Chen Zifan:? ? ?
Can you say that again?
Fifteen models! ?
Where do so many products come from?
Wang Jinli explained a little: "Actually, there are only three types of products: air conditioners, refrigerators, and washing machines, but there are more styles. Take air conditioners for example, there are hanging type, vertical type, and central air conditioning."
The categories are different, the wind power is different, and the price ranges are also different. The same is true for refrigerators and washing machines. There are single-door, side-by-side, roller, and fully automatic... In total, the fifteen products are really not as many as expected.
Originally, Midea wanted to develop a few more types of products, such as range hoods, integrated stoves, vacuum cleaners, drinking/water purifiers, etc., but in the end they gave up. You cannot become fat by eating it all at once, so you have to launch a few models to test the water first.
Let’s take down the “three major items” of daily household appliances first, and then consider other things. Moreover, Midea’s development strategy is completely different from that of Stardust Technology. Stardust Technology takes a specialized route and only has a few products in one category.
Midea, on the other hand, casts its net everywhere and covers the area with firepower. Its product lines are many and complex. Some products are OEM products processed by OEMs. There is no such clear-cut product as Stardust 2 → Stardust 3, Xinghan 01, Xinghan 001, and Xinghan 009. Product planning seems very confusing.
Ordinary consumers only know that Midea is a big brand, but they can't tell you which products are good... When they walk into Midea's home appliance store, it seems that every model is good and the design is quite beautiful.
The product feels solid enough, and the price is not much different from Gree, Haier, and Supor. However, Supor specializes in kitchen utensils and seems to have won the title of "Kitchen Overlord" in that year.
As a result, several brands specializing in household appliances may not put as much thought into their products as brand marketing, advertising, and grabbing market share, as long as the products maintain normal standards.
That is to say, Gree also advertised "mastering core technology" when advertising. In the early stage, many people did become users of Gree air conditioners, but later... Xiaomi already made air conditioners. Where is your technology?
Or was it an advertising slogan from the beginning?
If Chen Zifan were asked to make electrical appliances, he might not specialize in air conditioners, washing machines and other products. Instead, he would choose emerging home appliances that are eccentric, such as dishwashers, shoe washers, sweeping robots, etc.
Even if he were asked to make air conditioners, he would only launch a few models and upgrade them every two years. However, due to the long service life of air conditioners and washing machines, brand has become a key factor.
Air conditioners, washing machines, and refrigerators from big brands may not necessarily be that good, nor may they be better than those produced by small factories. They may even be the same thing as what they sell, just with a different brand.
Of course, these are just "malicious speculations" made by Chen Zifan, and he has never had an in-depth understanding of these brands. As far as Midea is concerned, from Wang Jinli's investigation, it can be seen that Midea actually has a production factory.
It is also equipped with a dedicated product design team. This time it wants to develop "smart home" and is also seeking new breakthrough points to enhance its brand power.
Chen Zifan carefully looked at the documents Wang Jinli brought back and realized that he had misunderstood Midea. Although they wanted to create many products this time, their product positioning was very clear and their product lines were also very clear.
For example, for washing machines, they have come up with a simple and colorful series with very beautiful colors, which directly reminded Chen Zifan of LG's LGK big-eye mobile phone.
"This color scheme...isn't appropriate? Isn't it easy to get dirty if the washing machine uses light colors? Moreover, the texture is not good enough, and it is not as attractive as dark colors!"
"Ahem, the person in charge sent by Midea this time said that they also want to create more "younger" products. These things are preliminary plans and have not been finalized yet. They will definitely be adjusted back in the future? "
"In the name of intelligence, you want to improve product positioning? Oh~ It turns out to be this intelligence. It uses Stardust OS to connect refrigerators, washing machines and other products to achieve remote control of their various functions..."
It is definitely much easier to use than an infrared remote control, but if you think about it carefully, it is not very useful. The air conditioner has a remote control, and you can directly turn on and off, adjust the temperature, and adjust the mode.
As long as the refrigerator is open, it will basically not take care of it.
The remaining washing machines will be used more frequently, but who would use their mobile phones to control them while washing clothes? Chen Zifan didn't know what to say for a moment. Is this smarter or more inconvenient?
