Recently, the new generation of Gree mobile phones passed the network license of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which was approximately a year after Gree released its mobile phone product. Although it is not surprising that home appliance companies have launched mobile phone products, Gree mobile phones have chosen to return to the public at this time. Still surprising.
Gree has always been a traditional household appliance company in the external impression. However, with Gree’s introduction of mobile phone products in recent years and recent attempts to acquire Zhuhai Yinlong, Gree’s idea is obviously based not only on household appliances. It also wants to take a share in the current mobile phone Red Sea and new energy vehicles.
For Gree mobile phones, Gree Electric chairman Dong Mingzhu even shouted 'three years do not change', 'to sell 100 million' rhetoric, its ambition is evident.
Although 'Miss Dong' has always dared to dare to do it, she has always believed that Gree's mobile phones will succeed sooner or later, but in today's increasingly saturated mobile phone market, the difficulty of achieving this goal is probably greater than Miss Tung expected. many.
Make full use of your potential
As early as early 2015, when Gree announced the launch of the first generation of Gree smartphones, there were already many home appliance counterparts in the industry involved in this field. Regardless of Haier, Changhong and other companies entered the mobile phone market a few years ago, TCL, Hisense and other old brands In the era of the prevalence of functional machines at the beginning of this century, enterprises have already started to operate mobile phones.
Among the numerous home appliance companies, TCL mobile phones are undoubtedly the most representative. From 2001 to 2005, TCL TV sales ranked first in China for five consecutive years. There was no moment in sight. It was at this stage that TCL announced the acquisition of France. Telecommunication giant Alcatel’s mobile phone business entered the European mobile phone field and successfully occupied a place in the overseas market.
However, on the other hand, in China, due to the rise of emerging Internet mobile phone manufacturers such as Xiaomi and Glory, these household appliance companies are relatively weak in product competitiveness and are still at the level of third and fourth-tier manufacturers in the domestic market.
According to the report of China's smart phone market released by Sinoo in the first quarter of 2018, OPPO, Vivo, Apple, Huawei, and Glory rank among the top five in domestic mobile phone sales. Among them, OPPO sales in the first quarter of 2018 reached 18.52 million, and the performance was very impressive. However, in this report, it is not seen that there is a home appliance company that can be on the list. The sales figures are not satisfactory.
For this phenomenon, industry expert Liu Buchen stated that Gree sold no more than 200,000 units of mobile phones last year. This figure can be said to be negligible for domestic mobile phone sales. In addition, other household appliances companies are building brands and The product itself is difficult for consumers to recognize, which is why it is difficult for home appliance companies to become bigger and stronger in the mobile phone field.
Create Internet of Things Entrance
Despite the poor performance of home appliance companies in the field of mobile phones, home appliance companies do not have an advantage to do mobile phones. Liu Buchen believes that the advantage of home appliance companies in making mobile phones is that they can build an ecosystem with their own products and use stickiness to attract existing consumers. .
Gree also has great expectations for the mobile phone business. In Gree's annual report released in 2014, it elaborated on the mobile phone business: 'Gree's mobile phone will soon be available as a carrier for linking and controlling smart home appliances. Gree will preempt Competing for smart home entrance, it becomes a platform for connecting various household appliances and collecting data. It helps users to pay close attention to the running status of home appliances and finally achieve the purpose of remote visualization control. In the future, it can also enter the field of big data services.
From Gree's vision, we can see Gree’s vision for the future layout of smart homes. 'Actually, home appliance companies make mobile phones mainly to be an entry point, and smart homes require mobile phones to be an entrance. It controls everything through the Internet of Things. The appliance sector. ' Household appliance industry observer Hong Shibin analysis of this.
As the core hardware of the smart home ecology, the importance of mobile phones is naturally self-evident. Although Gree mobile phones are not currently forming a climate in the market, Gree mobile phones are a step that cannot be ignored for Gree’s strategic layout. , Whether it is Gree, or other home appliance companies, doing mobile phones to a large extent or in order to enter the field of smart homes to do early preparations.
Low awareness
In May of this year, Dong Mingzhu announced that Gree’s revenue target for this year was 200 billion. However, for Gree at the moment, it is not easy to achieve this goal.
Gree’s financial report released last year showed that its revenue in 2017 reached 148.7 billion yuan, Gree air-conditioning business revenue accounted for 83% of total revenue, while living appliances and smart equipment accounted for only 1.55% of total revenue, respectively. 1.43%, the contribution to performance is quite limited.
In order to achieve significant growth, Gree must expand its business in areas other than air-conditioning. From a recent period of time, Gree not only tried to acquire Yinlong, but also expanded in the areas of mobile phones, household appliances, and smart equipment.
But for the mobile phone market, Gree is already too late to enter the field. 'For the mobile phone market, which has become increasingly saturated, the development space for home appliance companies is very small. If there is no subversive innovative design, it is very different. The products, these home appliance brands want to make breakthroughs in the highly competitive mobile phone market is a very difficult thing.' Hong Shibin said.
If you look back at the various cases in which home appliance companies make mobile phones, there is not much room for success other than TCL's gains in overseas markets. The industry is not optimistic about this.
Liu Buchen believes that the reason why household electrical appliance companies do not succeed in making mobile phones is that the important reason is that home appliance companies leave behind the impression that the technology content is not high, and mobile phones are the latest technology products of modern communication technology. Home appliance companies make mobile phones in the public brand The degree of recognition is low.
In Huawei, Vivo and OPPO, and other mobile phone manufacturers continue to display the latest technology products, Gree next-generation mobile phone network access permission message is not emboldened. Although Dong Mingzhu's rhetoric is still in the ears, but have to say is left to Gree these home appliance companies do Good mobile phone business has become less and less time. As for the layout of smart homes, it is still unknown.