01 routine operation

In terms of naming, XIAOMI 10S is actually the "S (super)" version of XIAOMI 10. Popularly speaking, it is the upgraded version of XIAOMI 10. Since it is an upgraded version, according to the previous executive warm-up and the contents of the press conference, we must do some "visible" upgrades on the basis of the original version.

First of all, the Snapdragon 865 processor carried by XIAOMI 10 has been upgraded to Snapdragon 870. in Qualcomm Inc's product sequence, there is no doubt that the latest and most powerful processor is the Snapdragon 888 installed in XIAOMI 11 and K40 Pro. Excluding the strongest attributives, Snapdragon 870 can also be regarded as the latest. From the test of Snapdragon 870, it can be regarded as the Pro+ version of Snapdragon 865, and this upgrade may be the most sincere part of the upgrade of XIAOMI 10S.

XIAOMI 10S upgrade processor, performance, supply aspects of the pressure faced by another, at least the selling points and hot spots have been guaranteed.

Secondly, in terms of sound quality, compared with XIAOMI 10, XIAOMI 10s has been upgraded from dual speakers to Harman Catton certified dual speakers, using XIAOMI 10 Pro speakers, equivalent 1.2cc sound cavity, 7 magnetic sound units.

As XIAOMI 10 series began to focus on "audio and video" after the differentiation strategy, XIAOMI 10S continued in the audio and video design, and these designs as one of the features of the flagship bucket machine, with Hi-Fi certification on the market to compete with products, in order to obtain audio-visual entertainment has certain requirements of the user group, this action can be regarded as one of XIAOMI's gradually diversified competition strategy.

Third, XIAOMI 10S not only upgrades in processor and sound quality, but also transplants some hardware on the basis of XIAOMI 10 series. Among them, the camera module of XIAOMI 10s uses XIAOMI 10 Pro, and the rear cover design continues the module of XIAOMI 10 version, which can be said to absorb some of the mature and classic designs of XIAOMI 10 series of released models, which is enough for a model designed to "upgrade".

The design concept of this product is of great research significance for a hardware company with mature supply chain management:

First, most of the components of the new products, including high-cost camera modules, are derived from the released XIAOMI 10 series, the biggest advantage of this operation is to "clear inventory".

Second, this way of blending mature design can greatly reduce the R & D cost and R & D cycle of new products. Under the background of hardware upgrade, the project can be quickly established and the hardware equipped with the latest supply chain technology can be launched quickly.

Third, this way also reduces the difficulty of pre-sales and after-sales service of products to a certain extent. for electronic products, sales problems always exist, and the familiarity of parts and components determines the salesperson's familiarity with product recommendation. As well as the cost of after-sales maintenance, this product will maintain a very good level of competitiveness in the offline market.

Fourth, the release of XIAOMI 10S, to a certain extent, can share the sales pressure caused by the shortage of high-end processors and coordinate the shopping experience on product coverage through different processor collocation.

On March 8, Qualcomm Inc CEO Ammon said that the current shortage of global semiconductor supply made him feel "big" and was simply not ready to deal with the crisis, which is expected to last until the end of 2021. Snapdragon 888, as a flagship processor, is bound to affect almost all smartphone manufacturers equipped with this platform because it is out of stock. According to information disclosed by Qualcomm Inc, the delivery date of the new order has been as long as 30 weeks. This means that it is very likely that after the first batch of stock is sold, the new order will not be able to be received.

XIAOMI 10s will, to a certain extent, as an alternative purchase plan, play a role in alleviating the purchase pressure.

For XIAOMI at this stage, the upgrade of XIAOMI 10S is of greater significance in that it further improves the coverage of XIAOMI's series of mobile phones in the product price range, and this role has also become an important link in the high-end connection of XIAOMI's product system.

02 Product role

XIAOMI 10s to XIAOMI, in the situation of the press conference, there is a more important role:

In addition to Lei Jun and Lu Weibing, create a third "online salesman".

XIAOMI chose Chang Cheng, an old man in the mobile phone industry, founder of the ZUK brand and former head of Lenovo mobile phones.

Lu Weibing, from Jinli, joined XIAOMI after the 2019 New year to become Hongmi CEO and is now XIAOMI's fighter second only to Lei Jun. New Year's Day joined XIAOMI after the festival in 2020, and his position was as vice president of XIAOMI Group, responsible for mobile phone product planning. From the perspective of position, product planning can be seen as the executor of product strategy, which is actually not high for regular work experience.

It is just that this position of real power has become a virtual position in the past year or so, and the fundamental enemy is nothing but the "Magneto" of the exploding combat effectiveness in the Lenovo period, and in the propaganda of XIAOMI's 10 youth editions, it is because of the "vulgar" propaganda, which has greatly affected the reputation.

