In the past, Nokia dominated the global mobile phone market for 15 years. It was Apple, which made smartphones in the cross-border industry, that defeated it, not Motorola and Sony Ericsson, which competed for the first throne at the same time. If Apple is defeated one day, it will only be "Apple" in another industry, not the mobile phone manufacturers that are chasing after it.
A disruptor in an industry often crosses the border.Didi did not have a taxi, but changed the entire travel market. WeChat did not have a communication operator license, but it brought the boom of instant messaging.
Perhaps this was the case in the automotive industry. The century-old industry was too deep-rooted, and it was even more difficult to change itself. Many crossovers were involved in the automotive sector and wanted to bring revolutionary products, one of which was Xiaomi.
On March 30, Xiaomi officially announced its car-building plan, which was late in entering the market, causing not only a sensation in the automotive industry, but also attracting the attention of young people who are concerned about the development of mobile Internet, dominating the hot search list for many days.
In the car, Lei Jun personally led the team, the first investment of 10 billion yuan, the next ten years will invest 10 billion dollars, although the current Xiaomi car has just started, but around the smart car an "arms race", has already begun vigorously.
10 billion dollars is enough? How much does it cost to build a car? According to the different strategic plans of each company, it is difficult to give a clear figure, but it can still be seen from the investment of various giants.
As of 2020, NIO, Ideal and Xiaopeng’s financing quotas are 83.50 billion, 36.20 billion and 45.80 billion yuan respectively, and their cash reserves are 42.50 billion, 29.87 billion and 35.34 billion respectively. The three new forces have spent 41 billion, 6.33 billion and 10.46 billion respectively since their establishment.
NIO founder Li Bin reminds latecomers who want to enter the field of smart cars: "Don’t come to build cars without 20 billion", while He Xiaopeng of XPeng Motors lamented that "I used to see others make cars and think 10 billion was too exaggerated, but now I jump in and know that 20 billion is not enough".
It seems that making a car is indeed a very expensive thing, Xiaomi’s 10 billion dollars enough? With the most expensive NIO as a reference, the cumulative cost of 5 years is about 40 billion yuan, even if Xiaomi is calculated according to the loss of NIO, 10 billion dollars is enough to support it for 10 years, in other words, if Xiaomi car can stick to 10 years, it is not far from success.
Funding, technology and traffic are enough to support Xiaomi to build a mass-produced car, and other problems encountered during the construction of the car can also be solved by using Xiaomi’s strong supply chain integration capabilities through foundry and cooperation. At this stage,Xiaomi’s biggest problem is who to sell the car to…
There is a group that cannot be avoided, which is rice noodles. Let’s put it directly, will rice noodles buy Xiaomi’s first batch of production cars? Looking back at the development history of Xiaomi mobile phones, we can see that rice noodles play a very crucial role in it. In the era of car building, how much energy can fan culture give Xiaomi? This is a question worth exploring.
When it comes to fan culture, I have to mention the Wuling Hongguang MINI EV, which is a classic example of the myth of driving sales through the fan economy.
At the beginning of Wuling Hongguang MINI EV, the car that was sprayed the most on the Internet was the elderly scooter, a high-end version of "Old Man Le".
How did Wuling reverse the situation?In a word, the crowd is focused.
Wuling knew very well who they were going to sell their cars to. Young girls, spiritual boys, and town ladies were the three main groups that Wuling Hongguang targeted.
We can see that all Wuling’s marketing methods are based on the communication ideas of FMCG and fashion products. The materials, activities, and promotions you see are all moving in the direction of youth. Unlike traditional car marketing, not mentioning performance, comfort, or battery life is the ultimate goal.
Open Xiaohongshu, you can see that many female users are crazy about Amway Hongguang MINIEV. These female customers have their own title called "Wuling Girl". They think that opening Wuling Hongguang is a very proud thing, which is a sense of brand belonging.Hongguang MINIEV has feelings for the "Wuling Girl".
Wuling Automobile data show that Hongguang MINIEV female owners accounted for more than 60%, 90 users accounted for 72%, young girls become the main client base of Hongguang MINIEV.
Judging from the current trend, Hongguang MINIEV has successfully broken the circle. After attracting the group of "Wuling Girls", more and more people have begun to pay attention to the Hongguang MINIEV car, which is the power of fans.
In today’s increasingly competitive car market, many car brands have realized the importance of "fan culture". Toyota Corolla established the Corolla Club and holds COROLLA DAY every year. BMW holds the annual BMW M Festival at the Nurburgring every year, attracting tens of thousands of M family fans around the world every year. We can see the futureFan culture will gain increasing attention in the automotive industry…
Fan culture is precisely Xiaomi’s strength. The fan economy in the consumer electronics industry is not new. Sony and Apple have it, but no one like Xiaomi really manages the fan base.
