumers for lacking R&D capabilities and willingness.”
Because Xiaomi is a new player in the personal computer field, executives are willing to speak out in the media to attract attention, whether through Weibo or through interviews.
When Xiaomi computers were first launched, a lot of attention was focused on cost-effectiveness. After more and more consumers started to experience Xiaomi computers, more attention was focused on national production.
In the past, domestic computers were expected by consumers, media and even officials to master core technologies, especially Lenovo. In the past, we often saw accusations in the media that Lenovo lacked core technologies.
With the advent of Xiaomi computers, it can be said that almost everyone’s expectations for Lenovo have been fulfilled by Xiaomi.
"I'm very curious about why Xiaomi is able to develop its own chips and graphics cards and jointly develop them, while previous domestic brands had various difficulties when it came to self-research."
"Large investments in R&D are slow to produce results and may not necessarily yield benefits. Xiaomi is able to do this because Zhou Xin has been deeply involved in the chip field for many years and has good relationships with American giants such as Intel, Motorola, and IBM.
To put it bluntly, if Zhou Xin takes action, the technology giants of Amerikan will give him face, and the other parties will buy into his request for cooperation. Domestic brands will not buy into it, and they only want to sell products to you. "
"Lenovo has been around for so many years, but it still doesn't have any core technology. I'm not talking about CPUs, graphics cards and other high-end gadgets. Has Lenovo made any innovations in other fields?"
Discussions about Xiaomi's self-developed technology in general online forums often lead to misunderstandings about why previous domestic brands are not working, and further misunderstandings about why Lenovo is not working.
Although there are many domestic computer brands besides Lenovo, Lenovo is undoubtedly a symbol, and when combined with independent research and development, Lenovo is a typical case.
In December 2002, Lenovo held a technology conference called legend world at the Lenovo Building, claiming that it would transform into technology.
At this meeting, Lenovo invited experts from foreign companies such as Intel, Texas Instruments, Oracle, and Microsoft to sit down and discuss.
President Yang Yuanqing announced this year’s technology answer sheet because Lenovo’s technology conference was held for four days. After the announcement on the first day, some experts immediately expressed their opinions on the Internet: “Is this Lenovo technology called technology?”
At this so-called "world-class technology event initiated by Chinese enterprises for the first time", Lenovo proposed the concept of "associated applications" for the first time. At the opening ceremony, Lenovo's founder used "continuous revolution theory" and "stage revolution theory" to summarize Lenovo's technological innovation path.
The most attractive part of this technology conference is the "E-home" laboratory, where a series of forward-looking products developed by Lenovo based on "correlated technologies" are displayed.
After passing the verification, the glass door of the "E-home" automatically opened, the electronic parrot in the foyer issued a pleasant greeting, the lighting in the living room was automatically adjusted to the appropriate brightness by the system, the curtains of the "balcony" automatically opened, and light music began to play automatically in the bedroom. .
Screens can be seen everywhere in the entire E-home, and audio and video files stored on digital cameras, PDAs, PCs and even the Internet can be played on any display terminal. The seemingly ordinary electronic scale in the foyer is also embedded with an associated protocol. When you stand on the scale, relevant health data is collected and displayed.
"Sensor devices like this can be hidden in every corner of the home, even in the toilet. They can collect various health data of the human body at any time and act as reliable family doctors."
"It is not difficult to see that at the three levels of personal information terminals, enterprise information applications and social information services, the biggest problem is the fragmentation of applications. 'Association' is the solution proposed by Lenovo."
This can be seen as the prototype of the Internet of Things. Of course, this was not the first thing proposed by Lenovo. This concept was proposed by IBM a long time ago, and IBM also elaborated on it at the previous Comdex conference.
To put it bluntly, this thing is a model room based on the concept proposed by others, so much so that reporters at the world conference discussed Lenovo's display technology: These technologies are too scrappy.
During the interviews at the meeting, the reporters were also merciless:
"Mr. Yang, the technology displayed at Lenovo's Legend World conference today is very innovative, but in my opinion Lenovo is just an integrator of technology. We actually don't feel that much of the technology is truly original from Lenovo.
This time Lenovo proposed the concept of associated applications. Does Lenovo's R&D team have any more specific core technologies for the implementation of this concept? "
"I do not deny that Lenovo currently lacks foundation. The technology displayed today is more about integrating technology from mature manufacturers.
But Lenovo will not give up its exploration in technology. According to the strategy set by Mr. Liu, we should also reach the stage of technology from trade, industry and technology.
Lenovo's strategy has always been to clear the periphery first and then approach the core technology. I originally wanted to wait until there were phased results before announcing it, but it is not impossible to announce it in advance today. Lenovo will also set up a chip research and development department to work with Intel. Join forces to create a CPU more suitable for Chinese consumers.
This CPU will become the core technology for the implementation of Lenovo related applications, supporting the implementation of home-based applications. "
Yes, the benefits of Xiaomi's self-developed CPU have been fully verified in the past. Someone has already found a way. There is no reason for Lenovo not to follow suit. Even if it is just a gimmick, it is enough.
(End of chapter)
