Yu Chengdong regrouped, and 200 billion Huawei terminals fought back

Reporter丨Qin Yi Editor丨Tan Lu

Yu Chengdong returned to his familiar track.

On February 22, Huawei released the HUAWEI Pocket 2, a small folding flagship mobile phone, which supports two-way Beidou satellite messaging.

Yu Chengdong stood on the platform and talked eloquently.

The mobile phone market after the Spring Festival has a strong smell of gunpowder. OPPO, realme and others have advanced their new product launch plans, and the Xiaomi 14 Ultra was released on the same day as the new HUAWEI phone.

Huawei is expected to fight a turnaround.

Data shows that in the first two weeks of 2024, Huawei regained the first place in domestic smartphone sales and made a strong comeback.

Some Huawei insiders believe that Yu Chengdong, who is best at fighting tough battles, will have the next main task to recover the lost ground in the mobile phone business.

Rallied

In the past few months, Huawei's device business has been reorganizing.

On the 22nd, Yu Chengdong did not hesitate to praise the new HUAWEI Pocket 2, saying that many functions are "the first in the industry", "exquisite and versatile", and "just what I want".

This can't help but be reminiscent of last year's Huawei Mate 60 series, where he blurted out "far ahead".

The mobile phone market has already entered the stock competition, and after three years of silence, how to regain lost ground?

At present, Yu Chengdong's core idea is to extend the "1+8+N" full-scenario intelligent strategy that has gradually become a climate, expand the self-developed software ecology, and improve the intelligent experience of mobile terminals.

The operating system "Hongmeng", the ecological trend has gradually improved.

In January this year, Huawei released the Galaxy version of the native HarmonyOS operating system, and Yu Chengdong said that the number of HarmonyOS ecological devices has exceeded 800 million, an increase of 100 million units from the official announcement data in August last year.

"2024 is a critical year for HarmonyOS Native. Yu Chengdong wrote in an internal letter.

In his view, in order for Huawei mobile phones to continue to expand their scale, it is necessary to accelerate the development of various HarmonyOS native applications, and the integration products must be comprehensively leading.

While Huawei regained the first place in sales, Apple showed signs of weakness - in the first week of the new year, iPhone series sales in China fell sharply by more than 30%.

Eliminate the advantages of the other, and usher in the best window for turnaround.

Set up a new game

According to the official website, Huawei mobile phones have five major product lines.

In addition to the Mate series, P series and nova series, there are also folding screen brands Pocket series, as well as the Changxiang series, which focuses on the thousand-yuan machine market.

Judging from market feedback, the Mate and P series have always occupied the minds of users of "high-end mobile phones".

According to Counterpoint Research, in the trend of declining global mobile phone consumption, mobile phone manufacturers have hit the high-end. China's high-end smartphone market has grown by 27% over the past year.

Especially at the peak of innovation, a major killer feature for manufacturers to sprint to the high-end is folding screen mobile phones.

IDC data shows that Huawei occupies the first place in the domestic folding screen market in 2023, with a share of 37.4%, followed by OPPO with a market share of 18.3%.

"The new HUAWEI Pocket 2 supports Kirin chips with 5G network speeds, and the market effect is not expected to be too bad. A Huawei dealer told the "21CBR" reporter.

With a number of high-end product lines in hand, Yu Chengdong still has short-term pressure. With only high-end product lines, it is difficult to quickly increase volume, especially when the glory was stripped away before and an arm was lost.

High-end profits, low-end scale, has always been the industry consensus. His new chess game may start with building a new brand camp.

At the end of 2023, the Huawei Nova series, which is young and fashionable, will be launched. "Everything is under control. Yu Chengdong said.

Source: Huawei Phone

According to people familiar with the matter, Huawei's return to the first place in sales in the domestic market is due to the launch of the low-end nova series, with four mobile phone activations exceeding 1 million units, which greatly supported the total sales.

According to Tianyan, in March 2023, Huawei applied for the registration of the trademark "Xingyao Mobile Phone".

According to market analysis, this may replace Honor's original mid-range mobile phone business.

Busy at both ends

When the terminal business suffered a heavy setback, Ren Zhengfei handed over the smart car business, which may be the first to hit the grain, to Yu Chengdong.

Yu couldn't find a way out for a while. However, in the second half of 2023, the situation has changed.

In the past few months, its partner Cialis has continued to increase its volume, with monthly sales exceeding 30,000 units, catching up with the sales of new forces and Li Auto.

Source: Huawei

As the situation gradually improved, Ren Zhengfei made a new deployment - Yu Chengdong was promoted to chairman of Chebu, and the CEO was succeeded by Jin Yuzhi, president of Huawei optical products. This move may release more energy in the terminal business and make long-term plans.

The automotive business is expected to be a core growth point. It's just that, based on revenue, we have to consider the reality.

According to the 2022 financial report, the revenue of Huawei's terminal business fell to 214.5 billion yuan, continuing the downward trend. From January to June 2023, the revenue stabilized at the scale of 100 billion yuan, and the annual performance was "better than expected".

Source: HUAWEI CLOUD

Huawei has made multiple moves to gain growth in sectors such as enterprise, automotive, and digital energy, but the small size of these businesses has not alleviated the company's financial pressure.

For example, HUAWEI CLOUD has a revenue of 45.3 billion yuan this year, and BU, an intelligent vehicle solution, has a revenue of only 2.1 billion yuan.

"At the end of 2022, Huawei's asset-liability ratio was 58.9% and its net cash balance was RMB 176.3 billion. Meng Wanzhou once said frankly.

The terminal business is of great significance as a cash cow. With Yu Chengdong leading the terminal business back to the main track, there may be financial considerations.

According to Huawei's official website, from January to September 2023, Huawei achieved sales revenue of 456.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 2.4%, and a net profit margin of 16%.

Yu Chengdong has never hidden his ambition to make his mobile phone the first in the world, and now he is ushering in a turnaround.