Recently, Huawei held a new product launch conference for terminal commercial office and launched a series of new products. At the press conference, Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's terminal business, announced that Huawei's "consumer business" will be officially renamed as "terminal business" and fully enter the commercial field. In the future, Huawei's terminal business will cover two major segments, of which consumer products will continue to face consumers and create consumer products for consumers, while commercial products will focus on serving government and enterprise customers.
Not only Huawei, but also other big manufacturers have already deployed troops in the B-end market to try to occupy a place on the B-side. As early as 2018, Tencent, Alibaba, and Baidu successively announced organizational restructuring and entered the industrial Internet. It can be seen that the transformation from To C to To B to layout the B-end market has become an unspoken choice for giants.
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Turnaround B
Nowadays, the B-end market to be tapped has become a "place where soldiers must fight". While seeking changes in themselves, Giants such as Tencent and Alibaba have also laid out the B-end arena through investment and mergers and acquisitions, improved their business layout, and enhanced their competitiveness in the B-end market.
According to IT Orange data, as of September 30, 2021, Tencent's total investment in the TO B field reached 5.44 billion yuan, a total of 48 investment events; ByteDance's total investment in the B-end reached 850 million yuan, a total of 13 investment events; Ali invested in 5 B-end investment events, with a total investment of 530 million yuan.
On the one hand, the C-end market is gradually saturating, and user demand is stabilizing. With the gradual peak of consumer Internet traffic, "traffic anxiety" seems to have become a dark cloud, hanging over the heads of many enterprises. According to CNNIC's latest "49th Statistical Report on the Development of China's Internet Network", as of December 2021, the scale of mainland Internet users has reached 1.032 billion, and the Internet penetration rate has reached 73.0%.
As the scale of Internet users tends to the total population, the number of users of the platform has gradually shown a steady growth trend, and the era of barbaric growth has passed. In a sense, user mining in the C-end market has approached the ceiling. Based on this situation, many enterprises have begun to transform from the C-end to the B-end and tap the B-end market.
On the other hand, the digital transformation of enterprises is already the trend of the times, and the demand for B-end is rising. The development iteration of 5G, artificial intelligence, cloud computing and other technologies has provided important support for digital development. In addition, the sudden epidemic has forced enterprises to carry out digital transformation, and digital transformation has become the focus of development of many enterprises.
According to public data, the main body of the mainland market has reached 150 million households, of which 46 million are enterprises, and more than 99% of the enterprises are small and medium-sized enterprises. This also means that a considerable number of enterprises do not have the ability to digitally upgrade or transform themselves, and need to use external forces to accelerate digital transformation. With the increasing demand for digital upgrading or transformation of enterprises, enterprise services have also become the focus area of many large manufacturers, and by using their own technological advantages, they have empowered the digital transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises as a "new business" for large manufacturers.
Huawei changed lineups
As one of the many players, Huawei's choice to enter the commercial terminal market is not without warning. At the 2020 Huawei All-Connected Conference, Huawei launched the HUAWEI MateBook B series, the first-generation commercial laptop product for governments and enterprises, and in December of the same year, Huawei released the first commercial desktop product HUAWEI MateStation B515 for government and enterprise customers. Huawei will choose to fully enter the commercial field, but also for many reasons.
First, the consumer business is declining, and Huawei urgently needs to find new increments. Affected by the dual factors of chip shortage and sanctions, Huawei's mobile phone business has shrunk. According to relevant data released by Omdia, Huawei's mobile phone shipments have dropped to 35 million units in 2021, a sharp drop of 81.6% compared with 2020; the global market share has also dropped from 15% in 2020 to about 3% in 2021.
The shrinkage of the mobile phone business has also had a significant impact on Huawei's overall revenue. According to the financial report data, Huawei's global sales revenue in 2021 was 636.8 billion yuan, down 28.6% year-on-year. Among them, the consumer business achieved revenue of 243.431 billion yuan, down 49.6% year-on-year, and the proportion of revenue fell to 38.2%, falling back to the second largest source of income. Faced with this situation, Huawei urgently needs to find new growth points to make up for the negative impact of the shrinking mobile phone business.
Second, Huawei has a deep accumulation on the B-side, and entering commercial terminals can better play its advantages. It should be known that Huawei originally started by relying on B-end business, has a strong To B gene, and has a wealth of experience in government and enterprise customer service. It is understood that as of now, Huawei terminals have served more than 25,000 government and enterprise customers across the country, covering 31 provinces. In addition, Huawei's carrier services and enterprise services are both geared towards the B-end market, and these two services can also form synergies with terminal services.
