The law of smartphone growth is in the hands of a few

In the early years, opinions about the saturation of the smartphone market came one after another. Especially in the recent two years when the domestic smartphone shipments have continued to decline, the saturation argument is rampant, and the battle of several major brand giants has added fuel to this. It seems that there are only losers in the entire market, and no one can take it. to an admission ticket.

In fact, the essence of market saturation is the saturation of consumption scale, not the saturation of brands. In other words, the ebb and flow between brands will still be the norm in the smartphone market, so we should not be surprised that new brands break through. Realme, which returned to the domestic market in May this year, is such a breakout.

In the first battle of Double 11, realme has already shown a wave of results in advance. According to official data, Realme’s first Double 11 sales exceeded 618 sales on its official website in 58 seconds, and 618 sales on Tmall in 7 minutes. Suning.com also exceeded 618 sales in just 19 minutes. In a big promotion festival like Double 11, realme, which stands out among many established mobile phone brands, will inevitably create a new record and history of domestic mobile phone brands.

Since the domestic smartphone market is divided and almost saturated, how can a new realme brand become the darling of the market soon after its return? Why?

Cracks in China’s smartphone market

There are also opportunities for magnification in saturated markets, which is one of the reasons for Realme’s return.

Although the Chinese market has been divided up by many brands that have been fighting for many years, although the Chinese market has shown relatively clear demand weakness in the past two years, at the same time, at the turning point of such changes, the entire market has also begun to emerge some new products that were not so obvious in the past. trend.

For example, sub-branding, that is, a new independent brand separated from the original brand, inherits the technical genes of the original brand, but adopts differentiation and more subdivided positioning, in order to cover more needs.

For example, in the performance offensive, there are fewer and fewer brands that use cost performance as a selling point. On the contrary, everyone focuses on the improvement of performance. The most intuitive is the stacking of software and hardware to attract consumers with sufficient stacking materials.

There are also innovative selling points, that is, the enlargement of the original selling points, or the discovery of refreshing new selling points, such as gaming screens, huge pixels, super slow motion and so on.

These trends are considered by brands as new outlets and new opportunities, but before consumers are willing to pay, no one dares to be 100% sure that consumers will accept it. Surprisingly, consumers are not only willing to pay, but also We welcome the arrival of these new trends with unimaginable enthusiasm. Consumers and new products and new selling points seem to be greeted with good rains after a long drought.

This relieved the brands that were once under the pressure of market saturation, and also made them believe in the inescapable fact that there are still cracks that can be torn open in the saturated market.

However, the core reason for realme’s success after a short return is the many “internal skills” that it has cultivated for more than a year.

More than a year of high-intensity overseas expeditions

Looking around the major markets such as China, Southeast Asia, the United States, and Europe, it is nothing new that a mobile phone brand has a share in multiple markets, or even dominates the list. In the past five years, mobile phone brands have mainly shown two characteristics in going overseas:

On the one hand, under the premise that the competition in the local market has intensified and become more saturated, the overseas market of mobile phone brands has shown a downward trend, shifting from more developed markets such as China, the United States and Europe to relatively less developed markets such as Southeast Asia and Africa.

On the other hand, going overseas is often the choice of the top or first-tier brands. In emerging markets where mobile phone dividends have exploded, giants have absolute advantages and competitive heights in terms of channel construction, brand effects, product power, and price wars.

Realme is very bold. As a brand new brand, when it was launched in May last year, it selected its first development point in the highly competitive Indian market, and made a good start in online channels, becoming Amazon’s “Best seller”.

Realme, which competes with the giants on the same stage, has stimulated the wolf nature of realme. After India, realme turned its attention to the Southeast Asian market, which is highly valued by Chinese mobile phone brands, and chose to enter Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Myanmar at the same time. and 7 countries including Singapore.

In the most popular Southeast Asian market, there are strong enemies and dangers, and realme quickly opened up the market through channels. For example, in Indonesia, realme has achieved a top 5 brand with monthly sales exceeding 500,000 in just one year.

Realme, which has been fighting all the way, is not satisfied with the Southeast Asian market. In June of this year, realme went out of Asia, set foot in the European continent, entered the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, Russia and other countries, and once again competed closely with brands that have been deeply cultivated in these regions for many years.

While the top brands in various markets have gradually slowed down their pace of going overseas, realme has planted its own banner in more than 20 global markets such as Southeast Asia and Europe in more than a year.

In just over a year, realme, a brand new brand, has not only shown its ambitions to all its competitors in the global market, but more importantly, realme, which has chosen an international strategic start, has been fighting for more than a year. strength.

First, the market scope that realme has expanded is quite wide. Second, the consumer demand in the markets that realme has entered is quite different, such as the European market and the Southeast Asian market. .