In other words, throw the clothes directly into the drum, close the door, turn on the phone, select the mode and timer on the phone, and then dry the clothes directly and throw them into the rack. Then just hang them up.
"My suggestion is to let them develop some "novel" products, and then label these products with "technology" and "smart", such as dishwashers. It is not impossible to do this now, it depends on the product..."
If Midea develops well and the product's functions can be fully transplanted to mobile phones for remote control, it seems that we can give it a try.
Thinking of this, Chen Zifan suddenly remembered something and quickly stopped Wang Jinli who was about to retreat and continued: "By the way, be sure to remind Midea! Don't install ads on their smart homes!"
Wang Jinli: "...I understand."
From a manufacturer's perspective, it's a good thing that a product can get a lot of advertising revenue, but from a consumer's perspective, no one wants ads to pop up when their refrigerator lights up the screen.
If you want to truly make good products and manage your brand well, you have to give up part of your profits, improve product experience and user satisfaction first, and then talk about profits later.
This is just an ideal state. Chen Zifan is just reminding them that it is good to cooperate and save trouble. He also wants to achieve his goal as soon as possible, but if it doesn't work, he will do it himself.
"Smart TVs", "smart refrigerators", "smart air conditioners"...many products originally carried very beautiful development concepts, but in the end they were all ruined by advertising, causing smart homes to become "deceptions".
These are all okay. Some crazy car manufacturers even have advertisements on their cars. Fortunately, they are not on the dashboard. If an advertisement pops up on the dashboard while driving, the driver will probably collapse on the spot.
At present, Stardust Technology is probably the only one in China that can control advertising. Some remaining mobile phone manufacturers have already begun to accept pre-installed applications and built-in advertisements, such as LeTV, which is now in dire straits.
On the one hand, Boss Jia "ignores his business" every day and is busy developing Faraday Future to compete with Rolls-Royce and Bentley. On the other hand, he has suffered a fierce attack from Xiaomi, and the product experience is indeed not good.
The price/performance ratio is high enough, but Boss Jia's "software subsidizes hardware" has flooded LeTV's mobile phones, TVs and other products with all kinds of advertisements. As a result, Xiaomi has seized the opportunity and started to sow discord with their users.
There is also a saying circulating on the Internet: If you want cost-effectiveness when buying a mobile phone, buy LeTV, but LeTV phones must be installed with Xiaomi’s system!
Taking advantage of this opportunity, Xiaomi Mi 1 has also entered the most critical period before its launch. It is almost the end of the year. What if Stardust Technology makes another "limited edition" during the Spring Festival and advertises on the Spring Festival evening...
Or breaking the news in advance about Stardust 4, Stardust 4+, or other products... Rebus is really overwhelmed. While the residual heat of Stardust 3 is still there, he must seize the opportunity to enter the market.
Rebus also regrets it now. He originally wanted to choose the brand with the highest sales volume and the most influence in China to benchmark the price/performance ratio. But after choosing Stardust 3... he realized that things are not that simple.
The starting price of Stardust 3 seems to be as high as 3999. However, a closer analysis shows that Stardust 3 is very cost-effective, and other brands are not popular enough. There seem to be many supporters of Apple and Samsung abroad, but it is useless!
They can’t even enter the Chinese market, so what’s the use of benchmarking? So there is no way, no matter how powerful Stardust 3 is, he still has to find some loopholes, such as the most criticized 5-megapixel camera on Stardust 3.
The 5.2-megapixel camera came into being~
Another example is that Stardust 3 only has 3G...
Let’s not mention the 3G issue for now, because Xiaomi cannot get 4G chips for the time being, and the Tiangong generation of Haihua chips is still being prepared. It will be after the Spring Festival when the test is completed, so next year will be 4
G mobile phone is the main battlefield.
Although Stardust 3 only has 3G, the current package fee... Sometimes there is no difference between 2G, 3G, and 4G. There is not much traffic, and the cost is still huge.
We can continue to talk about Midea and slowly finalize the final product. The 4G era has just begun, and "intelligentization" is not something that happens overnight. This time Wang Jinli came to Midea and had another important thing:
"Smartphones..."
Regarding smartphones, there is still a key but not urgent project to solve this year, and that is about the "low-price brand". Strictly speaking, it is not a sub-brand of Stardust Technology.
