Text / Sansheng
Producer / Node Finance
In the classic film "The True Colors of Heroes", Xiao Ma Ge once told the audience: it doesn't matter if you lose, the really great person is to get back what you lost. Coolpad (02369. HK), it seems that in this state of mind, it began its own new journey.
In the eyes of most people, the domestic mobile phone market may already be a red sea, at this time to return, is there still a chance? For companies that want to make hot money and quick money, the opportunities are really not big. But for Coolpad, which chose to return after careful consideration, it holds a long-term thinking and aims at the deep-sea areas in the market.
Any industry will undergo the evolution from the blue ocean to the red ocean, and the deep sea has always been and will be the most profitable area. Recently, Coolpad announced a strategic cooperation with Tencent Cloud to establish a joint laboratory for next-generation operating systems to jointly promote the research and development of underlying technologies.
So, what is the reason why Coolpad chose the operating system?
/ 01 /
Breakthrough, why the operating system?
To answer this question, we must first understand the current state of the smartphone market.
From the overall scale, in recent years, the domestic smartphone market demand is weak is an indisputable fact. The reason for this situation, in addition to the large economic cycle, is closely related to the lack of innovation in the mobile phone system and the long-term dependence on hardware "stacking".
At present, many manufacturers fight whose camera pixels are higher, whose appearance is more gorgeous, whose battery capacity is larger, and finally the question in front of consumers is, am I going to pay more money? However, under the continuous high-end of mobile phones, the consumer experience does not seem to have been improved by equal value.
Excess performance, insufficient experience, and consumers' reluctance to pay for high prices has become perfectly normal.
In Coolpad's view, the software system is more important than the stacking of materials, and the cost is more cost-effective. As Sima Yunrui, vice president of Coolpad and president of the Internet Center, said: "We don't care about the so-called high-end, we care about the experience, we want to give users an affordable experience." ”
For mobile phone users, the experience is also the most important, Apple mobile phone is so strong, in large part from the good experience of the IOS system.
To work the software experience, the operating system naturally becomes the main offensive position. In this direction, Coolpad has enough confidence.
From the team point of view, Sima Yunrui has nearly 20 years of cloud computing, big data and Internet business experience, and has been responsible for research and development of artificial intelligence and cloud platforms in Microsoft and Xiaomi. From the perspective of technology accumulation, Coolpad has a system research and development institute that specializes in the development and optimization of mobile phone systems, and at present, in the core branch code contribution ranking of the Linux core community, Coolpad has leapt to the top 2 of Chinese mobile phone brands.
In addition, Coolpad has also developed Tencent Cloud, a powerful foreign aid. Since last year, Coolpad has cooperated with Tencent Cloud, and the two sides have set up a joint laboratory to jointly promote the research and development of underlying technologies, explore the landing of the next generation of operating systems, and continue to strengthen the evolution of technical architecture and data storage security.
In terms of specific development and implementation, in terms of kernels, in the past year, Coolpad has continued to increase the research and development of its self-developed operating system COOLOS and continuously optimized the operating system kernel. The COOLOS 2.0 application has been iterated on two newly launched smartphones.
Coolpad R & D personnel try to solve the most concerned and basic experience of users from the underlying architecture, that is, smooth, power-saving, and stable. By optimizing the read-only file system EROFS under the Linux operating system, Coolpad ported it to its COOL 20 Pro mobile phone, successfully compressing the system's footprint by 36%. This is the treatment that other manufacturers can only have on the flagship machine, Coolpad is used in less than 2,000 yuan of COOL 20 Pro, the cost performance is self-evident.
In terms of memory, in the face of the erosion of the Android system update on the mobile phone running memory, Coolpad has opened a "big project", that is, storage to the cloud, computing to the cloud. According to the assumption, in the future, Coolpad will put large files, photos, videos, APKs, etc. on the mobile phone locally on the "cloud" to reduce the local storage occupation. At the same time, computing will also enable intensive computing in the cloud, no longer relying on soCs of advanced processes. In addition, Coolpad is also exploring the combination of cloud and AI technology at the system level.
In terms of stability, Coolpad's digital system will maintain monitoring and recording indicators related to system stability of the mobile phone, such as the average number of daily device application crashes, the number of ANR applications not responding, etc., and constantly optimize and improve stability. According to Coolpad monitoring data, from COOLOS 1.0 to 2.0, the system stability is constantly improving.
Overall, before and after Coolpad's return to the Chinese market, it has decided to do a big job at the level of mobile operating system, and has also achieved certain results in practical application. A new cool school that is different from the "China Cool Alliance" era in the past is looming.
However, to truly re-emerge in the market, Coolpad must not only work the deep structure of technology, but also focus on the deep structure of the market, of which digital channels have become the top priority.
/ 02 /
Digital channel model, Coolpad's way to break the game
Coolpad's choice to innovate in digital channels is based on the current situation of the mobile phone market, just as it chooses to break through in the direction of operating system.
At present, nearly 70% of mobile phone sales in the Chinese market still come from offline, and more than half of the purchasing power comes from third-tier cities and below. However, with the development of logistics and communications, the head brand will grasp the channel more and more tightly, and refined management has become the inevitable development of the market. Under the "zero-sum game" of maintaining profit margins of offline stores, the threshold in front of them is getting higher and higher, and a large number of stores are closed.
