Sina Technology News, in the afternoon of November 8th, realme recently held a new product launch event, officially launching the new generation 'dual-engine flagship' realme GT7 Pro, equipped with the Snapdragon 8 series flagship processor, with a starting limited-time price of 3599 yuan. Xu Qi, vice president and China region president of Realme, said in a media interview that the competition in the Chinese mobile phone market is no longer just about the June 18th and November 11th sales peaks, but has become a long battle, where everything needs to focus on product competitiveness and brand reputation. Additionally, he mentioned that AI will definitely help with smartphone sales, and realme will focus on three AI tracks: AI efficiency, AI imaging, and AI gaming.
Pricing is under pressure, and the Chinese market is a long-term battle.
Under the backdrop of rising costs in the supply chain, Xu Qi admitted that there are challenges with the pricing of the realme GT7 Pro this time. He openly stated that the low-spec version will definitely incur losses, but realme's future will not be based on losing money to make good products.
He revealed that currently, the storage and main chip prices have increased the most, especially the Snapdragon 8 series flagship processor has significantly increased compared to the previous 8Gen3. On one hand, realme is optimizing its products, and on the other hand, pricing will become more reasonable. The health of a brand definitely does not solely come from hardware. Pure hardware losses are unhealthy for a company. In terms of the extent of the price increase, realme has indeed increased prices, but in terms of high-end products, we are still firmly investing in them to attract more high-end market users.
Xu Qi pointed out several key points for the realme GT7 Pro. First is to stay within the 3,500 yuan price segment. Even though the low-spec version may incur losses, they remain firmly positioned in the 3,500 yuan price segment; secondly, they have capped the 512GB large memory under 4K, which is an important advantage in the face of the current sales pressure. Thirdly, the realme GT7 Pro can benefit from economies of scale as a globally launched product, aiming to double the global sales target compared to last year's GT5 Pro. The goal is to offset research and development costs by increasing the volume continuously, achieving better prices.
The release of the realme GT7 Pro coincides with the November 11 shopping festival. Xu Qi believes that the explosion at e-commerce nodes is different now. In the past, the whole year revolved around the two major promotions of June 18th and November 11th, so the explosive momentum at these single points was very strong. But now, consumer spending tends to be more normalized. Major promotions will still be explosive, but it's difficult to be as huge as before. The key is to have good products to deal with the competition in the entire Chinese e-commerce market. It's no longer just a market that relies solely on the sales peaks of June 18th and November 11th; it is now a long battle, a marathon, where everything depends on the product's competitiveness and brand reputation.
Besides online channels, realme also announced the launch of the 'University Town Brand Service Center' project at the event, planning to cover 80% of the core university towns nationwide by the end of the year, allowing people to experience products and enjoy relevant after-sales services near their campuses. Xu Qi stated that in terms of offline channels, realme's first step is to establish a presence near university towns, with student-centric stores and after-sales services because realme has a large user base of students. In the future, they will also expand to Shopping Malls, as Malls are an important leisure venue for young people today. However, this requires the brand to further enhance product strength, SKU, and reach the right stage. They are currently not aggressively entering expensive Shopping Malls.
AI will definitely help with sales volume, focusing on three major AI tracks.
Regarding AI, Xu Qi believes that it is a very important major trend and will definitely be a major focus for major smartphone manufacturers.
Currently, AI smartphones are still in a rapid development process, and AI will certainly help with sales volume. In many overseas markets, AI has become a popular term for consumer purchases, including many brands like realme, which will prioritize the concept of AI in front of some hardware parameters, to inform users about the new AI features. AI is playing increasingly important roles in everyone's life, for example in AI health care, it will penetrate into more and more users' daily life scenarios. However, AI still needs time to settle and some more killer applications need to gradually emerge, achieving the AI scenes that everyone imagines may still require some time.
He also shared realme's layout ideas on AI. On the R&D side, on one hand, they will do self-research, and on the other hand, they will also cooperate with global AI vendors like Google, Qualcomm, Microsoft, etc., to create some AI applications together.
In terms of specific directions, he believes that after mobile hardware gradually converges, differentiation in the AI track and positioning is needed. It's not about doing everything, but focusing, always around the target audience. realme's AI will focus on three tracks: AI efficiency, such as AI assistants, AI portals, including some more convenient functions in work; secondly AI imaging, this time the realme GT7 Pro also brings functions like AI shadow removal; third is AI gaming, AI gaming may be a major feature of realme, because realme's global users have an exceptionally high frequency of game usage, so in AI gaming, they will develop and coordinate with more games based on large model processing to give users a better experience, easier to win, or have better graphics, etc.
Xu Qi said that in the future, AI will personalize the entire system, by continuously learning to understand you better. Eventually, it will also be similar to the apple ecosystem, where changing devices will incur a cost, and it may become a competitive advantage in terms of user stickiness.
