The Millennium Semiconductor Survival Guide.

Chapter 262 The Meizu Who Wants to Transform

Huang Zhang is still very proud of Meizu's achievements, because the only thing that can attract consumers through crowdfunding is the quality of the product itself.

Moreover, Meizu has opened three phases, and the first and second phases have collected the highest number of units supported by crowdfunding websites - 5000 units.

In the Internet age, products that rely entirely on online channels, once word-of-mouth fails, it is impossible to continue to gain so many consumers in the future.

Like Lenovo, even if the word-of-mouth on the Internet fails, it can still rely on offline channels to survive, but a brand like OnePlus that relies purely on online channels, a bad word-of-mouth is half dead.

Manager Zhao, who was sitting across from Huang Zhang, clearly understood this truth. He is a project manager under Xinxing Capital who has been active in the Pearl River Delta region all the year round.

The projects he has seen the most are also Internet projects. The reason why he is interested in the Meizu project is also because he heard about the Meizu brand when he was talking to the crowdfunding website when he was introducing their success stories.

"We launched in September 2002, and there was no electronic payment before September. The crowdfunding model was logically unfeasible, and the profit of the crowdfunding website itself was very low.

We have no way to cooperate with point card alliances like Internet companies such as Tencent, Netease, and Shanda. Only electronic payment can keep our costs down.

Besides, for some crowdfunding products with a price of thousands of yuan, it is a bit unrealistic for you to ask consumers to charge 10 point cards through point cards.Consumers who are interested in crowdfunding are essentially impulsive consumption at the moment of spending money.

If he recharges through the point card and prolongs the time when paying, this impulsive consumption may subside after completing the point card recharge.

So we have been doing preparatory work in the early stage, publicizing on the Internet forum, polishing our website design and so on.

Fortunately, our revenue exceeded 1000 million RMB in the first quarter after our launch, and even exceeded 5000 million RMB in the first half of this year. "

After the introduction by the person in charge of the crowdfunding website, he showed Manager Zhao the top ten revenue-generating cooperative companies of their crowdfunding website. Among them, Meizu ranked No.1000 with a revenue of more than 1 million.

What Emerging Capital emphasizes most is the sense of smell. This is also the housekeeping skill of Zhou Xinjiao Wu Shiqiang. Manager Zhao quickly caught this signal. Why can this company called Meizu attract so many consumers to pay?

Launched three rounds of crowdfunding, raising a total of more than 1000 million funds, which is very difficult for a little-known small business.

"You mean Meizu? This is a very unique company. At that time they came to us to talk about cooperation. In fact, I didn't want to agree.

Because they make mobile phones, they hope to set a price of 1000 yuan and then crowdfund 500 units. What kind of concept is this? That is to say, they need to raise [-] million yuan at a time.

I have also introduced to you before that the business model of crowdfunding websites relies on two points. One is the handling fee.

Most of the things sold on crowdfunding websites are real objects, and it is impossible for us to charge 30.00% of the handling fee like Internet companies.The second is the interest rate difference. After the consumer completes the payment action, the money is in our account, and we will send the money to the company after the company delivers the goods.

Therefore, there is an interest rate difference in the middle, and we make money from the interest rate difference and handling fees, but at that time Meizu hoped that we would pay them at least 50.00% first, otherwise they would not be able to produce.

These two conditions are against our rules, but 500 million crowdfunding is very important for a newly established company, including the founder of Meizu. He showed me the concept map they made was very popular on the Zhongguancun Forum. praise.

The post was full of voices wanting to buy, and finally we gritted our teeth and made the deal.

It was very smooth in the middle. Meizu's marketing on the Internet was very successful. I remember that they found [-] users in a week and completed the payment on our crowdfunding website.

After sending the money to Meizu, we were very nervous. In case they run away, we need to advance the 250 million to consumers, and maybe we will go bankrupt directly.

In order to prevent them from running away, we even specially sent an employee to Meizu to work with them, saying that it was free labor for them, but in fact it was to monitor them not to run away.

Fortunately, the delivery was successful in the end. We cooperated for a total of three rounds. When the third round came, there was no need to call them the money first. "

Manager Zhao asked back: "If Meizu runs away, will you run away or admit it and pay the 250 million for yourself?"

