Four questions about Xiaomi’s mobile phone: whether it was a loss in 1999

On August 17th, when the words “¥1999” appeared on the screen of the “Apple Fan” on the Xiaomi phone conference yesterday afternoon, I am afraid that everyone on the scene could not hide their inner excitement. Accompanied by the screams of rice noodles, which were blocked by the aisles, almost everyone in the media area was busy making micro-blog calls. Everyone wanted to send this price out of the 798 small venue for the first time.

At that moment, Lei Jun and Jobs, who were standing on stage and smiling, were so similar that fans had shouted "Reebs" when he was on the court.

About an hour later, the "Reebs" found a hard ground in a meeting room on the side of the conference venue. He threw his own mobile phone engineering prototype onto the ground, picked it up and rebooted to prove that the mobile phone was "falling ". Around him, all the media circled in a circle.

This is one of the differences between Lei Jun and Jobs - he did not reject the media. After the conference, Lei Jun was immediately surrounded by fans and then he was chased by reporters. If you listen to Steve Jobs's press conference, you can only wait for him to leave and get up again.

Our four questions about Xiaomi's mobile phone start here.

Did you lose money in 1999?

Whether 1999 is lower than cost is almost the first issue of all media instincts. The reporters on the scene attacked from different angles. Lei Jun always responded with a standard answer: “This is not my concern. I am concerned about whether the user is satisfied.”

Xiaomi's mobile phone uses a Qualcomm 1.5GHz dual-core CPU, Adreno 220 graphics chip, and configured with 1GB of RAM memory, 4GB of body storage, Sharp's 4-inch screen, 8-megapixel camera and 1930mAh large battery. According to an industry insider's estimation, the sum of the above-mentioned parts' sales price can easily exceed 200 US dollars, leaving millet with little room for profit.

Lei Jun also said: "We received the support of a large number of suppliers for this point in 1999. From today's cost calculations, we should have no losses. We have no surpluses to say. Two or three hundred dollars are hard to earn."

Lei Jun explained to reporters the composition of the cost of mobile phones, including the price of components, tariffs, loss of yield, maintenance renovation costs, patent fees, market channel costs, developers and suppliers R & D costs. Most of these are rigid irreducible costs, more flexible indicators, one is the market channel costs, and the second is R & D costs, including millet company's internal labor costs.

Lei Jun believes that the cost of promotion for high-end smart phones is almost RMB 900. "We went to a mobile phone shop, dozens of promoters, and only one or two customers. These promoters are all required to pay salaries." He implied that Xiaomi's mobile phones had all gone online and had reduced most of the channel costs.

Where will the guest repay and invest in their own mine boss? Due to the different structure of the shareholders of both parties, the distribution costs still have to be settled “in accordance with market prices”. Although there is no specific cost, it is certainly "high cost performance." Lei Jun said: "I don't want to bother my brother company too much. As a result, I'm a bit dissatisfied with my old age today - he never ends his warehousing and distribution." According to him, Vanke is on the site of Xiaomi.com. Give a lot of help.

Lei Jun said in the face of reporters, "Millet is an Internet company, the ultimate profit point of Internet companies is to make money through services, not through hardware." Since the hardware is not to sell money, coupled with the various "old friends" to help each other, millet phone The first version had such a shocking price.

Can production capacity meet the demand?

Millet's mobile phones now adopt stricter pre-sale measures than the iPhone 4, and it can be imagined that the lineup will be queued in October. Lei Jun even took out 600 engineering prototypes and sold them to die-hard fans. It reminds us that Tencent always takes QQ members as mice.

At this moment, whether Xiaomi’s mobile phone is hungry or not is actually asking Xiaomi’s production capacity and when it can be mass-produced.

Lei Jun said that the conditions to be met in mass production are: The final round (fourth round) of engineering machine yield is normal and there is no problem; Xiaomi's network structure is reliable and operates normally; where passengers are dispatched to all parts of the country, it will take some time.

Judging only from the above conditions, the production of Xiaomi's mobile phones can be expected in January-February next year. However, this does not mean that users can buy a mobile phone without making a reservation, at least considering the factors of the cattle. Millet phones that sell for only 1999 yuan will attract no less than the iphone oxen.

Regardless of any hindrance in the middle process, as long as the final experience of the user is to buy a mobile phone is more difficult, it will affect the evaluation of the Xiaomi mobile phone, and the extent of the final arrival of the user. When Lei Jun talked about the problem of cattle, he thought for a moment: "We try to sell the mobile phones to the people we want."

Can I pull my users as I wish?

An important investment philosophy of NetEase CEO Ding Lei is: Before entering a new field, it is necessary to see who the opponent is. Xiaomi's opponent, there is no doubt Tencent. This is a big problem.