After it was confirmed by Lenovo on September 17 last year that it violated the "Lenovo restrictive Agreement," it was caught in the vortex of the "closed business gate" and was finally convicted of violating the business competition agreement. It is necessary to pay Lenovo a breach of contract penalty of 5,252,821.09 yuan, and continue to fulfill the obligation of business competition restriction.

Originally, he wanted to recruit a senior general, but unexpectedly, his own image was dragged to a low ebb because of improper propaganda and remarks and violation of the prohibition agreement. at this time, XIAOMI chose Chang Cheng to be the keynote speaker. And Lei Jun also forwarded the corresponding Weibo Corp as an interaction, which undoubtedly sent a message to the outside world:

XIAOMI did not give up the usual process, XIAOMI also needs a product spokesman who is different from Lei Jun and Lu Weibing.

Although Chang Cheng still had a certain degree of maladjustment and formality at the press conference, whether sitting or standing or VCR, he seemed a little stiff, but after all, Chang Cheng still completed the task. XIAOMI 10s played an important role in XIAOMI's re-launch of Chang Cheng.

The second role of XIAOMI 10s, in the eyes of new eyes, should be accurate price positioning.

Among the main models sold at XIAOMI Mall at the present stage, XIAOMI 10S is a mobile phone that uses the released popular models, integrates mature designs, and uses most of the components of the previous generation to carry out "accurate clamping" in pricing. Its purpose is obvious, that is, between the performance-to-price ratio market of red rice sinking and the middle and high-end market explored by XIAOMI, as a "price connector", Hongmi-XIAOMI is mainly selling models, making up in the price range of 3299-3799.

From the above picture, we can clearly withdraw the importance of XIAOMI 10s for the price system covered by XIAOMI's products at the present stage. With 3500 as the middle line, the price of the XIAOMI 10s is reduced by 200 yuan and floated by 200 yuan. All the prices are red rice-XIAOMI's corresponding products as the main sales model.

Before the release of XIAOMI 10s, at the price of 3000-4000, within the Hongmi-XIAOMI product system, there was only one memory combination of red rice K40 Pro, a memory combination of red rice K40 Pro+ and a memory combination of XIAOMI 11, which is not very competitive for this mainstream sales main force range, XIAOMI Group's product system, XIAOMI 10S to the upgraded XIAOMI 10 version, better configuration, lower price Effectively fill the gap in this price range, and it is a very competitive product.

However, the use of released popular models for upgrades, rather than the release of a new series of models to make up seats, which is not a good sign for XIAOMI.

03 lack of brand

When it comes to "dolls", the hottest discussion in the community is undoubtedly Huawei-Honor dual-brand system. In Huawei-Glory system, there are a large number of "doll sets". One of the characteristics of Nokia is that "technology is shell-based".

However, their "nesting dolls" are different from XIAOMI. Huawei-Glory system, Huawei-Glory is carried out among sub-series of different brands, for example, between Huawei's Nova series and Glory Digital Series / V Series. Huawei's enjoyable series and Glory X series exist to change the shell, change the label, change the model and continue to sell. The game of Huawei-Glory system does not affect the image of their respective brands under the Huawei-Glory system. Also through the precision of the knife, there is a great differentiation selling point.

XIAOMI is different. What XIAOMI has done on the released series is to widen the series of product models. Including the release of XIAOMI 10s, in Hongmi-XIAOMI system, it is actually only the basic operation of XIAOMI.

For example, the K30 series has a total of 9 versions: K30 Standard Edition, K30 4G Edition, K30 5G Edition, K30i, K30 Speed Edition, K30Pro, K30Pro Zoom Edition, K30 Supreme Commemorative Edition and K30S Supreme Commemorative Edition. The memory combination of these nine versions adds up to nearly 20.

As a result, the product line of red rice is also jokingly known as Red Rice Brand and K30 brand mobile phones. if it were not for the shortage of letters and Chinese character concept words commonly named for mobile phone products, high probability K30 would continue to produce a series of products. However, the longest interval before and after the launch of the K30 product is only 11 months, not more than a year.

XIAOMI 10s, nearly 14 months since the release of XIAOMI 10.Such a large span of time interval, is still launched based on the old model of the upgrade version, is XIAOMI's advantage, but also XIAOMI brand building, product line coverage deficiency.