"I don't know, I really don't know. From an emotional point of view, I definitely have to pay. If I don't pay the money, the reputation of the crowdfunding model in Huaguo will be bad, and it will hit the entire industry.

From a rational point of view, I don't want to dig out, the pit is too big.Fortunately, nothing like this test of my humanity happened. "

When the other party mentioned Meizu, he was both excited and scared, which made Manager Zhao interested in Meizu, so he came to the door.

After Huang Zhang introduced the Meizu company, Manager Zhao was a little disappointed, because a company that survives only on industrial design is still a company that focuses on mobile phone manufacturing, and honestly, it doesn't have much value.

There are too many mobile phone companies on the market now, and the entire market is full of manufacturers of all sizes. If you take a look, you will find that almost all of them are chips from Xinxin and MediaTek.

After Xinxin launched an integrated mobile phone chip, MediaTek quickly followed up, giving Xinxin little breathing time.

Integrating all the chips on a motherboard and providing a package solution is the first thing MediaTek did. Before Xinxin launched the mobile phone integrated chip, MediaTek had already approved this project internally.

After the launch of the new chip, MediaTek even suspected internal leaks, so they worked overtime to launch their mobile phone integrated chips.

Xinxin Technology has a first-mover advantage and is backed by Zhou Xin, occupying 70.00% of the market share, and MediaTek occupying 30.00%.

Although Xinxin Technology occupies most of the market share, MediaTek is growing rapidly, and is fighting a price war in this field, trying to gain market share with price advantages.

Xinxin Technology is a bit forced to follow the price cut, because if you don't cut the price, you will lose the market. For this group of companies, they don't care about the quality of the technology, but only care about the price.

Of course, Xinxin is not without advantages, because Xinxin Technology is more famous among consumers. Although it is a Huaguo enterprise, consumers will subconsciously think that it is a Silicon Valley enterprise.

And Xinxin is the supplier of Mphone. If I buy a mobile phone equipped with Xinxin technology chip, I will buy an Mphone. There is a little bit of this meaning in it.

Therefore, Xinxin Technology's mobile phone integrated chips can still enjoy a little premium.

Manager Zhao asked: "Mr. Huang, I just heard you talk about your company's specific situation, and I want to hear about your future development strategy.

We all know that with the mobile phone integrated chip launched by Xinxin Technology, Huaguo's mobile phone market has fallen into a situation of competition, and all companies want to come to the mobile phone market to get a share.

Whether it is making color TVs, making refrigerators, making TV sets, or even pig raising companies have to get involved in the mobile phone industry, what do you think are the advantages of Meizu? "

Huang Zhang replied: "In fact, I think the two problems are one problem, Meizu will transform in the future.

We all know that the new president personally started the era of smartphones. Now in Silicon Valley, giants in the mobile phone field, such as Nokia and Motorola, their executives must call them smartphones.

Said that I will make a smart phone in the future, and the three elements of a smart phone are the screen, the operating system and the mobile phone processor.

I think that the future development direction of Meizu must be to make smart phones, and there must be certain innovations in these three elements.

It is precisely because Meizu wants to transform and want to be a smartphone that Meizu needs financing.

If we continue to innovate in industrial design, we will first sell mobile phones to consumers through crowdfunding, and then open some offline stores after a certain amount of precipitation is completed, launch our own official website, and gradually develop into a company with channels covering both online and Offline mobile phone manufacturers.

In fact, I don't need external financing at all, but if Meizu wants to enter the smartphone field, then we must conduct external financing.

We need to find suppliers to cooperate and carry out certain research and development, which requires a lot of funds. "

Manager Zhao said: "This step is too big. There are many companies in the market that can provide mobile phone processors, such as Samsung, Texas Instruments, Intel, Xinxin, etc., but they are all expensive.

Moreover, the operating system of a smartphone needs to be deeply compatible with the mobile phone processor. From the selection of the mobile phone processor to the creation of the operating system, there are countless difficulties to overcome.