Almost all journalists in the room asked how Ms. Mi competed with the potential 400 million users of WeChat. Lei Jun’s “educational” journalists wanted to look at the issue like this: Miao chat users are also QQ users. In the past few months it can be assumed that there is no incremental increase. Under such oppression, Miao chat still maintains its increment. “So This is terrible."

This is obviously not enough to convince reporters. Imagine that the people around you want to use a chat texting tool. It is to register a new account, enter an e-mail address, and confirm the e-mail address. Is it easy to sign in with the QQ number that everyone has?

However, if you really want to install QQ on Xiaomi's mobile phone, you have to face other minor troubles. A reporter who has installed MiUI said that the QQ address book and miui's own address book will prompt twice when they come to text messages, and they cannot stop miui's message. Lei Jun said that due to "privacy and security considerations", miui temporarily did not release other software to take over the phone address book permissions, but "if they are interested, we are willing to talk."

Android's entire user account system includes users' emails, chat tools, address books, and integrated logins for app stores. The ROM of different developers is actually a change to the user account system so that it can be used without having to register for a google account. Motoblur requires the user to register a moto account separately. Miui does the same. After Millet has cleared the pass, he can now log in to Mi chat, Xiaomi's own web-based application store, and miui forum.

Future Xiaomi’s other backup features, Lei Jun’s introduction will be done by Xiaomi himself, without considering the issue of opening up the Jinshan Pass. However, Lei Jun mentioned only the T drive in the cloud service of Jinshan. He felt that a mobile phone could not access the 1T file library. However, including the WPS and the drug tyrants system, they could even promote the integration of mobile games, and so on. The use of Jinshan Pass was really useful. It cannot be underestimated.

Lei Jun has said that millet as an Internet company, to make money through services, then at any cost to win over users, I am afraid that will be increasingly important for Xiaomi. Importing users can also be a way to pull users - of course, the premise is that the products are done well enough.

Is the positioning too narrow?

Millet mobile phone positioning is "high-performance enthusiast phone." The "Commercial Value" article is concerned that this position may be too narrow. “It is impossible to use the Xiaomi mobile phone only for the enthusiasts and professional users. Whether this niche positioning will affect the performance of Xiaomi’s mobile phone needs further consideration.”

Lei Jun explained to reporters the considerations behind this positioning: Xiaomi organized an event entitled “I am a mobile phone control” for forum users, and 560,000 people participated in the past month. According to their votes, "We counted enthusiasts' favorite annual annual mobile phones, which are actually the best-selling mobile phones of the year." Among them, Apple's previous generations of iPhones took three “annual mobile phones” (except iphone 3G). Lei Jun believes that this result can be fully confirmed that Xiaomi's main feedback object - the users of the miui forum, the so-called "fans", and the market's judgment is highly consistent.

"A fan-friendly mobile phone is likely to become a best-selling mobile phone," Lei Jun said. "E-consumer has become a fancier product leading the fashion and trend after today. Only enthusiasts like it, this phone can really go to the public. So I don’t worry about sales, because these enthusiasts are opinion leaders, and they can influence a large group of people.For example, many people asked me to recommend an Android mobile phone because they didn’t have more mobile phones than I had bought, and they didn’t use mobile phones. Performance understanding."

Xiaomi's main understanding of "fans" should come from his self-built miui forum. Lei Jun revealed that more than 100,000 visits to the MIUI Forum each day, and more than 500,000 users worldwide are using MIUI, of which 300,000 domestically and 200,000 overseas. This is in line with the impression that reporters get in daily contact - many people learn about miui through other professional android forums, and their discussion of miui has not been absorbed into the miui forum. A user who once used miui said that the miui forum is too messy, everything is there, and discussions are easily overwhelmed. On the one hand, the forum covers only a part of the "fans". On the one hand, not everyone is satisfied with the forum environment. If miui relies too much on its own forums each time it is updated, is it possible that the evolution of the system will be decoupled from the needs of the public?

At least for now, the ultra-low price of 1999 yuan has masked most of the controversy over the positioning of Xiaomi's mobile phone. Even the simple pursuit of high cost-effective, affordable ordinary consumers are also very difficult to remain undisturbed. Xiaomi does not have to advertise on her own, and the publicity and analysis of major media are overwhelming. When the real test of millet, still have to wait for this configuration to slowly be behind the times, when the millet phone is no longer the highest-end configuration, and similar to the mainstream configuration.

Lei Jun said that Millet's mobile phone hardware update will not be slower than Moore's Law for 18 months. "We will release the second paragraph within 18 months."