On November 6th, Hammer Technology, under commercial pressure, launched four products, one of which is a mobile phone. Previously, mobile phones have been the main business of Hammer Technology. This time, Luo Yonghao launched a peacock blue back cover mobile phone. At the same time, frankly: 'The mobile phone is really making no money'.
Many people familiar with hammer technology revealed to the Caijing reporter that this phone is probably the hammer's out-of-print phone. In this regard, Hammer Technology did not respond to the question of Caijing. Some people also analyzed that the hammer phone is small. Public, market share is almost negligible. From its millions of user experiences and feedback, the overall reputation is good. If the external market environment changes in the later stage, it is not impossible for Hammer Technology to return to the mobile phone industry.
At least so far, from the business data point of view, Hammer Technology's mobile phone business has failed. In the past four years, Hammer Technology has launched a total of 7 mobile phones, with a total sales volume of about 3 million units. This figure is the largest sales of hundreds of millions of mobile phones in China every year. In the market, it can be ignored. The analysis report released by China Information and Communication Research Institute recently showed that from January to September 2018, the domestic mobile phone market shipped 305 million units, of which 276 million domestic brands were shipped, and smartphones came out. The trend of the volume of goods to the head enterprises is obvious. The top 10 manufacturers in the first three quarters of this year have a total shipment share of 92%, an increase of 8 percentage points over the same period of the previous year. Regardless of Samsung, Huawei or Apple, the mainstream mobile phone brand A single main mobile phone can usually sell 10 million orders after three months of listing. Due to the small size, Hammer Technology has no right to speak in the mobile phone industry chain, hardware procurement costs are higher, and one-time research and development costs are added. Wait, every time you sell a hammer mobile phone is losing money. Can not do large-scale in the field of mobile phones, is the key reason why the hammer has to choose to fade out.
Suffering from commercial failure, Hammer Technology is under great pressure and has to shrink people and costs. On October 15, one of the office locations of Hammer Technology Chengdu Company was dissolved. Hammer Technology explained that it was personnel adjustment and said that 'the company is in good operating condition', familiar with According to the company's situation, the main business of the mobile phone makes hammer technology in addition to loss or loss, the investor's patience is limited, will not let it continue to burn a lot of money.
Under external commercial pressure, the drastic changes within the hammer technology are inevitable.
A person familiar with the matter told the Caijing reporter that many senior executives of Hammer Technology chose to leave their own business. The difference is that Hammer Technology has become one of the shareholders of these departing entrepreneurs. This looks like a new business. layout.
The other three new products released by Hammer Technology on November 6th come from three different companies – the humidifier is the product of Chang Respiratory Technology (Chengdu) Co., Ltd., which is a wholly-owned registered company of Hammer Technology in Chengdu in August 2017. Subsidiary; luggage from Chengdu Yuanxingke Technology Co., Ltd., the company was established in March 2018, joint venture between Hammer Technology and Xiamen Sibak Sporting Goods Co., Ltd.; Smart Speakers are from Shenglian Network Technology Co., Ltd. .
Coupled with the internal incubation of Hammer Technology, which has already received 150 million RMB financing bullets, Hammer's next plan seems relatively clear – through the phenomenon of shareholding, joint venture, incubation, etc., to form an incubator + eco-chain model.
In other words, Luo Yonghao is likely to change from an entrepreneur in the mobile phone industry to a business incubator, and he is also likely to transform himself into an advertiser – helping other products to sip.
The incubator and eco-chain model is not new in China, but it is a new stranger to Luo Yonghao. In the field of venture capital, the typical representative of the incubator is the innovation workshop. The innovation workshop has capital and industry resources, which can provide early coverage for its incubation projects. Funding and resource support, as well as revitalizing the resources of various companies, there are more than 200 projects in the past few years. This model has experienced high-light moments in the past few years, around 2014. A large number of entrepreneurial cafes, venture capital space, innovation accelerators and other projects, soon, most of them disappeared. This kind of tide, will soon be wrapped in Luo Yonghao and his hammer technology?
An insider of an incubator project told the Caijing reporter that the incubator is now difficult to grow up. 'The core appeal of the project side is two things - money and resources. The main thing the incubator does is to pull investment and resource docking. The current situation is that The scale of development of these incubators is not very good. How can there be enough blood to supply?'
At present, one of the largest shareholders of Hammer Technology is the Chengdu government. Many sources said that due to the commercial failure of Hammer Technology in the past four years, the valuation could not rise, the investment prospects were dim, and there was no good mobile phone ecological chain. Chengdu The government has no patience with Hammer Technology. In August 2017, the Chengdu government invested 600 million yuan in hammer technology. Later, the hammer put the overall management and service departments in the administrative, supply chain, R&D, and design departments in Beijing, Shenzhen and other places. Moved to Chengdu, about 200 people in the office, accounting for half of the hammer technology team.
The original intention of the Chengdu government to invest in hammer technology is to build an electronic information industry ecosystem. A recent employee said that the hardware team in Chengdu has been disbanded, most of the technical team has moved back to Beijing, and Chengdu has only a customer service team. This obviously deviates. The Chengdu government originally invested in and introduced the expectation of hammer technology.