More importantly, Matrix owns the patents for mobile phone screens, and other suppliers have not conquered this field for the time being. You still have to spend money on research and development, which is unrealistic. "

As the project manager of Emerging Investment, Manager Zhao is very familiar with the mobile phone industry.Because the key projects of emerging investment in the past two years include investigating the upstream and downstream enterprises of the smartphone supply chain.

Mphone has a number of suppliers in China. Emerging investment needs to select suppliers with technical content for investment. Many of these suppliers are located in the Pearl River Delta region. Manager Zhao has visited many companies and has also seen it in the internal knowledge base of Xinxing Investment. A lot of information.

He knows very well that after entering the era of smart phones, most of the current mobile phone companies will be eliminated, and smart phones are not something that small companies can play at all.

He came to see Meizu out of curiosity, but now he regrets it because Huang Zhang's idea is too unrealistic.

Huang Zhang explained: "These technologies sound complicated, but with the development of smartphones, suppliers will provide solutions, and what Meizu needs to do is to choose the right solution among these solutions.

In my opinion, the only difficulty that cannot be overcome is the screen, because there is no supplier that can provide a solution for the screen technology that is similar to the effect of Mphone2, not even a sample.

The screen solutions I have come into contact with in the Pearl River Delta, without exception, are far from Mphone2 in terms of sensitivity, and the only supplier that is close to the Mphone2 screen has a particularly high cost.

This cannot be solved for the time being, but the processor and the operating system can be solved. The processor can talk to Xinxin Technology. We can’t use the A-series chips, but we can ask Xinxin to help us design other mobile phone chips. .

If Xinxin Technology fails, we can still find Samsung and Intel.The operating system now also has some open source mobile phone operating systems, which can be used for transformation.

We can launch a smart phone similar to Mphone1 first, and then launch a mobile phone similar to Mphone2 after the touch screen technology on the market matures.

In my plan, if I get financing, I will also make samples, do marketing, build an official website, sell them in batches like Mphone2, and sell them on the official website.

After seeing the Mphone2, I have already had countless ideas about the product itself. The cost of the mobile phone itself is not very high. What needs to be spent is the modification of the operating system. We need to recruit a large number of development engineers.

Select the operating system and then modify it. At the same time, we also need to build the official website of Meizu, and we need to create some applications in conjunction with the operating system. "

From this point of view, maybe it is a way to go, Manager Zhao thought.

Due to the fire of Mphone, the first industry to fall is the handheld computer. Mphone2 can do everything that a handheld computer has, the price is similar to that of a handheld computer, and it has communication functions, which leads to a complete loss of the market for handheld computers.

In the first half of 2003, almost all companies involved in handheld computers announced that they would cut off this business. For companies whose main business was handheld computers, they all chose to transform.

To transform the original handheld computer operating system into an operating system for smartphones, some companies have chosen to open source it, such as Palm OS.

This is why Huang Zhang said that neither the operating system nor the processor is difficult, because there are already solutions on the market.

Huang Zhang continued: "I want to find Xinxing Investment, because Xinxing Investment, as an investment institution under Xinzong, has participated in Xinxin Technology, Xiaomi, Yongxin Technology, etc."

Yongxin Technology is a joint venture company established by Cao Yongluo and Zhou Xin. Zhou Xin holds shares in it through Xinxing Investment and is also one of the suppliers of Mphone.

Since Yongxin Technology is the supplier of Mphone, they have received a large number of orders from the same industry and gradually become the leader in the field of mobile phone assembly, basically copying the route of Foxconn's rise with Apple's back.

"Emerging Investment has a strong voice and a deep understanding of the upstream and downstream suppliers of the mobile phone industry. The cooperation between us and Emerging Investment can play a big role.

For example, Xinxin Technology's mobile phone processors are only sold to Matrix, and Meizu will talk to them. With Meizu's size, they may not even bother.

But there are emerging investors acting as intermediaries, and I believe they are at least willing to listen to our demands. "

After Huang Zhang finished speaking, Manager Zhao became a little interested, because proposing an idea and being able to disassemble and subdivide the idea are two different things.Huang Zhang's answer at least demonstrates the feasibility.

(End of this chapter)