At the beginning of its establishment, Xiaomi designed the MIUI system with the help of 100 fans. From the beginning, Lei Jun emphasized more than once to be "the coolest technology company in the hearts of rice fans"."Make friends with rice noodles". To this end, Xiaomi has established a call center composed of 400 self-owned employees, which is specially responsible for interacting and giving feedback on the Xiaomi community, Weibo, and calls from rice noodles, and establishing direct contact with rice noodles to deepen the experience of rice noodles for Xiaomi.
Even Xiaomi customer service has the feature of adding personal touch. Compared with other cold customer service routines, Xiaomi customer service is more interesting. Rice noodles are also willing to "flirt" with the customer service lady, and even Xiaomi customer service has been searched for interesting reply styles. This shows the importance of rice noodles to Xiaomi.
The question is whether Lei Jun will use the fan economy again when it comes to building cars.
In the field of management, there is a term called "behavioral inertia", which probably means that people’s behavior will be influenced by previous experience. For example, the success of a company often depends on their having a unique set of strategies and procedures, which makes them habitually follow the previous strategy when they start a second business.
The success of Xiaomi mobile phones proves the feasibility of the fan economy.For Xiaomi, following the "routine" of fan economy is the best shortcut to success.
In the traditional automotive industry, the effect of the fan economy may not be obvious, but in the field of smart cars, the fan economy is a perfect match for smart cars.
The main way to make money from smart cars is not the profit from selling the car, but a series of paid services generated after buying the car. In the traditional automotive field, the sale of a car means the end of consumer behavior.After the sale of smart cars, consumer behavior has only just begun.
What role does the fan economy play in this? Let’s refer to what Xiaomi has done before.
In the field of mobile phones, netizens often say: "As a mobile phone manufacturer, the best seller is not the mobile phone, but the power bank." This sentence is not a joke. Xiaomi mobile phones are cost-effective and low-profit, but other peripheral products derived from Xiaomi mobile phones have surprisingly high sales.
From Xiaomi’s latest earnings report, it can be seen that Xiaomi’s growth share is not entirely driven by smartphone sales, but by smart hardware, a new ecological chain brand covering hardware and home service products, through continuous online and offline sales channels.
Xiaomi’s sales chain covers laptops, televisions, Bluetooth headsets, sweeping robots, smart bracelets and daily necessities, as well as numerous online businesses such as gaming platforms and loan services.
According to reports, Xiaomi mobile power accounts for 80% of the domestic power bank market, and sales have exceeded 100 million in 2019. As long as you are a fan of Xiaomi and buy a Xiaomi mobile phone, then you may also buy Xiaomi ecological products such as Xiaomi headphones, Xiaoai speakers, Xiaomi power banks, Xiaomi bracelets, and Xiaomi routes. This is the power of fans.
In the same way as cars, as long as fans buy Xiaomi cars, it is possible to buy Xiaomi car chargers, Xiaomi driving recorders, Xiaomi smart car displays and other Xiaomi car products, and then cooperate with Xiaomi’s integration of software and hardware. Purchasing Xiaomi car peripherals will be the most preferred choice for Xiaomi car users.A Xiaomi car will drive the sales of various peripheral products.
Fans’ loyal pursuit and consumption of a certain product and brand will also be transformed into consumption of related products because of the psychology of love my dog, love me.It can be seen that building a car is just a key part of Xiaomi’s business blueprint.
How will Xiaomi enter the automotive field? Although Xiaomi has not yet revealed too much detailed information about car manufacturing, this does not prevent us from opening our minds. Remember, how did Xiaomi acquire its first fans at the beginning of its establishment?
Xiaomi uses the system as the entrance. In 2010, Xiaomi did not officially release the mobile phone, but developed an operating system – MIUI. After the release of MIUI, Xiaomi established a forum to recruit volunteers to "brush". As long as you want, whether your mobile phone is a motorcycle or HTC, you can brush MIUI. At the beginning, there were only 100 MIUI users, but the reputation was excellent.
After that, MIUI grew at a rate of almost 100% per week, and in less than a year, MIUI users exceeded 300,000. Later, this batch of users continued to spread and fission, and soon millions of users paid attention to Xiaomi, and an extremely sticky rice noodle community was formed. After the fan base, Xiaomi officially released the first generation of Xiaomi mobile phones, and it was precisely because of this batch of first-generation rice noodles that the success of Xiaomi 1 was promoted.
