While riding in the car two days ago, the driver took an OPPO mobile phone navigation, picked off the back cover, and kept blowing it on the air conditioner outlet.

In the past two days, TrendForce announced the smartphone shipment report for the second quarter of 2016. Unsurprisingly, Samsung, Apple, and Huawei occupied the top three positions. But what surprised the swordsmen was that OPPO ranked first with 17.5 million units. Sales volume increased by 66.7% year-on-year, ranking fourth in global shipments, and second in the Chinese market.

So the mobile phone industry and the media cheered again.

Does this scene seem familiar? Yes, this was the case for Xiaomi from 2013 to 2014. Every time Xiaomi’s sales are announced, it will inevitably cause heated discussions in the industry and noisy media.

Today Xiaomi has fallen to eighth place in the world, and has entered fifth place in the Chinese market.

However, there is still a phenomenon that puzzles swordsmen. Among the colleagues and friends of swordsmen, there are only two or three people who use OPPO mobile phones. It is a small probability event to see OPPO mobile phones in *facilities or on public transportation.

Where are OPPO’s mobile phones sold?

1. The increase in sales of OPPO and vivo is due to the low penetration rate of e-commerce in the 2nd to 5th tier markets

Since the end of 2015, with the increase in sales of the two OV brothers and the so-called Mensheng The image of great wealth has been revealed. Whether it is China's mobile phone industry or the media, the consistent interpretation is that the expansion of offline channels is the reason why the two OV brothers have grown rapidly.

As a result, not only relatively traditional mobile phone manufacturers began to restructure their offline channel systems, but even Internet brands represented by Xiaomi began to restart offline channels. The rise of the OV brothers is like the rise of Xiaomi since 2012, causing China's mobile phone industry to follow suit again.

According to media reports, OPPO currently has 200,000 offline sales outlets, which is an astronomical figure for many manufacturers. In fact, both OV companies benefited from the channel capabilities and business model of their former parent company, BBK, and quickly emerged through their three- to six-tier offline layout and huge advertising model. In fact, in the BBK era, whether it was the era of learning machines, cordless phones, VCDs and other products, they all relied on this method to conquer cities and territories, but in the end, BBK still could not avoid the fate of being eliminated by the industry.

Although today's OV brothers do not have much commercial contact with BBK, their business and operating models are basically not much different from the previous BBK learning machine methods. Just like when BBK benefited from the information asymmetry between users and manufacturers and formed a large enough market opportunity in third- to sixth-tier cities through extensive advertising, the current two OV brothers are also taking advantage of e-commerce in third- to sixth-tier markets when the penetration rate is low. Opportunities have completed fission through advertising and offline channels.

Everything looks great.

The same question is, in first- and second-tier cities, especially in first-tier cities, why are the product coverage rates of OV Brothers so low?

There is a phenomenon that can help us understand this strange phenomenon of the two OV brothers. First, as early as 2013, supermarkets represented by Carrefour and others began to close stores. By the end of 2015, this trend had spread to the Chinese clothing industry. According to sources, Bosden alone had closed more than 3,000 stores. Sales stores, and Wanda’s city plazas have also started closing mode. As for the digital or electronic markets that are closely related to the mobile phone industry, business in Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai has become increasingly slow. In Beijing alone, since the closure of Pacific Digital City a few years ago, Zhongguancun E World has been basically closed since the second half of 2015. As a representative of China's electronics market, Hailong Electronics Market finally couldn't survive this year and was shut down in July 2016.

The long-standing disadvantages of the offline model. Due to the long history, the allocation efficiency of social resources has been very low compared to e-commerce channels. The demise of offline channels is a high probability event except for special industries. The demise of channels for general consumer goods is a high probability event. , Today, when e-commerce has greatly improved the efficiency of social resource allocation, restarting offline channels cannot be said to be retrograde, but it is difficult to say how bright its future will be.

