Years ago, Shanzhai Mobile used the power of MediaTek to rise and swept across the country. But after the advent of the smartphone era, the cottage manufacturers that have been imitating can't play. This seems to be the fate of the cottage, although there are many objects that can be imitated, but this road is getting narrower and narrower.
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Depressed Huaqiang North
One day in May, I saw that it was noon, and Lu Zhiping’s cell phone counter was still empty. "This business, there is no way to do it." He sighed and played a computer game.
Lv Zhiping's counter is located in the Longsheng mobile phone wholesale market in Shenzhen Huaqiang (8.27, -0.32, -3.73%). Three or four years ago, this mall was a lot more lively than it is now. An aisle that is less than a meter wide, people need to push to advance. Now, the young man who sold the mobile phone for five years has not opened for three consecutive days.
Huaqiang North, located on the north side of Shennan Avenue, is famous both at home and abroad for producing cottage mobile phones. On the two sides of the road, there are more than 20 electronic markets connected intensively. Each floor of the market is divided into countless counters, such as cells. Here, the traffic is always busy, and the vendors who hold the computer, mobile phones, and electronic components shuttle back and forth. The courier workers who pull the trailers sip the goods and unload them. The various skin color merchants who flash from time to time in the crowd make it look like a world market.
The counters of individual households like Lv Zhiping are important bases for Huaqiang North Gold Rush, and they are also the most distinctive business model. Unlike other places where rents are rented, the shops here are rented by meters, one for three or five square meters. The counter of the meter is shared by two to three. Putting a Casio calculator and a crumpled book on the street, it became a facade.
The owners seem to be inconspicuous, but behind each person, there may be a factory or a professional company. On the back of Lu Zhiping’s business card, he opened an account opening account for Agricultural Bank of China, ICBC, and CCB – almost all banks. There is a small line of characters under the account: "Professional production and sales of various brands of mobile phones."
In Shenzhen Huaqiang North and Beijing Zhongguancun (8.01, -0.52, -6.10%) and other large consumer electronics distribution centers, the cottage phones used to be "the king of the mountain", but now they are losing their front line. According to market research firm iSuppli, in 2010, domestic cottage shipments were 24.2 million units, down 27% from 33.2 million units in 2009, and the growth trend slowed down noticeably.
The behind-the-scenes pusher of the cottage phone - the main supplier of the mainland cottage mobile phone chip Taiwan's Unicom Technology (MTK) just released a quarterly financial report last month, the first quarter of this year, MTK income of 19.867 billion Taiwan dollars, a year-on-year decrease of 39.3%, net profit NT$3,065 million, a sharp drop of 72.3% year-on-year.
Since the business has been very good, Huaqiang North is often difficult to find a shop. But now this situation is changing. On the left side of Lv Zhiping, on the empty counter, there was a rent advertisement advertised with red paper. "In the past, a booth transfer fee was more than 100,000 yuan. Now, no transfer fee is charged, and no one wants it," Lu Zhiping said.
In the name of the high-tech communication digital plaza separated from the wall of Lu, the developer started to reduce the rent in full in November 2010. On the first floor counter, the position of the atrium dropped from 1,680 yuan/m2 to 1,500 yuan/m2. In other locations, there was also a drop of 100-200 yuan. "Because we did it early, there are still some old customers, but we just barely maintain it." Cheng Yusong, who has been doing express delivery for more than ten years in Huaqiang North, told the Southern Weekend reporter. He did the international express delivery of the cottage phone, but since the financial crisis in 2008, the volume of express delivery has suddenly dropped by half. Since then, the situation has gone from bad to worse, and in the first few months of 2011, it has fallen by 30% compared with the same period of last year.
