Luo Yonghao at the press conference once again proved that the most successful sales in the world are not products but themselves!
Last year, Hammer Technology, with a loss of 420 million and a net asset of negative 240 million, "successfully" devalued Suning’s investment of 50 million to 37 million, and still has the ability to obtain a 300 million increase from the old shareholders; In the eventful autumn when the "wet pants" incident caused Qian Chen to run away and the management team was in turmoil, it is a miracle that he still has the ability to develop new products.
But how long can Lao Luo’s overdrawn personal goodwill be squandered?
Nut’s Jedi counterattack
No mobile phone has ever undertaken such a difficult and complicated mission as nuts. According to Huawei Yu Chengdong, there will only be three major manufacturers of smart phones in the future. The implication is that there will be no future for minority mobile phones. Not long ago, Luo Yonghao took the lead in the Double Romance, and the best annual shipment record of hammer mobile phones is more than 1 million. To achieve the goal of 4-6 million this year, the pressure of the first new machine Nut Pro can be imagined.
At the geek conference in Innovation Park, Luo Yonghao said that the hammer mobile phone will not launch another thousand yuan machine, which indicates that he wants to fight on two battlefields of revenue and shipment at the same time, and the high attention of the hammer mobile phone is only separated by a Luo Yonghao compared with the third-and fourth-tier brands such as ZUK, which were rumored to be suspended earlier.
As far as combat power is concerned, the success of Nut Pro depends on four points:
1) First, to what extent can "pills" replace feelings.
Hammer mobile phone was in deep financial crisis last year, and finally completed the financing, which greatly changed the mind of Mr. Luo, the "genius product manager". In the widely circulated quarrel with Qian Chen and others, it can be seen that his product ideas have undergone subtle changes. When T3 was released, Lao Luo had a problem with Qian Chen’s education: "This battle must be won", and for the sake of refinancing in the future, "Hammer mobile phones must find some different places to survive". The direct consequence of this idea was the birth of innovations such as Bigbang and OneStep, as well as today’s flash capsule, and the indirect consequence was the elimination of two-thirds of the technical teams such as Qian Chen.
From the press conference, the core competitiveness of nuts is shifting to Smartisan OS, deliberately strengthening innovation in front-end interactive experience. Different from all kinds of high-level research in Huawei Lab and Xiaomi’s efforts to strengthen patents, Hammer mobile phone focuses on innovation that users can quickly perceive, which is a typical four-two fight.
And this time, Lao Luo’s pills did contain many things that could replace feelings.
Bigbang and OneStep, which are quick sharing and collaboration tools, are only preliminary attempts. Although the improvement on the actual operation experience of mobile phone users is quite limited, it is not easy to trigger the operation. OneStep even dropped the chain during the live demonstration in Lao Luo, and opened the source early but no friends followed up. However, this idea has been continuously carried forward on Nut pro. Such as SMS unsubscribe, simulated incoming call, wireless file transfer based on LAN and thumbtack function similar to iphone widget, etc., are all explained in detail as selling points.
At least for now, Luo Yonghao intends to give up the role of a talented industrial designer and quickly enter the talent product manager. Instead, he uses the iteration of Smartisan OS to make up for the lack of hardware and find an innovative soft belly, which not only avoids homogenization competition, but also strives to improve the user experience. At the press conference, the flash capsule is even more gimmicky. As a memo with integrated voice and classification function, this product was promoted to the level of artificial intelligence assistant by Lao Luo, which indirectly shows that the hammer mobile phone has been established to be updated by software.
2) As for the universality of Roche’s industrial design, it takes a back seat.
Luo Yonghao, as always, praised the beauty of Nut Pro. This mobile phone was also called the drop-dead gorgeous in the homogenization era in the previous exposure in official website. However, Luo Yonghao realized that Hammer Technology was not the start-up company of that year, and its brand image and price positioning had solidified. It was unwise to compete with mainstream manufacturers for industrial design and harsh technology, so he turned to loudly ask at the press conference, "What happened to the software interaction industry now? No, I will! "
When T1 was released that year, his statement was not like this. At that time, he often spoke out that "Lei Jun of Xiaomi Technology and Huang Zhang, chairman of Meizu, have always been bumpkins" and "It seems that Apple is going to die. As a hardcore fan of Qiangna Kidney, I now think that he is basically an idiot except for industrial design. "
3) Full-term appointment is unpredictable.
Nut Pro started the full-payment reservation in JD.COM at 10: 00 on May 2, and the number of blind appointments exceeded 500,000 in a few days. The popularity of the product did not lose Xiaomi 6. Lao Luo chose the full-payment reservation instead of the pulse delivery mode used by friends, which should be based on two considerations.
