Millet Retrograde Under The Epidemic: Online Release Millet 10 Officially Hit The High-End Market

This is a special conference. The impact of the new crown pneumonia epidemic has spread to all walks of life, and the smart phone industry is no exception. In February 8th, Xiaomi announced that millet 10 will be released in February 13th by the pure online live broadcast. The chairman and CEO Lei Jun of Xiaomi group at that time said it was a "tough" decision made by millet.

In February 13th, after the end of the online conference, Lei Jun accepted the interview with the media and other media in twenty-first Century through the way of video connection. He said that he chose to publish millet 10 online, and his pressure was actually very, very large, because he had never tried this kind of form, nor did he know exactly what the result would be.

Lei Jun told reporters that he would talk with the management of millet every day for discussion, and finally decided in February 4th that the online release plan. "Do not underestimate the difficulty and devotion of a live broadcast conference", Lei Jun said. Many people may feel that the online conference is simpler, but in fact, the online is more complex than the line, because no one has done it, so there are much more things to consider.

From time to time, the release of millet 10 was only two days later than the original plan. Judging from the results, Lei Jun said the effect of the conference and the booking situation of the product were far beyond expectations. If the millet 10 online publishing is regarded as a gamble, then Lei Jun won.

But as long as it is gambling, there is risk. Lei Jun said that the reason why millet insisted on releasing millet 10 is the need of the industry. "The new crown pneumonia epidemic situation has made the entire mobile phone industry become stillness. Both the channel providers and the supply chain need a new product conference to boost morale. We can not wait until the epidemic is over, but we ourselves have been defeated."

And from the perspective of millet company, millet 10 is high hopes, it can not drag nor drag. "This year is the 10th anniversary of millet, millet 10 is the work of millet assembly, is also the first product of millet impact high-end market, if dragged on for too long, the advanced nature of products may be challenged." Lei Jun said.

Millet brand hits high-end market

At the beginning of 2019, millet group independently established Redmi brand and opened the dual brand strategy of millet mobile phone. The purpose behind it is also very clear, that is, Redmi will inherit the past "millet" and "red rice" brand, the pursuit of the ultimate cost performance, and the new millet brand will get rid of the price constraint, impact high-end market to pursue the ultimate experience.

At the online conference in February 13th, Lei Jun said that high-end mobile phones have always been the dream of millet, and millet 10 is the first real high-end type of millet. In Lei Jun's view, the high-end model is to achieve every level of professional level, and millet first pursuit of technology and products, so that consumers are convinced, and then make the brand, tonal so that we can recognize.

From the price point of view, the starting price of millet 10 is 3999 yuan, and also hit a new high of millet series. According to the introduction, in order to create millet 10 series, millet Group invested more than 1 billion yuan research and development expenses, and from the platform performance, network configuration, image function, display effect, sound quality experience and other dimensions carried out the whole platform technology upgrading.

From the specific product configuration, millet 10 carries a Qualcomm Xiaolong 8655G chip, supports SA/NSA dual mode 5G network, adopts the latest LPDDR5 memory, and improves 29%-50% compared to LPDDR4X rate. In addition, millet 10 also equipped with the latest WiFi6 technology, its maximum throughput of 9.6Gbps, relative to WiFi5 increased to 2.7 times, while supporting 8x8 MU-MIMO technology, multi device networking environment download rate can be increased by 100%.

In terms of video and audio, millet 10 carried one hundred million pixel main camera, including 13 million pixel ultra wide-angle, 2 million pixel macro and 2 million pixel depth of field lens, and so on three sub cameras. It is worth noting that the millet 10 Pro released on the same day also has a further improvement in photography than millet 10, which can achieve 10 times of mixed optical zoom, the highest 50 times digital zoom and laser focus.

In the DXOMARK evaluation of the authority, millet 10 Pro refreshed the DXOMARK list, and the total score and video test were ranked first in the world. Lei Jun told reporters that as early as 2016, millet decided to use friends as a benchmark, and decided to expand R & D investment year by year according to the financial resources of millet, the goal is to catch up with rivals in an important field.

Subsequently, Xiaomi set up a core device department to increase investment in the research and development of all core devices. "The decision made four years ago has begun to show results in the last one or two years," Lei Jun said. "For example, DXOMARK's evaluation is the third party evaluation that was first proposed by friends."

Mobile phone industry under epidemic situation

Before the launch of the online conference, millet group announced that the total annual revenue in 2019 is expected to exceed 200 billion yuan, of which the R & D cost is expected to be about 7 billion yuan. At the same time, it is expected that the R & D investment in 2020 will exceed RMB 10 billion yuan.

In 2018, the annual revenue of Xiaomi group was 174 billion 915 million yuan, an increase of 52.6% over the same period. In terms of 200 billion yuan revenue, the year-on-year growth rate in 2019 was about 14.3%.

This growth rate is not high, but according to the millet CFO week funding received to the twenty-first Century economic report reporter said, in 2019, the whole millet has adopted a prudent operation strategy, the purpose is to reserve sufficient ammunition for the next 5G mobile phone competition. According to Zhou's capital, in the first three quarters of 2019, the stock was very healthy under the sound management strategy, which enabled millet to go to the 5G with light weight.

Millet announced that more than 10 5G products will be released in 2020. In this regard, Lei Jun said that this year will no doubt be the popularity of 5G, but 5G from terminal to the Internet to charges, all ready to take a little more time, so the industry needs forerunners to promote the popularity of 5G phones, millet is willing to play the role of vanguard.

But now, when the new crown pneumonia outbreak is over, there is no answer. It will continue to affect the entire mobile phone industry. Will this break the original plan of the enterprise? Lei Jun told reporters that under the current circumstances, it is impossible not to be affected by the epidemic. For example, in terms of production capacity and stock preparation, it started deployment two months ago, but now many factories can not resume production, so the supply will still be very tight in the next one or two weeks.

In addition, most of the offline stores are suspended from the epidemic, which has an impact on the offline sales of new products. According to the dual brand strategy of millet, Redmi is the main business channel, while millet brand is both online and offline. But now, millet 10 has to rely mainly on online channels.

Therefore, Lei Jun believes that the sales volume of the whole industry will definitely decrease in the first quarter, but retaliatory rebound will be achieved in the two or three quarter. In his opinion, mobile phones are the most commonly used intelligent devices, so the market may not be as big as possible.

For millet, Lei Jun felt that the impact of the epidemic would be even smaller. "On the one hand, 50% of its revenue comes from overseas markets, and 10% of its revenue comes from Internet services, which are relatively less affected. In addition, the strategy of millet switching to 5G before 4G is more decisive, so there is not much inventory burden, so the overall pressure is also smaller.

For the newly released millet 10 sales, Lei Jun said, since it is the impact of high-end market products, so its sales volume will not have high expectations, as long as the price can be liked and accepted by users, even if millet 10 took the first step of success.

In February 13th, Xiaomi's share price closed at HK $13.38 / share, or 3.56%, with a total market value of HK $321 billion 200 million. In the middle of the day, influenced by the new product release, the share price of millet rose to 5%. From last year's Redmi K30 to the release of millet 10 and new releases, the share price of millet has been promoted. Lei Jun said that as a company CEO, he would not pay much attention to the change of stock prices, but he believed that investors could be identification with company's value as long as their businesses and products were truly well done.