Recently, Pei Yu, former co-founder of Yijia mobile phone and founder of nothing, announced that his first smartphone "nothing phone1" would be released soon. According to Pei Yu, nothing phone1 will be equipped with Qualcomm snapdragon chipset, run a customized Android system called nothing OS, and provide seamless connection technology with other devices in nothing product ecosystem. Pei Yu also shouted "nothing wants to become an ecosystem competitor of apple and other companies". The rapid growth period of the global mobile phone market has ended, and the brand competition pattern is relatively solidified. This "Red Sea" market leaves little market space for Rookies of brands such as nothing. If you want to gain a firm foothold in the mobile phone market with a large number of mature brands, rookie brands need to survive in the cracks. Rookie brands still have space "The stock of mobile phone market has been saturated, and the brand needs to jump out of the existing logic of the industry, so as to adjust the gross profit of the overall business through the supplement of external gross profit, for example, by increasing the revenue of software, financial services and IOT products." Zhou Dan, a senior analyst of GfK's China Science and technology division, said in an interview with China Electronics News that the construction of intelligent hardware ecology has just begun, and low-cost IOT still has high gross profit. The new brand should combine the sales of phone + scene three piece sets (mobile phone, wearable and true wireless headset) with mobile phone as the core, which can enhance the value of channel agent profit space and feed back the mobile phone. In terms of market selection, compared with the Chinese market, the overseas market is more suitable for brand rookies. In China, the world's largest market for smart phones, mobile phone shipments have continued to tighten in recent years. According to the data of canalys, a market consultancy, China's mobile phone shipments fell for four consecutive years from 2017 to 2020, with a slight increase of 1% in 2021. China's mobile phone market is often the first choice for emerging brands. For example, Yijia mobile phone initially focused on the Indian and European markets, and then returned to the domestic market with high cost performance and reputation. The success of Yijia mobile phone is worthy of reference and reflection by brand rookies. In terms of price segment selection, Zhou Dan believes that there is still some space in the low-end mobile phone market. She pointed out that the global smartphone market is now a tug of war among big players. In the new strategic stalemate stage after Huawei's market share fell to about 2%, the head mobile phone brands have formed a competitive pattern of "3 + 2 + dark horse", that is, three Chinese brands oppo, vivo and Xiaomi, two international brands Samsung and apple, as well as "dark horse" brands such as realme, voice and new brands compete for the market. According to GfK's global mobile retail monitoring data, as of January 2022, the sales volume of other small and micro spaces other than the top brand had accounted for less than 5%. Zhou Dan pointed out that at present, other space is more concentrated in the range of $100 ~ 200, so if new brands want to enter the smartphone market, their living space should start from the low-end market. Nothing is not nothing The development of nothing confirms Zhou Dan's analysis of the development path of mobile phone rookie brands. It is understood that nothing brand was founded by Pei Yu, former co-founder of Yijia mobile phone in 2020. Last year, it released a TWS wireless headset of nothing ear for $99. Public information shows that nothing has so far completed three rounds of financing - $7 million in the seed round, $15 million in the a round and $70 million in the B round. Among them, Google venture capital participated in two of the financing, namely, the $15 million round a financing in February 2021 and as one of the six investors of the $70 million round B financing. Why can nothing attract investors such as Google venture capital? "Google venture capital is investing in nothing because it is optimistic about the Internet of things era and the future potential of aiot ecological chain products," Zhou Dan said in an interview with China Electronics News In her opinion, although nothing benchmarked apple, in fact, its business model is more inclined to MI family. "Nothing plans to launch ecological products such as true wireless headphones, smart phones and smart homes. Its product layout and the concept that nothing means' nothing 'sound a bit like Xiaomi's ecological chain product brand Mijia." In addition, nothing intends to focus on developing the emerging consumer electronics market in India. Manu Sharma, a former Samsung executive, will also become the leader of nothing with rich team leadership experience. Zhou Dan said that the operation mode of Yijia mobile phone in the overseas market has achieved good performance and reputation, which has also become the flash point for Peiyu, the former co-founder, to attract financing. However, some industry experts pointed out that given that nothing is still in the early stage of its establishment, the two capital contributions of Google venture capital are not much. Compared with its heavy investment in the field of health care, nothing still needs to prove itself in the market performance in order to win the trust of more investors. (Xinhua News Agency)