First of all, Nut Pro’s 5.5-inch 1080P display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 625/626 processor, 4GB RAM and 32GB ROM are mainstream mature configurations, and the possibility of problems in the supply chain is very small;
Secondly, because the delivery time is controlled in the hands of Hammer Technology, the funds reserved in full will have a relatively long precipitation period, which is conducive to withdrawing funds in advance and stabilizing the cash flow of Hammer Technology.
Whether it will trigger the refund and compensation mechanism and cause some kind of crisis depends on the performance ability of Hammer Technology.
4) But the most decisive thing is how to transform users from friends.
In 2014, Luo Yonghao once said that 39% of the 120,000 mobile phones sold by Hammer were converted from iPhone users. The authenticity of this data has not been verified so far, but it shows that Luo Yonghao has long recognized the significance of converting users from friends.
China’s mobile phone market has been in excessive competition, and the brand concentration is getting higher and higher. There are only 309 mobile phone companies left in 2015 from 445 in 2014, and the situation in Q1 this year is even worse. The global smart phone market has increased by 4.3% year-on-year, while China has only increased by 1%, and the market pattern has solidified.
It’s unrealistic to rely entirely on the contribution of hammer friends. Lao Luo said that there is no fan effect for things over $20. "An idol’s brain powder buys one or two thousand pieces of things, and there are almost no successful examples in business."
In the window period of China’s mobile phone from increment to stock, Hammer mobile phone is unlikely to expect to find a large number of new users enough to support the business model with a cross talk party.
Therefore, the most reliable potential users of Nut pro are still friends.
According to the data from China Mobile Terminal Company, the probability of mobile phone users in China choosing the original brand when changing phones is 18%. In the third, fourth and fifth tier cities, the brands with the lowest loyalty are HTC, ZTE, Lenovo and Coolpad, while the brands with the highest loyalty are Apple, Huawei, vivo and OPPO. In terms of the positioning of Nut Pro, it is logical to compete for the share that domestic mobile phone brands in the second and third tier may lose.
According to the "2016 Headline Mobile Terminal Switching User Big Data Insight Report", there are mainly two groups of retained users of domestic mobile phone brands who will switch to friends, young women aged 18-23 and male users aged 31-40, and strive for these two groups. It is of great significance to nuts.
At the press conference, Lao Luo emphasized the camera function of Nut Pro, especially the optimization of night shooting and dark shooting, the long battery life and high-value two-color stitching design, which are deliberately catering to specific consumer groups.
But the question is, is there still a chance for hammer mobile phones to be promoted to first-line brands?
The press conference that lasted for several hours actually gave the answer:
What is certain is that,Lao Luo basically gave up the shipment mode. Nuts, as a volume product, didn’t have much shock in hardware, industrial design was relatively weakened, and competitiveness turned to functional updates that could be obtained by Smartisan OS. However, these seemingly smart gadgets played a big role in promoting the audience’s purchase behavior, and the prospects were not optimistic.This is manifested in the fact that the scenes they apply are too small and subdivided, and the little experience they have improved requires a certain learning cost, which requires early adopters to carry out a lot of Amway through word of mouth to be effective. Luo Yonghao was also afraid that the audience would not understand it at the press conference, and repeatedly asked during the demonstration: Got it? Do you understand?
However, the more Lao Luo indulges in these ingenious and enjoyable ideas, the more obvious the trend of niche of hammer mobile phones is, and the more detached it is from the competition pattern of mainstream mobile phones.The current strategy of Hammer Technology can be summarized as creating more added value by enhancing the interactive experience without increasing the hardware cost, which shows that Luo Yonghao attaches more importance to profits than its desire for shipments, and the future positioning of Hammer is more small and fresh mobile phones under the conservative price strategy.
And the biggest change is Luo Yonghao himself.
Nut mobile phone is willing to play the role of iPhone charging treasure, which is impossible in the past, and it also makes the brand image that was once high-profile in the eyes of Hammer Friends unrecognizable.
At the press conference, Lao Luo lowered his posture, laughed at himself more than attacked his friends and businessmen, and peddled some Jianghu philosophies from time to time. Only when he used the wrong microphone to demonstrate the voice function, he turned around and angered the employees.
As a friend, Lao Luo is a chat object of nice, but as a boss and colleague, his friendliness is not high. The future of Hammer Technology does not depend on one or two cross talk parties, but on the trembling ordinary employees under the aura of "genius product manager".