Editor/Zhao

"familiar smell"

"Glory is not the original glory." Wang Heng, a mobile phone dealer, commented after the glory conference on June 16, "But the product is still familiar with the formula and taste." On the afternoon of June 16, the first large-scale product launch conference was held in Shanghai Oriental Sports Center at the end of last year.

As a "return work" of glory, the glory 50 series, the first official "big machine" after glory independence, still let Wang Heng see the shadow of Huawei.

In terms of product positioning, Glory 50 focuses on dazzling appearance. From inviting Simon, a youth idol and "small fresh meat", we can also see that Glory has a clear positioning for the 50 series. This is a machine for young people. At this point, it can be said that Huawei nova's product line concept comes down in one continuous line. The difference is that glory will launch it as a flagship series.

In Wang Heng's view, Glory 50 is like the fusion of Huawei P series and nova series, which not only absorbs the image of P, but also inherits the sense of youth and lightness of nova. This can also be confirmed from the price. The price range of Glory 50 series is 2000 yuan to 4000 yuan, which not only covers the mass market of nova series, but also enters the high-end ranks of P series.

However, Wang Heng told AI Finance and Economics that according to his judgment, Glory 50 is not the final form of the glory digital series. "Glory 50 is the strategic need for glory to' recover lost ground' at this stage, but the ultimate goal of glory is the high-end market." In his mind, the goal of the glory digital series after independence should be the P series released by Huawei every spring.

It has just spent more than 200 days in the glory of "dark days". It is widely circulated that its internal goal is to restore the market share to 16% by the end of this year. The goal of returning to the center of the stage from the share first determines that the glory 50 series must be able to "go".

Although glory had a free product system planning after independence, in fact, glory's new product strategy continued Huawei's previous concept. According to Zhao Ming, Glory Future's product line is divided into three series: Magic series positioning extreme technology, digital series positioning enjoyable technology, and X series positioning Pratt & Whitney technology to cover different market demands. Among them, Magic 3 will be released this quarter.

This can't help but remind people that Huawei also has three series-Mate series, P series and nova series.

Among them, the glory Magic series is easily reminiscent of Huawei Mate series, covering high-end machines. Zhao Ming also admitted in an interview that this product line is also the top product line of glory, bearing the glory of high-end brands.

Before the glory conference, some media revealed that Huawei Mate series will be broken for the first time since its listing on 20 13, and no new products of this series will be released this year. The glory Magic 3 to be released this quarter has become another inheritance of Mate's product concept.

Referring to the upcoming release of Magic 3, Zhao Ming said that Glory's main competitor in the China market in the future is Apple.

In addition to the three major product lines, Glory also announced that the past Play series products will be independent as online sub-brands. An analyst told AI Finance that this means that the Play series will compete fiercely with Xiaomi's Redmi sub-brand and take a more cost-effective route. In a sense, this sub-brand played a glorious part in the past Huawei system, playing against Xiaomi.

In addition, Zhao Ming announced that Glory has opened more than 2,500 experience stores and special zones in the past six months. "In the future development, we will strengthen offline stores." Zhao Ming said, "Future glory is an omni-channel brand." This is very different from before, and the investment in glory online is also very different.

According to media reports, in the offline channel layout, Glory also followed Huawei's traditional style of play, adopting almost the same customer grading system, covering counties and towns. A glory experience shopkeeper told AI Finance and Economics that in the past six months to a year, many Huawei stores he knew have turned to glory.

"This is a career." He said.

This omni-channel strategy also determines that glory can no longer copy the original cost-effective route. Because it is omni-channel-oriented, the product pricing strategy also needs to consider the profit rate of channel providers.

Get out of Huawei completely

The new glory is still "everywhere" in the shadow of Huawei, but it has actually completely escaped from the shelter of this big tree of Huawei.

In an interview with media including AI Finance and Economics, Zhao Ming said that the dark moments of the past have changed the whole glory team. "We don't have a big tree to enjoy the cool." He said that at that time, even operating cash had to go to the bank for loans, the office had to be decorated by itself, and tables, chairs and benches had to be bought by themselves.

In this case, Zhao Ming said, "We should turn ourselves into a big tree, hold up an umbrella and tie ourselves down." Zhao Ming revealed that since Glory was acquired by the management led by SASAC, the management team still maintained full freedom of decision-making. "Although Shenzhen State-owned Assets is the controlling shareholder, it gives full freedom and authorization."

A person close to Glory told AI Finance and Economics that Glory and Huawei were separated, and half of the original 8,000 people were Huawei's original R&D personnel. According to Ai Finance, the original Huawei terminal joined the glory in R&D bases such as Beijing and Xi 'an, including Huawei camera algorithm team and design team.

Glory inherited Huawei's ability, but internally wanted to put aside its relationship with Huawei. Another person once told AI Finance and Economics that in order to "avoid suspicion", Glory has no plans to access the HarmonyOS system in the short term.

Even on the issue of listing, it is very different from Huawei. Zhao Ming said that he is responsible for the return on investment of shareholders and "does not exclude listing."

Without the big system of the past and the Kirin chip, how to differentiate glory products has become a challenge. Facing the new market competition environment, using Qualcomm's chips, Zhao Ming said, "Hardware can only determine the downline and bottom line of mobile phone performance and experience, and more importantly, the ability to control hardware." Zhao Ming believes that Glory has an advantage in the control ability of many low-level microcode or low-level control codes, that is, using the same chip will make the best scheduling of performance and power consumption.

But in fact, every consumer's perception of the experience improvement brought by this driving ability is not consistent. This is why people's evaluation of Apple iPhone, which is recognized as the best experience in the industry, is also polarized.

In addition, there are several hard battles to be fought before glory, such as the battle of high-end machines, the battle of overseas markets and the battle of supply chain guarantee.

Glory, like other domestic mobile phone manufacturers, still has a long way to go in defining what is high-end and experience. At that time, Huawei had a unique way of playing on the road of building a tall mobile phone brand independent chip, saving money to be a brand and establishing a successful Mate high-end series. Glory begins with the main cost performance, and obviously there is still a long way to go.

In this special year of chip shortage, glory supply chain is also facing challenges. With the release of Glory 50, some people questioned that the chip only adopted the new 778G from Qualcomm, instead of the highest-end Snapdragon 888 from Qualcomm. "This new mid-range chip cannot support the facade of the flagship model."

Some analysts believe that Snapdragon 888 is good, but the 5nm production capacity is tight. Qualcomm's mid-range chip, Snapdragon 780G, also uses the 5-nanometer process, which leads to a shortage of production capacity. So far, there is only Xiaomi 1 1 Youth Edition on the market. The performance of the newly introduced 778G is similar to that of 780G, but the advantage is that the 6nm process is adopted, the production capacity is relatively less scarce, and the supply is easier to guarantee.

From this point of view, it may be a helpless but correct decision for Glory to choose Snapdragon 778G instead of 888G or 780G of 5nm.

In overseas markets, in the past two years when Huawei was suppressed, domestic brands such as Apple robbed Huawei of its global market share. According to the data released by canalys, Xiaomi surpassed Apple in the European smartphone market in the first quarter and reached the second place for the first time; OPPO's share in the European market also increased significantly year-on-year, reaching 153%. Although the overall share is only 4%, it has become the largest growing manufacturer among the top five because of its small base.

Facing the new situation, glory will set sail again in a short time. What will be its grasp?

(Wang Heng is a pseudonym in the text)