Prosperous
The word "cottage" used to mean "castle in the mountains", but it is now used to refer to counterfeit products that imitate, copy, and plagiarize. According to legend, the word "cottage" comes first from Shenzhen. In the 1990s, this fishing village adjacent to Hong Kong began to smuggle mobile phones and then developed into imitation manufacturing. At the beginning, the manufacturer did not dare to name the name on the mobile phone. It could only be printed with the two letters “SZâ€, and it was called “cottage†over time. The “cottage†is not the beginning of the mobile phone, nor will it end in the mobile phone. The maker of the cottage mobile phone, the market of the Nuggets was DVD, MP3, etc. (at the peak, there were two or three hundred dazzling MP3 brands); after the mobile phone, it was MP4, MP5, game console, digital camera, Netbooks, flat-panel TVs, etc. - However, almost all consumer electronics products that are price-sensitive and faster-changing have almost a "cottage" version.
However, it is the mobile phone that made the cottage a brilliant moment. The most important driving force is the mobile phone chip solution launched by Taiwan MediaTek. At the end of 2003, MediaTek mobile phone chip production and shipment, this industry called "Turn Key" (turnkey) low-cost chip solution, the chip, software platform and third-party application software bundled together, will camera, MP3 Various functions such as video and touch screen are integrated on the mobile phone chip. Manufacturers use this solution to produce mobile phones with a battery and a casing.
According to an industry magnate who did not want to be named, many people who were on the road to “cottage†in the early days were some R&D and management personnel of regular mobile phone manufacturers. Between 2002 and 2004, domestic mobile phones suddenly fell into the ice cave after a short period of prosperity. A group of smash hit manufacturers such as Nangao, Kejian and Yimei crashed to the ground. The technicians and managers of these companies, some of them enter other brands, and more are themselves. However, due to the lack of funds and strength, only the "underground factory" can be sneaky.
Later, domestic mobile phones continued to slump, and the market share dropped from the early 50% to 30% in 2007, and the losses were serious. This line is no longer a fragrant. The “black phone†is profitable despite its high risk. As a result, more people began to join in - there are some well-funded business owners. In October 2007, the implementation of the mobile phone license system for 9 years was cancelled, and the “black mobile phone†was bleached. More people entered the cottage industry.
The mobile phone cost of the cottage is low, it does not pay taxes, and it does not participate in the network detection. (The detection cost is generally more than 300,000 mobile phones. In addition, it is generally required to wait for more than one and a half months for the inspection of the incoming network. For a mobile phone of one price per day, Great cost), no need to advertise, engage in promotions. For a mobile phone of the same model, the price of a cottage is only one-third or even one-fifth of a genuine card.
The cottage phone is also very imaginative in design. A miniature Audi car model, turned over is a touch-screen phone with a camera. In the headlight of its "head", there is a stylus hidden in it; a mobile phone with the style of "big brother" in its early years because of its The upper antenna can release a strong current in an instant, and is called "anti-wolf mobile phone"; a "grab" is not afraid in the hand, as long as it is, it can make a call right away. The more extreme performance is that the deafening 8 speakers or being turned on by a sorghum have become the selling point of mobile phones.
With a huge price advantage and out-of-position design, the cottage phone quickly occupied the market. Lv Zhiping remembers that in the most insane time, they must go to the factory at two or three in the middle of the night to queue up and grab the goods. An employee of a cottage mobile phone factory told reporters that when she was the busiest, she would have to add more than two hundred hours a month.
Abandoned by the era of smartphones
As more and more mobile phones are made, the competition is becoming more and more fierce. Lv Zhiping recalled that three years ago, the profit of a mobile phone was one or two hundred yuan, but now it is 8-10 yuan, less than one tenth of the previous one.
Zhu Wang and Lu in the same market have a more intuitive feeling. He is doing mobile phone battery business. Three years ago, a battery could earn at least 1 yuan, but now it has dropped to 2-3. He said, don't look at the high-tech that you are selling. In fact, it is no different from selling cabbage.
The ever-decreasing profit margin has caused some cottage manufacturers to start shoddy. In Pakistan, there has even been a collective “crash†accident in the cottage. And some mobile phones claiming a lifetime warranty, even after three months, even the manufacturers can not find.
The acceleration of the 3G era has given the cottage a fatal blow.
In 2007, when Apple opened up the smart and 3G era with the really destructive innovation of the iPhone, which is extremely simple in appearance and interface, and the 3G era, the doomsday alarm of the Chinese cottage was already ringing.
