The destiny of Xiaomi’s mobile phone: either annihilated or become king

An Internet-enabled company started a mobile phone. In the end, there is a certain chance of success. The Xiaomi company created by Lei Jun, who has never engaged in hardware production, can tell you.

Yesterday, Xiaomi Mobile announced the launch of China Telecom’s CDMA2000 handset. This also indicates that Xiaomi's mobile phone is exploring the contract sales model of the channel outside the Internet sales. At the same time, it means that since the signing of a million contract machine sales agreement with China Unicom on December 20 last year, Xiaomi Mobile is likely to sign a contractual machine sales agreement with China Telecom.

"We don't rely on selling mobile phones to make money." Xiao Jun founder Lei Jun said, but want to learn Apple, not only to sell iPhone mobile phones to make money, but also through the AppStore sales of various applications can also make money, for Xiaomi, want to make money first of all Achieving a certain amount of sales will only make it possible for manufacturers and suppliers to make some profits to Xiaomi, and at the same time allow third-party developers to develop relevant applications for Xiaomi mobile phones.

Calculating accounts for Xiaomi, the sales volume of Xiaomi’s mobile phones is still less than one million units. This figure is far from compared with the sales volume of tens of millions of handset manufacturers such as Huawei, ZTE, and Lenovo. It is even less able to compete with Apple last year. The shipment of nearly 100 million units and the sales volume of Samsung's 100 million units. Therefore, Xiaomi’s main task at this stage is to increase the production capacity of Xiaomi’s mobile phones.

"Millet mobile phone will reach 10 million units in sales next year." Lei Jun told the "First Financial Daily" reporter, but before reaching 10 million units, millet phone first need to solve is the problem of sales channels.

Unlike traditional mobile phone manufacturers, Xiaomi’s sales channels do not need to enter traditional mobile phone stores or distribution channels, and are sold through two channels: online booking and operator contract machines. Since the booking began in September last year, Xiaomi’s mobile phone sales have reached nearly one million units through its own website, and the sales volume of China Unicom’s contract machines can reach one million units. If China Telecom’s cooperation with China Telecom is further reached, there will be several million units. Contract machine sales.

After solving the sales channel through word of mouth marketing, Xiaomi will have to solve the supply problem, which is to solve the problem of the supply chain. Once the production capacity plan is set, spare parts will need to be purchased in advance. According to co-founder Zhou Guangping of Xiaomi, the production of a mobile phone requires 860 spare parts and more than 100 suppliers. “We need to purchase spare parts 12 weeks in advance. ”

Not only parts and suppliers need to coordinate in advance, even the production plants need to stabilize the climbing capacity. Because suppliers and factories need millet to gradually increase sales, rather than overnight. "The production plant needs us to grow at a steady rate every month instead of selling 2 million units a month. There is no sales next month." Lei Jun told the reporter, "Otherwise, the factory has recruited a large number of workers and you no longer have to They will not know what to do."

“A company like ours, once it has pressed more than a few hundred thousand units, it will be finished immediately.” But this is not the whole problem that Lei Jun is facing. Lei Jun admits that sales, supply chain and production are not the most difficult problems. The real need to face service issues. According to a mobile phone industry veteran, mobile phone hardware encountered the most after-sales maintenance problems in the first month, after which the rate of repairs decreased.

At present, the repair rate of Xiaomi's mobile phone is maintained at about 1.5%, which is lower than the average repair rate of 2% in the mobile phone industry. Li Wanqiang, co-founder of Xiaomi, stated that Xiaomi needs to make the call rate of 400 phones more than 80% in the next stage. In addition, Xiaomi’s after-sales service also requires more physical stores to guarantee service. Xiaomi has already established 7 millet homes in 7 cities including Guangzhou Guangshen and Beishang, and is expected to expand to 30 in the first quarter of 2012.

It is expected that Xiaomi’s customer service team will double again in the first quarter of this year and expand to 300 people. Xiaomi will accelerate the deployment of authorized maintenance points. It is expected that it will cover 120 cities in the second quarter and reach 180 cities and 600 outlets throughout the year. Lei Jun said: "How to guarantee the quality of third-party services is our biggest issue."

One problem followed by one problem, perhaps Lei Jun's problem is a common problem for all Chinese Internet companies who currently want to get involved in the mobile phone industry.

Domestic mobile phones have had a glorious history, but two years ago, China's traditional mobile phone brand manufacturers have almost been wiped out by international manufacturers, leaving only the Lenovo Group still struggling to support the mainland. However, last year, Huawei and ZTE began to make efforts in the domestic mobile terminal market, represented by Xiaomi, and some traditional Internet companies including Baidu and Alibaba have also begun to enter the mobile phone market.

However, no one company has changed from an Internet company to a mobile hardware company like Xiaomi. As Lei Jun said before, “The millet company is the last thing I do when I start a business.” Successful or unsuccessful, all need to be successful Lei Jun to prove himself.