Although Hammer Technology is lacking in business, it still has a certain reputation and attention in the industry. Bullet SMS can benefit from this in a short period of time. A investor who has been exposed to bullet text messages told Caijing reporters. Due to the high volume of users, it is increasingly difficult to find new investors to follow up on investment.
According to industry analysts, whether a company can continue to grow depends on its comprehensive strength, especially its commercial competitiveness and growth. The high attention of Hammer Technology and Luo Yonghao can help the company open the market in the early stage and follow-up competition. And development, or rely on strength, hammer technology in the past four years can not open the situation in business, failure is a foregone conclusion.
Due to the inability of the mobile phone business to grow significantly, the financing channel of Hammer Technology has also fallen into a bottleneck. Analysts believe that its urgent task is to form self-hematopoietic capacity as soon as possible. The core strength of Hammer Technology is product design capability and brand awareness. The incubator + eco-chain model is also a hammer. Realistic path that can be chosen.
For example, Xiamen Spark Company, which cooperates with the hammer to launch the suitcase, has been making luggage products for many years and has cooperated with major brands such as Samsonite and Adidas. The company itself is not well known. By cooperating with Hammer Technology, the new joint product may be More easily known by the market.
Helping small brands open up the market and form an ecological chain, this is what Xiaomi has been doing. As of March 31, 2018, Xiaomi invested and managed 210 eco-chain companies, 90 of which are concentrated in hardware and consumer goods. Connect more than 100 million devices.
The ecological chain is the core competitiveness of Xiaomi. Xiaomi mobile phone is also a solid foundation of this ecosystem. These two points are not currently available in hammers. What's more, Xiaomi is always alert to other intelligent hardware companies.
Last year, Hammer Technology released an air purifier, which is also derived from its breathing technology. A person close to the hammer technology disclosed to the Caijing reporter that they hope to balance the mobile phone business through other types of hardware products. Loss, the results are not good. Winter is the peak period of air purifier product sales, experienced last winter, hammer this air purifier sales of about 30,000 units, from the overall market, this product is still insignificant. According to data from the data company Aowei.com, in the first quarter of 2018, the retail volume of air purifiers in the Chinese market was 1.003 million units.
Some analysts believe that the hammer air purifier sales are not big enough, the main reasons are two: First, the air quality in northern China last winter is better than in previous years, the market demand for air purifiers decreased, compared with 2.237 million units in the first quarter of 2017, The overall market sales fell by 32.8%; the second is because of the interception of companies such as Xiaomi in the market. For whatever reason, Hammer Technology has tried to push products other than mobile phones such as air purifiers, which currently seems to be unsuccessful. I believe that a company whose main business is not prominent, trying to create a miracle in the non-main business field, I am afraid it can only be whimsical.
All along, Hammer's main business is mobile phones, which is also a huge market. However, after the rapid growth in the past few years, China's mobile phone market has entered the second half, Apple, Huawei, Samsung and other giants have divided most of the shares. The space left for brands such as Hammer Technology is extremely limited. It is impossible to make large-scale niche phones, and most of them face a crisis of survival.
The Internet of Things market has just emerged, and intelligent hardware is an important part of the Internet of Things market. According to the Information and Communication Industry Development Planning Internet of Things (2016-2020) of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, during the 12th Five-Year Plan period, China has formed chips, components and components. The complete IoT industry chain including equipment, software, system integration, operation and application services. In 2016, the overall industry scale of China's Internet of Things reached 930 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 24%; the compound annual growth in 2012-2016 The rate is as high as 26.34%. It is estimated that by 2020, the market scale will be further expanded to 1.8 trillion yuan. Among them, the application server is a hotspot for many Internet companies and traditional companies. From the perspective of direction, Luo Yonghao is not mistaken.
Optimistic about a market and possessing a market is two different things. The former tests the vision, and the latter tests the ability. He used to be optimistic about the mobile phone market, but he did not get commercial success. In the Internet of Things or smart hardware, everyone is optimistic about emerging. In the huge market, Luo Yonghao's challenges are concrete and cruel: all the Internet and traditional companies are entering this market. Behind the fragmented market is the contest between the strengths of different genes and scale players. For example, Netease enters the intelligent hardware market. For some time, its e-commerce platform 'strict selection' is its core competitiveness; Xiaomi's core competitiveness is mobile phones, and its scale has already started; the traditional home appliance manufacturers of the United States, their core competitiveness, is the manufacturing field. Accumulation and channels.
Hammer as one of them, how big is the odds, it is expected to be too early. It is certain that if there is no solid competitive strength and commercial landing ability, there is no hard trick or unexpected surprise, even if Hammer Technology I saw the new big market of smart hardware, and may once again become a niche player on this road.
In the face of the hammer technology with higher reputation than the performance, the enthusiasm of the onlookers is also declining. In the past few years, the release of Hammer Technology was overcrowded and the voice was high. This time, there were a lot of empty seats in the venue, and the audience reacted coldly. At the end, it will be scattered.