However, compared to other mobile phone brands that rely on Hongqi OS and Stardust ecological chain manufacturers, they will receive some Stardust technology and official promotion resources. After Wang Jinli’s screening, there are four goals determined:
"Xiaomi, Meizu, Coolpad, Motorola!"
The current development situations of the first two and the latter two are completely different. Xiaomi and Meizu are on the upswing, and Coolpad has been swept up by other manufacturers and is about to collapse.
Not to mention Motorola, its eldest brother Nokia can't hold on. It, the second-oldest company in the world, collapsed two years in advance in the smartphone wave. Now Google has revealed its intention to acquire it at a high price.
In Chen Zifan's memory, Motorola was later acquired by Lenovo. In fact, it was a mess and it cost 2.9 billion US dollars. But there was no way, all the acquisitions were acquired, so we had to bite the bullet and continue to make mobile phones.
The reason why I didn't choose Nokia... Firstly, Nokia has not fallen yet, and secondly, a skinny camel is bigger than a horse. If I want to acquire Nokia, Stardust Technology has paid too much, and it will cost more than 5 billion US dollars.
In order to support an officially designated "people's livelihood brand" that is almost unprofitable, paying more than 30 billion yuan to acquire Nokia is a bit too expensive. Motorola is cheaper, but not much better.
So the only real alternatives are Xiaomi, Meizu, and Coolpad. Xiaomi has to wait for Xiaomi 1 to come out before seeing the situation. Meizu may not accept living under others at the moment. A small factory is a small factory, but a small factory has a dream.
Coolpad is the best one to start with, but even though Coolpad is a domestic mobile phone brand, the acquisition price is not low. But if they don’t acquire it, their development philosophy will conflict with Stardust Technology, and they won’t be able to support it.
As for other brands...such as Big Cola, this brand that specializes in "square" mobile phones has fallen. There is no way. The square screen is too anti-human, big and heavy, and there are two big black edges when watching videos.
Chen Zifan is quite interested, but he won't joke about this kind of thing, so in the end he may have to choose between Xiaomi and Meizu:...
"Don't worry about Xiaomi for now. Let's see what tricks they can play. Send people to contact Meizu. Aren't they planning to launch a sub-brand called "Meizu"? See if they have the idea of making low prices. "
When Wang Jinli heard this, he immediately patted his chest and said, "Don't worry! They must have an idea!"
Chen Zifan:......
You can't do anything bad, right?
Forget it, as long as it can achieve its goal!
Wang Jinli’s idea is very simple. He believes that this is not a multiple-choice question. He will send people to contact not only Meizu, but also both brands. He gets fame, wealth and resources for nothing. Are these two brands not fools?
Moreover, it is their sub-brands that are supported, which has a strong driving effect on the main brand. Of course, after accepting the support, it will be impossible to break away from the Stardust ecological chain in the future, and can only become a vassal of Stardust Technology.
They need to think clearly about this in advance.
Coolpad is an alternative. After all, they still have a certain financial background. After two rounds of Coolpad acquisition prices have dropped, it is not impossible to consider it.
The matter of low-priced brands can be finalized before the Spring Festival. There is still plenty of time. The reason why they want to do this is because both the official and Chen Zifan are a little dissatisfied with the current pattern of the Chinese mobile phone market.
And their products...are really outstanding.
Obviously there is Hongqi OS and various technologies authorized by the Stardust Ecological Chain Plan, which are much more convenient than those charged by foreign technology companies.
No matter how much is appropriate, but it just can't produce any good products, it just needs to be passive and confrontational.
The mentality of these mobile phone manufacturers is also very simple: no matter how hard they try, they can't beat Stardust Technology, so it will simply fail. There are only a few mobile phone manufacturers with "dreams in their hearts" who are still working hard to build mobile phones.
In fact, it's Chen Zifan's fault. He also knows that Stardust Technology's initial development goals were not clear enough. It would either go down the wrong path, or it should not be so radical and just maintain the lead in 1-2 generations of products.
Being caught in the middle is the most uncomfortable thing, but this is only from the current perspective. The development situation at that time and the strength of Stardust Technology may not allow them to use such a radical approach to take over the entire market.
The current situation is different. You can try to change the development method. The most important thing is: popularizing low-priced smartphones will be conducive to the later announcement of Stardust Technology products and the promotion of mobile payments.