Returning to car manufacturing, how can Xiaomi make use of the fan economy to make inroads in car manufacturing?
In the era of smart cars, software is the entrance. In fact, although Internet cross-border car manufacturing has not really entered the white-hot stage, the entrance battle has already begun a few years ago, with the aim of gaining the first batch of fans.
Nowadays, the competition in the field of in-car OS has heated up sharply. Google has opened Android AutomotiveOS to third-party developers. Volkswagen has proposed to develop vw. OS by itself. Zebra Network has also restructured and opened up three major integration models. Huawei Hongmeng is also targeting cars. OEMs, Google, Ali, and Huawei have begun to stage a new round of competition for the entrance of intelligent networked vehicles.
Ali developed AliOS based on the Linux core, which has become the light of hope for China’s automotive industry OS. The Zebra Zhixing system carried on the SAIC Roewe brand models is built on the basis of AliOS. In addition, the Hongmeng system has also become a spark, and the car is an important application scenario.
What the giants are competing for is not the smart electric vehicle itself, but the traffic entrance in the Internet of Things era.For powerful car companies, they are more inclined to control the voice over the in-vehicle OS, forming a complete ecological chain from the vehicle hardware to the in-vehicle OS, and then to the upper-level application and even user data, so as to firmly grasp the value of intelligent networked cars. Core.
By extension, Xiaomi may launch a MIUI car version of the system, creating a "killer OS" similar to MIUI, allowing fans to become tap water, making users feel "you can’t do it", and then generating word-of-mouth fission. On the other hand, Xiaomi can connect thousands of users through the MIUI car version to form a rice noodle community, and all the topics in this community can be turned into a new source of income and business model for Xiaomi. The commercial value behind this community cannot be underestimated.
Let’s boldly predict that if Xiaomi Auto can successfully land within 3 years, then as soon as this year or next year at the latest, Xiaomi will launch a car version of the MIUI system. This is the only way for Xiaomi Auto to land, and it is a breakthrough for Xiaomi to enter the automotive industry. This car version of MIUI can be installed on other car systems. Before Xiaomi Auto really lands, it will seize market share and use the excellent experience of MIUI to attract a new wave of rice fans. The ability to form a soft and hard integration like a mobile phone is the key to the success of Xiaomi Auto, otherwise the "software-defined car" will be impossible for Xiaomi to talk about.
Of course, this is just a brain hole, and maybe Xiaomi will come up with a more surprising solution.
At the press conference, Lei Jun repeatedly mentioned the expectations of Mi Noodles and the requirements of Mi Noodles, and even in previous activities, a Xiaomi smart RV was transformed according to the requirements of Mi Noodles, and Mi Noodles representatives also said at the press conference that "the money is ready, just wait for Xiaomi to build a car".
Without a doubt, one of the biggest success points of the Xiaomi brand is to maintain a huge rice noodle group. Rice noodle is not only a user of Xiaomi, but also a strong connection with Xiaomi through MIUI, community, etc. Coupled with Lei Jun’s own idol temperament and feelings, it has further strengthened the connection and operation of users.
And Xiaomi is born with the user stickiness of rice noodles. In the past, when studyingstudentNow it has become a social backbone with considerable purchasing power. This unique advantage of Xiaomi provides a natural user base for its first product, whether it is feelings and convenience, the first product of Xiaomi Auto is bound to be the first choice for rice noodles.Rice noodles will become the owners of the first batch of Xiaomi cars.
In today’s era, users’ attention to a brand means interest and potential purchase behavior. On the contrary, with a swipe of a finger, users can reject your brand and transfer demand to other brands. In the era of fan economy, whoever can grasp the psychology of fans will own the market; whoever has a large number of fans will have a large market share; whoever has a large number of followers stickiness and a large number of die-hard fans will have a sustainable development momentum for their brand.
From this point of view, the reason why Lei Jun dares to build a car is not only because he has his own funds and technology, but also because his biggest advantage is actually his own fans. Rice fans have followed Xiaomi for 10 years, from the original 100 fans to thousands of rice fans today, from the mobile Internet era to the Internet of Everything era. Assuming that Xiaomi succeeds in building a car, it means that cross-border integration will become a major trend in industrial developmentFan economy is a major factor driving cross-border integrationIt is precisely because of the popularity of rice noodles that Xiaomi can achieve more "parallel running" or even "leading" in China’s upcoming technological innovation track.
So whether rice noodles can support Xiaomi in the future, we can look forward to it as much as possible!