As far as the current status of China's retail market is concerned, the e-commerce penetration rate in first- and second-tier cities is already very high. Compared with first- and second-tier cities, the e-commerce penetration rate in third- to sixth-tier cities has just begun. The growth of the brothers is determined by the particularity of this budding period, rather than the necessity of business.

Both Taobao and JD.com have put advertisements on rural walls in the past two years. It is only a matter of time before online shopping habits are formed in third- to sixth-tier cities and rural markets, and it is impossible to give mobile phones The manufacturer left it too long.

In fact, OPPO, which claims to have 200,000 online sales stores, has very low efficiency per store in the same industry. In 2015, OPPO sold about 50 million units. Even if all sales were offline, the average sales volume per store was only about 200 units.

Similarly, Apple only has more than 1,000 self-operated and authorized stores, but it sells more than 50 million units a year, with an average sales volume of 50,000 units per store. Even Huawei’s domestic sales in 2015 were about 50 million units, and Huawei’s experience stores were only There are less than 1,000 stores. If half of Huawei's sales are offline, the sales volume of a single store will be around 25,000 units.

Under such low resource allocation conditions, OPPO’s sales outlets cannot survive if they only operate as OPPO. This means that, like BBK, which previously boasted tens of thousands of dealers, when interests are differentiated, A seller may disappear overnight.

2. User pain points are not necessarily product capabilities and technical capabilities

The former "King of Copycats" Tianyu became the sales champion in 2007 after successfully going ashore to clear his name. However, by the beginning of 2016, there were rumors in the industry that Tianyu was facing bankruptcy.

In the era of smartphones, Tianyu not only found Alibaba as his godfather, but also cooperated with LeTV to create a new brand, but in the end he did not escape the fate of being eliminated by the industry.

In fact, manufacturers such as Tianyu, Gionee, and OV Brothers that have had "copycat" experience have their own unique advantages, because their sales channels are mostly distributed in third- to sixth-tier cities and rural areas. , and they also maintain good cooperation with sales channels. Under the pressure of big brands, they respond very quickly to the pain points of users in the market. Most products can quickly find pain points that are not clear to users, but directly affect the user experience. marketing.

For example, the "Voice King" mobile phone played by Kingsoft on city stations every day was a feature that the major user manufacturers at the time felt was not worth spreading but that users really needed. Similarly, OPPO’s so-called fast-charging innovation of “charging in 5 minutes and talking for 2 hours” may not bother to mention it in the psychology of big manufacturers, because everyone has the fast-charging function, so the difference is not that big. In fact, especially before 2015, due to the popularity of large-screen and ultra-thin designs in the industry, it was difficult to guarantee the battery life of mobile phones for a day of normal use. Everyone had to bring a power bank with them when going out. Instead, manufacturers proposed fast charging. Take advantage of it. In fact, the industry has long conducted strict tests and definitions on lithium battery fast charging. Any fast charging comes at the expense of battery life. OPPO's fast charging should be difficult to avoid this pattern.

But just because manufacturers like OPPO can more easily understand the pain points of users, and their marketing and advertising can more easily impress people who don’t know much about mobile phones, their sales in the third to sixth tier markets are also limited. Within reason.

In fact, the products of the OV brothers, which mainly focus on "photography" and "music", in various evaluations, their photography and music functions are no better than those of other manufacturers. Similarly, from 2015 to Looking at the products in 2016, the products of the OV brothers did not convert users' pain points into product capabilities and technical strength, and more often stayed at the product marketing level.

For the two OV brothers, there is still a long way to go before they can accurately grasp user needs into product capabilities and technical advantages. The result of marketing being greater than product is the lesson learned from the disappearance of the two brothers’ old club BBK. For mobile phone manufacturers that want to restart offline channels, offline channels may have an effect on user experience and product sales in a short period of time, but they still have to Focus on the changing trends of user consumption habits in Chinese society in the future.

For Internet brands represented by Xiaomi, they should be more cautious about offline channels. The risks of giving up their greatest advantages and following a business model that does not represent the future trend are obvious.