In 2019, Huawei encountered policy black swans overseas, with its businesses shrinking across the board.
OPPO, along with its Realme brand, took the opportunity to advance in the Southeast Asian and Indian markets, and seized the European market through 5G mobile phones.
Xiaomi's unexpected success in Europe has further expanded its overseas market share after occupying India.
Vivo's online channel development is still in China, and its overseas market share still lags behind other rivals. Offline channels have grown in India, but the overall progress has been slightly frustrated.
Next, how to play 5G cards? How to build an IoT concept and ecology? How is the balance between the brand's move to the high end and the market share? These questions will test Chinese mobile phone manufacturers.
Xiaomi balance speed and scale
On November 29, 2019, Xiaomi issued an announcement that Wang Xiang, the senior vice president of Xiaomi responsible for overseas business, was promoted to the president of Xiaomi Group.
"This appointment has risen and fallen sharply, and Xiaomi has seen a large amount of inventory overseas." Now, the overseas burden is under the pressure of the successor Zhou Shuren, former millet employee Yang Bin (a pseudonym) said.
Xiaomi overseas is divided into three regions, the first is the Southeast Asian market; the second is to enter the Indian market that has been five years old; the third is to officially enter the European region for more than a year.
In 2019, the Southeast Asian market "obtained that the Xiaomi brand was established in Southeast Asia and gained some popularity. However, the disadvantage is that it has no good relationship with local channel dealers and agents and has not allowed others to make money."
In order to impact the listing of Hong Kong stocks on July 9, 2018, Yang Bin said that from the beginning of 2018, various channels began to press the goods, and required full payment. In Indonesia, local agent Erajaya has a backlog of inventory. "It reached 2 million units during the peak period and almost hung up."
In Xiaomi's sales system, "I have been with Xiaomi for three years and the term parallel imports is spoken almost every day." Yang Bin said.
Licensed products are mobile phones and other products sold through official and formal channels, while parallel imports are not officially sold. "Someone bought the goods internally to a trading company.
After the trading company got the goods, they would sell them to whatever market gave them higher prices. In the market, the difference in earnings is called the parallel market. Sometimes parallel imports account for half of overseas sales. "
The Internet mobile phone distribution model sometimes causes a disconnect between production and sales, and parallel imports can play a regulating role in it and clean up the inventory without harming the brand. The scale of production maintenance can increase the bargaining chips with upstream suppliers and reduce production costs.
However, relying on parallel imports channels is like "sucking opium." Parallel imports traders only come to earn the difference and have no loyalty to the Xiaomi brand.
On the other hand, parallel imports play a role in the global market. Xiaomi's subsequent entry into India, Indonesia, Spain, and recently to Ukraine and other regions all gave positive feedback in the parallel market in the early stage, followed by Xiaomi's official channels in the later stage.
In 2019, Xiaomi was under siege by the OPPO system in the Southeast Asian market, and its market share stopped growing.
In addition to the OPPO brand, Realme has taken advantage of the offline store resources accumulated by the holding company OPPO, coupled with a more cost-effective product offensive, to steal the Xiaomi market. It also attracted some Xiaomi employees to join.
Taking the second quarter of 2019 as an example, according to Canalys data, the overall smartphone shipments in Southeast Asia were 30.7 million units.
Among them, Samsung ranks first; OPPO ranks second with 7.3 million units; Vivo ranks third with shipments of 4.1 million units; Xiaomi ranks fourth with 3.7 million units; Realme enters for the first time with shipments of 1.6 million units the top five positions in the Southeast Asian smartphone market are mainly grabbing Xiaomi's share.
In India, Manu, the head of Xiaomi India, is trying to resist the entry of parallel imports and doing his best to maintain a relatively independent kingdom.
According to data from the market tracking agency International Data Corporation (IDC), as of September 2019, Xiaomi continued to rank first among Indian smartphone makers with a market share of 27.1% but fell slightly from 27.3% last year.
The good news is that Xiaomi is increasing the unit price. Xiaomi Technology India's total revenue in the Indian market in FY2019 increased by 54% year-on-year to 34.8 billion yuan. The company's total revenue in the Indian market in FY2018 was 22.7 billion yuan.
In the past two years, Xiaomi has improved considerably in the Spanish market.
After seeing the activation of Xiaomi mobile phones in the Spanish area in the background, on the one hand, Xiaomi established a large retail formal channel through a formal agent in Spain; on the one hand, it took some measures to quickly enter the European operator channel.
Huawei sells equipment to global telecom operators and has accumulated a lot of resources.
Xiaomi recruited former Huawei executives, used related parties to match and pay some remuneration, and then used mobile phones and related products to enter the operator channel.
"Advanced operators, after two or three years of cooperation, replace the bridge company. Both parties take what they need." Yang Bin said, "This is a bit like a carrier rocket. When the scale is very small, you need the help of an intermediary company to fly to Over the sky, with a secondary rocket, throw away the intermediary company. "
In Ukraine, Xiaomi encountered a former Samsung agent. Talents and teams basically do not need to be stationed to ensure the supply of goods.
The Ukrainian agency team is relatively independent and operates on its own. At present, Xiaomi mobile phones have become the first in the country, with about 1 million mobile phones being produced each year. "Ukraine is a positive example."
OPPO plays hard overseas
Unlike Xiaomi, after years of development, OPPO has gradually established integration in overseas channels, factories, and services. OPPO regards the Asia-Pacific mobile phone market as an important base for global business development. "Thailand is the first place for OPPO to go abroad.