One of the advantages is the successful use of XIAOMI's 10 mature design and good reputation. As a milestone product for XIAOMI's 10th anniversary, XIAOMI 10 is a cross-border person who starts at 3999 yuan and enters the 4000 + price range of XIAOMI's mobile phone. The release of XIAOMI 10s continues the production power of XIAOMI 10 to a certain extent, and successfully uses the means of "increasing the quantity but also reducing the price" to cover the price of XIAOMI's product system, while following the mature design of XIAOMI 10 Pro, with a brand-new design and appearance, stimulate the mainstream market to replace the machine demand of users to buy desire.

The second advantage is that even in the 3000+ market, the model released by XIAOMI this year has still continued a very strong "performance-to-price ratio". Moreover, since the release of XIAOMI 11, the products released within the XIAOMI system are more cost-effective than each other. competitive one is stronger than one, while the performance and configuration are improved, the price does not rise at the same time, for consumers, this is a real "duty".

However, the release of XIAOMI 10s also reflects the defects of XIAOMI brand in product brand construction:

Lack of sufficiently differentiated brand series.

This problem in the red rice K30 series, XIAOMI 10 series has been very obvious, although in the XIAOMI brand system, there are CC series, MIX series, but these series, but not like OPPO or vivo, there are sub-series for the corresponding market segments, launch products, and each market segment products, there are popular styles.

These are exactly what XIAOMI does not have. The CC9 generation has died and has not been updated so far. After the MIX α concept machine, there is still no trace of MIX4. The release time of the previous generation MIX3 is October 25th, 2018.

XIAOMI can only rely on a single series, constantly using differentiated configuration to tap the value of the series of products to fill the lack of this aspect.

Before XIAOMI 10S, there have been four series focusing on high-end XIAOMI 10 Supreme Edition, XIAOMI 10 ultra, XIAOMI 10Pro, XIAOMI 10, as well as XIAOMI 10 Youth Edition, XIAOMI 10 lite, and overseas versions of XIAOMI 10T, XIAOMI 10T Pro. The role of these products in the life cycle is to broaden the sequence of sub-series to achieve the coverage of a product range.

And XIAOMI 10S release, XIAOMI 10 life cycle, once again extended, although the continued heat has certain benefits, but there will also be less than expected impact on the market, after all, this is an "old machine".

For XIAOMI, at this point in time, it is completely possible to launch other sub-series of new products without borrowing XIAOMI 10, and there is no need to continue the excavation of XIAOMI 10, such as the release of XIAOMI CC 11, which is not good.

A series, multiple versions, a variety of naming, to a certain extent, is the result of XIAOMI product sequence missing planning and sub-series brand concept construction, from the present stage, this reality can not be changed in a short time.

04 the way to break through

XIAOMI always likes to "grab the starter", the global starter, the Chinese starter, the real starter, the first batch. This is a disease that can be treated.

After Snapdragon 865 and Snapdragon 870 were preempted by Lenovo, XIAOMI was the first to release XIAOMI 11 of Snapdragon 888 in 2020. XIAOMI 10 series sold as many as 8 million units in XIAOMI's public information.

In the eyes of New eyes, although the sales of the XIAOMI 10 series cannot be compared with the 10 million sales of several generations of flagship models before XIAOMI 6, but it does represent the achievement that XIAOMI's sales price has exceeded 4000 of this high-end mobile phone price, and the sales volume of 8 million has been commendable.

Although it is too early to draw a conclusion on whether XIAOMI will stand firm in the 4000 + price range, it is undeniable that the product power of XIAOMI 10 is still very competitive.

The period of XIAOMI 10 series sales was accompanied by the downtime of Huawei-Honor system in an unfair market, and the downtime of Huawei-Glory brought the originally bloody Chinese smartphone market into a very delicate market. that is Huawei-Glory downtime, leaving hundreds of millions of stock mobile phone market, this market, back to the "blue sea" of high-intensity competition.

XIAOMI in the introduction of XIAOMI 11, in the ever-changing market, with a relatively rapid response, in the case of a certain "rollover phenomenon" in the practical application of Snapdragon 888, quickly launched XIAOMI 10S, and resumed production of XIAOMI 10, which has been delisted.

Such a purpose, in addition to alleviating the pressure of possible shortage of upstream components, is also aimed at the offline market to obtain the market left by Huawei-Glory system, while the offline market has always been XIAOMI's deficiency. In the case of insufficient coverage of various price segments, the use of mature design, "old materials", for a chip polished re-listing, to attack this market.

XIAOMI can respond so quickly in a short time, with such a new model, to solve the problem of price coverage and improve the product coverage of the channel, no matter from which point of view, it will be one of the operations of XIAOMI's rapid transformation.

However, a XIAOMI 10S is still too little, with such a "sub-flagship" to carry out more than 3, 000 price "make-up", is a strategy, but also helpless.