Behind this phenomenon is the channel model adopted by many brands in the current mobile phone market, which is still a distribution model through layers of agents. Its disadvantages are high cost, low efficiency, easy channeling, and the enthusiasm of channel providers is declining.
After figuring out the pain points, Coolpad began to be targeted.
At the end of June 2021, Coolpad divided the national market into several regions and established "Coolpad Authorized Service Stations" based on regions. The webmaster of the service station is responsible for both offline sales and after-sales, but also responsible for online user landing, the activity of Coolpad users in the region is on the webmaster, and Coolpad uses big data to assess and settle the authorized service station, and the assessment index is the user's activity.
This kind of online and offline sales model, Coolpad called "breaking the channel bias".
In Coolpad's channel planning, it roughly divides the Chinese market into 30,000 blocks according to the street, and the service stations of each block are unique. By the end of 2021, Coolpad has established more than 3,200 authorized service stations across the country.
The webmaster of the Coolpad authorized service station can also obtain Internet revenue and policy incentives based on regional active users on the basis of hardware sales profits. Not only will it help the majority of channel partners to obtain longer-term and stable returns, but also as regional users continue to accumulate, the revenue based on regional active users will also increase.
Willing to make profits and win-win results, dare to use new management methods, the digital channel model indeed reflects the survival wisdom of a company that aims to return to the head.
Not only that, in the channel construction route, Coolpad chooses "rural encirclement of the city", from the township low-line market, and gradually expands to the city.
In addition to the construction of new sales channels, Coolpad is also constantly innovating in products.
In May 2021, Coolpad released the Coolpad COOL 20 with a 48-megapixel glass body. Within 10 minutes of the opening of the "Double 11" Jingdong Promotion Evening Eight activity, the model was ranked in the TOP1 of sales within 1,000 yuan of the Jingdong mobile phone racing list.
Subsequently, in December 2021, Coolpad released the annual new Coolpad COOL 20 Pro equipped with "symmetrical stereo dual speakers". As mentioned earlier, this mobile phone has enjoyed the treatment of the flagship machine of the head manufacturer of more than 3,000 yuan in terms of operating system performance.
It can be seen that in order to regain the lost glory, Coolpad has been reshaped from the inside out. So, in the face of Coolpad's full-line force, does the market buy it?
/ 03 /
In the past, there have been ups and downs, and capital is still favored
In the short term, for the return of Coolpad, consumers are still in the process of re-familiarizing themselves. The capital market, which has always had the most sensitive sense of smell, has begun to take a step ahead and give the answer with real money and silver.
In fact, the whole process of Coolpad from entrepreneurship to glory to setbacks is inseparable from the participation of various capitals.
In that year, Coolpad won the second prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award in 2007 with the world's first dual-mode dual-standby mobile phone. Since then, as mobile phones have entered the era of intelligence, Coolpad has entered the 3G market and successfully ranked first in the domestic smartphone market in the following years.
In 2013, 4G was issued, and Coolpad quickly seized the domestic 4G market by releasing a variety of 4G TD mode smartphones, and successfully reached the top of the global sales champion in the 4G TD model.
By 2014, Coolpad was not only in the leading position of 3G and 4G in China, but also developed a set of security systems for suitable and high-end business people through the combination of the underlying protocol and hardware and software of the system.
From the past development process, it can be seen that Coolpad does have a deep technical foundation, otherwise it is impossible to be at the top of the industry for more than ten years, let alone become a member of the "China Cool Union" with ZTE, Huawei, Lenovo, etc.
However, LeTV, which became the largest shareholder of Coolpad in 2015, has dragged Coolpad down enough while falling down. Although in the following years, Coolpad encountered many difficulties, its ability to create a blockbuster mobile phone is still there. It has also partnered with Amazon to establish an independent product line Xcentz sub-brand for the smart accessories business, which has a certain overseas market share.
In 2018, LeEco completely withdrew from Coolpad, and Coolpad immediately gained the favor of the international top war pitch, and things began to turn around.
According to the company's announcement in November 2021, Coolpad has signed a share subscription agreement of HK$833 million, led by SAI (Haina Asia Venture Capital Fund), a wholly-owned subsidiary of SIG (Haina International Group), and followed by institutions and individuals such as Honghui Investment Co., Ltd. In addition to subscribing for 800 million new shares, SAI also subscribed for 800 million warrants.
According to public information, SIG has more than 30 years of investment experience in the global market, and after entering China in 2005, it has invested in well-known enterprises such as Byte and Himalayas, with a total investment of more than 3.5 billion US dollars.
From its continuous action of increasing Coolpad, it is not difficult to find its attitude towards Coolpad's future.
In January this year, Coolpad once again announced that its share subscription shares issued and distributed to Alllove Group, Elite Mobile Limited, Qunying and Baofeng had been fully implemented on December 30, 2021, January 14, 2022, January 14, 2022 and January 28, 2022, respectively.
"Spring River Plumbing Duck Prophet", in the eyes of ordinary consumers or investors, may cool the winter, but whether one of the former mobile phone heads ushered in the spring, the top international investment institutions may have more say.
From glory to trough, from wandering to returning, from operating systems to digital channels, Coolpad in 2022 looks to the next decade, and everything still has a chance.
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