After years of operation, OPPO has established an extensive sales and service network in the Asia Pacific region. Including: more than 52,000 sales points, more than 44,000 sales staff, 250 self-built service centers, 1-hour quick repair and international warranty services, etc. After ten years of development, OPPO's cumulative active users in the Asia-Pacific market will soon exceed 100 million.
On October 18, 2019, OPPO opened a flagship store in Bangkok's Emquartier Shopping Center.
In addition to providing retail for users, this store has also upgraded various interesting interactive experiences: drones, cameras, Bluetooth speakers, wireless headphones, flash chargers, AR / VR smart clothing and robots, from large screens to smartphone screens Are part of the product line.
The OPPO factory is located in Tangerang, Indonesia and opened in 2014. The plant covers an area of 27,000 square meters and is OPPO's first overseas mobile phone factory. It is mainly composed of logistics warehouse, mobile phone production line and quality control center.
In the initial stage of production, the new OPPO plant has a monthly production capacity of about 3-4 million units. Later went to India to build a factory the same way.
Data from research institute Canalys also shows that OPPO is at the forefront in many markets in Southeast Asia. In the Philippines and Indonesia, OPPO is the most popular mobile phone brand, and its sales market share has always ranked first; in Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia, OPPO ranked second.
According to a survey by Euromonitor International, UK. OPPO's share in Vietnam reached 23.6% in 2019, with the fastest growth in the Asia-Pacific region.
The system layout makes OPPO look very fast when it grabs market share when speeding up.
Taking Realme as an example, you can enter OPPO's stores in Southeast Asia offline. Most of the online products are benchmarked against Xiaomi, with similar configurations and better prices.
OPPO's layout is very clear. Use Realme to grab the low-end market, you can sell it at a loss, and use the profit earned by the OPPO brand to subsidize Realme.
According to market data from the market analysis agency Counterpoint in November this year, Realme entered Europe for only one and a half months and has become one of the top 5 mobile phone brands in Spain, becoming the "fastest growing mobile phone brand".
On December 16, 2019, the OPPO Asia-Pacific Strategy Conference was held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. For the Asia-Pacific market industry chain partners, OPPO's new business layout and development strategy for enterprises in the 5G era was announced, and OPPO Asia-Pacific Center was announced in Kuala Lumpur.
In the new period, OPPO is trying to play a leading role in 5G when Southeast Asia comes.
OPPO Global Sales President Wu Qiang revealed the performance of some international markets in an interview during the Reno 3 conference.
OPPO is the first manufacturer to officially release 5G mobile phones for the Western European market, and it is also the first manufacturer to officially launch 5G mobile phones for commercial use in the Western European market (May 2019). In the first few months of listing, in Switzerland, OPPO Reno 5G mobile phones accounted for about 20% of the 5G market segment.
Subsequently, OPPO entered the British local operator EE (British Telecom), and the relatively conservative OPPO products in the UK accounted for 12% of 5G products in the EE system.
In Australia, it has about 70% market share in the 5G field. In general, "Developed countries in Western Europe do not subsidize, and the network is under construction. 5G commercial advancement is not as fast as China's, and there will be a relatively long time period." Wu Qiang predicts.
Vivo waits for the opportunity
In the third quarter of 2019, Vivo ranked third in the Indian smartphone market with shipments of 7.1 million smartphones and 15.2% market share.
In the first three quarters, Vivo has sold close to 17 million smartphones in India. According to this trend, throughout 2019, Vivo's smartphone shipments in India should be around 25 million. Compared with the same period of last year, Vivo smartphones have a recoverable growth of 58.7%.
Chen Zhiyong (CEO of Vivo India National Corporation) said in an interview with a Chinese media group in India in December that "the first five years have passed the survival stage in India, and the next five years, think about how to lead."
A reporter asked Chen Zhiyong that after Realme got up, the rising speed was fast. Xiaomi's action in India was also more aggressive. How can Vivo compete on the line?
Chen Zhiyong said, "The online segment has not yet been completed. In the past few years, we have relatively more focused on offline consumers. For a brand, online and offline are equally important."
Backgammon (which is good at offline operation) (including OPPO and Vivo), the online strategy is slightly different. Starting in 2019, OPPO will go hand in hand at home and abroad. Vivo first selected the domestic market and tested the water with the iQOO brand. After solving the inconvenience of some brand names in Western Europe, Vivo moved.
Vivo in India has undergone a change from "seeking fast" to "seeking stability". From 2016 to 2017, "In just one year, Vivo expanded its channels by more than five times. This is indeed too fast. Later, we slowly realized that many things in India cannot be sought too quickly." Chen Zhiyong Say.
At present, Vivo has more than 10,000 employees in its Indian factory, and its sales system (shopping guide + salesperson + trainer) has more than 40,000 employees.
Vivo has gained market share in Southeast Asia and India, represented by Indonesia and Thailand. However, facing Japan, Germany and the United States, the three most difficult developed regions in the world, Vivo is much more cautious than OPPO.
OPPO Wu Qiang said, "In 2020, there will be new blank markets. There are currently plans to enter European markets such as Germany, Romania and Portugal. In addition, it will also enter the Americas, Mexico, and even Africa."
Previously, on January 31, 2018, OPPO has officially entered the Japanese market. In November, the OnePlus mobile phone with deep OPPO connections has entered the US T-Mobile operator channel.
Of course, these are at an early stage. It will take time for domestic mobile phone brands to have a firm foothold in developed markets like Apple and Samsung did.