Because Apple adopts the business model of “terminal + software + applicationâ€, the shape and functional advantages that the cottage relies on are completely subverted. Now, no one wants a mobile phone that can open a bottle. Everyone likes a mobile phone that can download apps, play games, and watch videos.
The innovation ability of the cottage seems to have reached a dead end. Recently, a microblogging drama that was widely forwarded by netizens said: Now, iPhone users have three major hobbies: games, photos, and microblogs. The cottage users also have three hobbies, but still - Phoenix legend, Phoenix legend, Phoenix legend.
Although MediaTek is very clear, its future depends on whether it can replicate the success of the 2G era on 3G chips, but it is difficult to know. Until now, it has not launched a truly "high quality and low price" 3G chip.
And Qualcomm, which holds the core technology of chips, has almost the absolute right to speak in the 3G era. This has led to a high price of 3G chips, and the core price competitive advantage of the cottage is gone.
In the 3G era, which is closely integrated with data consumption, telecom operators can reduce the price of 3G smart phones with various forms of subsidies, and even realize “zero yuan purchase†to attract consumers into their own networks. This will undoubtedly exert more pressure on the cottage machine that cannot receive subsidies.
Where the "cottage" is
The attitude of the Shenzhen municipal government is quite subtle for the cottage industry that grows wildly in the cracks. During the two sessions in 2009, Xu Zongheng, then the mayor of Shenzhen, made a government work report and proposed to “regulate and guide the 'cottage' products to enhance the brand, transform and upgrade, and follow the path of imitating development and innovationâ€. Some representatives believed that the government stated that it had the suspicion of supporting infringement and suggested deleting it. After several rounds of discussions, in the final government work report, the word “cottage†was replaced by an ambiguous “primary innovation productâ€. The "walking imitation development and innovation path" has also been changed to "improve the brand, independent research and development."
In fact, after more than a decade of development, some cottage manufacturers who have accumulated technology, talents and capital also intend to be good. However, it is not easy to truly achieve this transformation. Because there is no independent innovation ability, the fate of the cottage is often not controlled by oneself. The intellectual property protection, the change of business model and the evolution speed of chip integrators such as MediaTek may make it die.
In 2008, netbooks became popular, and some cottage manufacturers made a high-profile battle. In March of that year, even in Shenzhen, the "China's first netbook and cottage industry summit forum" was held. Some mountains that plan to play their own brands
The manufacturers of the village said: "Chinese cottage netbooks will rush out of the country and go to the world." But in just half a year, the netbook was eliminated by a newer product, the tablet PC, and some of the cottage manufacturers who invested heavily invested in it did not return.
The Shenzhen Municipal Government has also tried to clean up this market. Around 2008, the media had set off a wave of reports that revealed the blackout of the cottage industry. Under the pressure of public opinion, the deputy mayor of Shenzhen personally led the team to Huaqiang North to “clear the fieldâ€. After every 3.15, I have to check it again.
In order to evade inspection, some cottage manufacturers even put the factory on the mountain, and the workers pick up the car every day. An employee working at the Shanzhai mobile phone factory recalled to the Southern Weekend reporter that she was most impressed during her work, except for overtime work. She remembered that at 10 o'clock in the evening, someone suddenly reported that the inspection was coming. The boss ordered, turned off the lights, and left the place. They have been squatting for two hours.
Recently, because the Universiade is approaching, the winds of strict warfare are tight, and the banner of “protecting intellectual property rights and achieving a harmonious big luck†can be seen everywhere in Shenzhen Huaqiang North.
However, according to Lv Zhiping, these "strike hard" are basically thunder and rain. A credible detail is that he will be notified in advance of almost every clearance, as long as the counterfeiters are not blatantly placed on the counter, it will be fine.
"How can Shenzhen really check such a big industry?" Lu Zhiping asked. In his view, if the cottage is smashed, Huaqiang North will be paralyzed - roughly statistics, this cottage has the "China's first street," the cottage base camp, the turnover has already exceeded 100 billion, only 20 employees Yu Wan. And its global sales network, the output value and employment created are even more difficult to count.
Shenzhen Yetnorson Technology Co., Ltd. , http://www.yetnorson.com