Facing the competitive landscape of global cross-games, this high-intensity expansion of realme can be said to be a powerful tool for laying the foundation. Judging from market experience, realme, as a new brand, needs to quickly absorb the development rules of different markets. In terms of long-term competition, realme’s growth also needs the support of multiple markets. Only in a single market, any brand has room for growth. With ceiling.

Different from the traditional way that new brands start with localization, after traveling to various markets, realme returns to the Chinese market. This is a strategy of going out first and then coming in. Facts have proved that this high-intensity play has been proved to be feasible and effective by realme.

More than a dark horse

Expanding globally and becoming a leading brand in multiple markets, most people will not think that this is something that a new brand that was only established in May last year has already done it. After all, under the premise of sluggish demand in many markets around the world, the performance of most brands is much more conservative. They tend to focus more on consolidating the localized market. For them, expansion is a a relatively risky approach.

Judging from the age of brands such as Apple, Samsung, Huawei, and Xiaomi, realme is completely an “infant” brand and a complete newcomer. But perhaps it is because of its young age that realme has an unimaginable momentum, and this momentum has also made it a success in many Red Sea markets, bringing a lot of pressure to other competitors.

In India, realme is currently the brand with the second largest online share and the fourth largest overall market share; in Southeast Asia, realme has become the number one brand in e-commerce channel sales in less than half a year.

In the booming Asian market of e-commerce, realme is well aware of the importance of channels and products that can bring people a sense of surprise. Under the attack of many old brands, realme has achieved rapid growth and successfully broke through. Judging from the order of entry, the first-mover advantage of many old brands has been weakened to a certain extent by realme’s channels and explosive power.

Global shipments are also a core data to measure brand development. According to the report on global smartphone shipments in the third quarter of 2019 released by market research firm Counterpoint, realme’s shipments exceeded 10 million, ranking seventh. In the previous Q2, realme was still tenth in the world.

Objectively speaking, this is a very difficult growth achievement, especially for new brands. On the one hand, the global market environment is complex, and the increments are scattered; on the other hand, the consumer groups in each market are in different demand stages, and the market rules that determine the increments are quite different.

Realme can quickly achieve unimaginable growth goals in such a development environment, so that the outside world generally dubs it the “dark horse” brand name.

In fact, if measured by comprehensive performance, the “dark horse” symbolizing a successful breakthrough is not enough to describe the realme brand. In this long-distance race involving many high-quality horses, realme’s fast speed, strong endurance, and great strength can completely define it as a “sweaty BMW” that travels thousands of miles a day.

In the current global smartphone market, the existence of realme is also unique. To a certain extent, the high-growth and fast-growing realme is evidence of the size of the smartphone market. This rule is: in a specific market cycle, there will always be a “catfish” that overturns the river and subverts the tradition.

Three springboards determine new growth

Returning to the Chinese market can be said to be a brand new starting point for realme. On the one hand, the local market has a special meaning for realme, on the other hand, realme will inevitably prove itself in a new way in the Chinese market.

Taking this new starting point, realme is accelerating the overall increase in leveraging the global market.

One is to tap existing markets and develop new ones. Whether it is the Southeast Asian market where realme has been in operation for more than a year, or a new market such as China, it is new to realme. In more than 20 markets around the world, the opportunities and cyclical dividends faced by realme are far from over.

The second is investment in new technologies such as 5G and IoT. Since last year, 5G has attracted much attention in the Chinese market, and a group of brands have been trying to continuously launch 5G mobile phones to occupy the first batch of consumers who are early adopters of 5G. In order to get the bonus first, realme, which is fast-paced, chooses to walk on two legs, one is to set up a 5G R&D team, and the other is to promote the testing and implementation of 5G with operators and chip vendors.

The third is the whole product line. Consumers in the Chinese market are clearly stratified. To occupy the vast majority of consumers, the only useful and effective way to play is full-price products, which can cover the needs of the vast majority of consumers. It has been half a year since realme entered the Chinese market, and it has quickly built a full-price product matrix from the realme Q series to the realme X series to the realme X2 Pro series.

These are actually three springboards for realme’s future growth, aiming at user scale, user needs and user stratification respectively. In the domestic market and overseas markets facing 5G dividends, the growth of brands is inseparable from new outlets, but for most brands, the increment often depends on the number of legs, and it is difficult for one leg to break through the old growth ceiling. On the contrary, it will also bring the risk of being expelled.

Realme, which has been running at a high speed, is launching a growth strategy with higher ecological intensity than before after being one and a half years old. This is an evolution made by realme in a timely manner in an increasingly complex competitive environment. This is both catalyzed by the environment and determined by realme, and is not replicable.

In the face of the ever-changing global market, Realme, which has already reached the top 7 in the world, will inevitably become a disruptor while growing and subverting. This is also a development law that Realme cannot escape.