Third, the commercial office market is facing changes, and the remote office model is widely emerging. The sudden outbreak of the epidemic has not only disrupted people's lives, but also changed the development of many industries, such as the rise of remote office and mobile office models in the office field. According to the relevant report released by CNNIC, as of December 2021, the scale of online office users in the mainland reached 469 million, an increase of 35.7% year-on-year. The rise of the remote office model will also drive the rise in demand for commercial terminals to a certain extent, and Huawei's layout can naturally enjoy the dividends of the industry outbreak.
Deeper business dependency
Although Huawei is a latecomer in the field of commercial terminals, Huawei has its own confidence and strength to fight with the old players in the field.
In terms of hardware, Huawei has deep hardware manufacturing capabilities and can provide a variety of choices for government and enterprise customers with a rich product matrix. At the terminal commercial office new product launch conference, Huawei released seven major categories of notebook MateBook B series, desktop MateStation B series, display B series, flat panel C series, printer PixLab B series, smart screen B series, and wear WATCH B series new products, covering the commercial office field. The rich product matrix can also help Huawei cover a broader group of government and enterprise customers and gain a firm foothold in the field of terminal commercialization as soon as possible.
In terms of software, Huawei can rely on HarmonyOS to meet the multi-dimensional needs of government and enterprise customers. Different from consumer users, government and enterprise customers often have different needs for commercial terminals due to their different formats and scales, while Huawei can use the 17 standard customization capabilities and 9 open capabilities brought by HarmonyOS to meet the various needs of different governments and enterprises for terminal equipment.
In addition, Huawei has also provided targeted solutions for government and enterprise customers in different industries to solve the pain points of government and enterprise customers. In the field of government and enterprise office, Huawei has created a paperless office solution to improve office efficiency; in the field of education, Huawei has launched a smart classroom solution; in the field of energy, Huawei has launched a collaborative solution for the safe operation of mine employees to ensure the safety of operators; and in the field of insurance and health care, Huawei has launched an interactive insurance solution. It is understood that Huawei has created more than 20 intelligent scenario solutions to help the industry increase efficiency and quality.
In terms of security performance, Huawei is also not sloppy, providing reliable service guarantee for government and enterprise customers. The importance of security to government and enterprise customers is self-evident, so Huawei has also improved the security performance of its products through a series of measures to meet the security needs of customers. In terms of products, Huawei's terminal commercial products have undergone more than ten experiments, such as explosive atmosphere tests and mechanical vibration tests of ship equipment, and the product quality has been guaranteed. In terms of data security, Huawei provides multi-level data security solutions to ensure the security of data transmission. In addition, Huawei has also created an exclusive service system for commercial products to provide customers with reliable services.
The road to conquest of commercial terminals is long
Whether it is excellent software and hardware capabilities or years of experience in the B-end market, it is Huawei's confidence in fully entering the commercial terminal. However, it is undeniable that although Huawei has a good confidence and strength, the "cake" of commercial terminals is not so good.
On the one hand, the commercial terminal market pattern has stabilized, and Huawei is difficult to shake in a short period of time. Commercial terminals are not a new track, and there are already players who have been deeply involved in this, and have experienced big waves and sand, and their strength should not be underestimated. Veteran players rely on the first-mover advantage, in terms of technology, products, channels, customer groups have a deep precipitation, even if Huawei's strength is not shallow, it is difficult to break the existing pattern of the industry in a short period of time, to compete with it.
On the other hand, there are many strong commercial end markets, and it is not easy to share in them. There are many commercial terminal segments, and each field has no shortage of strong players, it can be said that the more segments Huawei covers and penetrates, the more competitors it has to face. For example, in the PC field, Lenovo can be described as a ride. According to official data, the market share of Lenovo brand PC products in the field of domestic government and enterprise procurement has reached 60% in 2017 and 70% in 2018. In the field of printers, HP, Epson, canon three foreign companies in the forefront, the three in the domestic market accounted for a total of up to 70%.
In general, the commercial terminal market has entered the era of stock competition, and Huawei will inevitably face a lot of pressure to enter the market at this time. Of course, Huawei is also a good time to be stuck, that is, the commercial office is entering the 3.0 era, and the commercial office is also evolving in the direction of intelligence and full connectivity, and Huawei is known for this. As Huawei fully enters the commercial field, the originally quiet commercial office field may set off new waves.
Text/Leek Finance, public number ID: jiucaifin