Who is the king of photovoltaic inverters: Why are coyotes and African buffaloes vying for the top spot?

"No need to guess, Huawei will definitely be number one this year!"

I wonder how Sungrow, which has long been the leader in domestic photovoltaic inverters, feels when it hears similar arguments.

At the beginning of the year, the competition between Huawei and Sungrow for the first place in photovoltaic inverters became a hot topic in the industry. What made Sungrow unhappy was that the outside world reported that "according to (Huawei's) own internal calculation data, it has surpassed Sungrow by 5 percentage points and has become the first in China."

What is "internal calculation"? There is no way to verify it, but it gives outsiders the impression that it is "confident" and full of mystery. Several rounds of clarifications, either openly or covertly, also led to a ridiculous "result": an organization ranked Huawei and Sungrow first in a domestic photovoltaic inverter industry ranking.

Is the title of "No. 1" really that important? Not surprising: as a "latecomer" in the photovoltaic inverter industry, Huawei, full of wolfishness, is eager to further establish its position in the industry. And Sungrow, as solid and steady as an African buffalo, has been the top brand in the domestic inverter industry for many years. How can it let others steal the limelight so easily?

Coyotes enter the game

A person in charge took a report to Huawei's senior management about Huawei's "disruptive" achievements in photovoltaic power stations. Ren Zhengfei said, "Don't talk about disruptiveness all the time. Wait until you become the first in the industry, then tell me."

There is a story circulating in the industry: A person in charge took a report to Huawei's senior management about Huawei's "disruptive" achievements in photovoltaic power stations. Ren Zhengfei said, "Don't talk about disruptiveness all the time. Wait until you become the first in the industry, then tell me."

Ren Zhengfei and Huawei seem to have an animal-like keen sense of smell for business changes. Huawei's desire for new energy should have been long-standing. China Energy Network found that as early as the end of 2010, Huawei's network energy department began to conduct research and prepare for entering the photovoltaic industry and look for a breakthrough. In the end, the inverter was finally chosen by Huawei as the "bone-cutting knife" to enter the new energy industry. Compared with the entire photovoltaic industry, the overall scale of the inverter market is not large, but due to its special positioning, the knife is cutting into the bone, and a slight stirring may cause whole body convulsions.

At that time, the photovoltaic inverter market was profitable, and a large number of small and medium-sized domestic companies with average strength entered the market. Their product designs were basically copied without their own ideas. At that time, the company that had long occupied the leading position in the industry was Sungrow, which is now engaged in a war of words with Huawei.

Founded in 1997, Sungrow Power Supply has always given the outside world a low-key and steady impression, and its founder Cao Renxian rarely appears in public media. The company focuses on the field of new energy power generation, and its photovoltaic inverter sales have ranked first in the domestic market for many years.

The threshold for the photovoltaic inverter industry is not high. In the past 10 years, the price has risen from the earliest two yuan era to the two cents era. An important task for many manufacturers is to continuously expand the scale of production and continuously increase the capacity of single-machine photovoltaic inverters, from the power of centralized inverters from the initial kilowatt level to the megawatt level. There are also many companies in the photovoltaic industry that have string inverter products, mainly promoting the concept of TCO, but it is difficult to get the recognition of owners, and the market has not been able to take off. Another change is that due to the continuous decline in prices, the domestic market has basically become a hunting ground for domestic manufacturers.

Huawei's strategy is clearly based on the pain points of these owners. In the industry's trend of price wars and the promotion of centralized inverters, Huawei took a different approach and chose a completely different approach - that is, to promote string-type distributed business. In 2012, it selected inverters to start photovoltaics, and a year later, it pushed the shipment volume to 1GW, ranking among the top three in the domestic industry.

Huawei's entry caught many companies off guard, and its growth rate has brought unprecedented pressure to its competitors. Although the top management of Sungrow Power Supply has not made any fierce remarks about this new rival, their inner concerns should be obvious. A greater concern may also come from Huawei's past market strategy. If we sort out Huawei's product positioning, market strategy, public relations methods, and rapid success after entering the inverter market, we can actually find shadows in the development of other businesses in the past - such as Huawei's track of starting its mobile phone business and quickly rushing into the top three in the industry.

For example, the concept of all-round services it advocates and the image that the entire team presents to the industry. Another example is the frequent promotional meetings held in various places, where a large amount of money can be spent on an event, which is something that other competitors could not match before.

In terms of marketing methods, when Huawei first entered the industry, it did not mind the long payment period of customers. It could give customers products to use first in exchange for a list of core customers, or give customers a drone to show service performance, which is difficult for other manufacturers who want to make a profit from selling a piece of equipment to achieve. Huawei can even cooperate strategically with customers, that is, purchase customers' communications products in exchange for shipments of inverter business products.

Obviously, in the fierce competition in the market, Huawei's "wolf-like" culture has been continued in the new field of inverters.

Ren Zhengfei once expressed his intention to carry the wolf culture "through to the end" - compared with its peers, Huawei's approach is steady, accurate and ruthless, using a ferocious combination of products to teams, from financial resources to marketing.

It’s not just the wolf and the bull fighting

Ren Zhengfei wrote the famous article "Huawei's Winter" when Huawei was performing well. Cao Renxian, general manager of Sungrow Power Supply, also cut off UPS and other businesses that were not closely related to new energy when the business was profitable.

Some people were panicked by Huawei's entry, while others welcomed it. Zhu Gongshan, chairman of GCL Group, the world's largest polysilicon company, once said, "The era of photovoltaic manufacturing is over, and the industry needs a Huawei."

But for Sungrow Power Supply and its leadership, it may be a different story.

The contributions made by this leading enterprise to the industry in the past are obvious to all. In the past 18 years, the conversion efficiency of photovoltaic inverters has increased from 90% in the early days to 99% at present, and the price has dropped from more than ten yuan per watt to 0.3 yuan. It has solved the problems of low voltage ride-through, zero voltage ride-through, high voltage tolerance, arc detection and protection. Behind these industrial advances, there is the shadow of Sungrow.

A once unfamiliar rival suddenly rushed to its side and was on par with it within two years, and was likely to snatch the title of first place. The psychological impact on the industry big brother can be imagined.

As the core business of the company, the importance of inverters to Sungrow is self-evident. When the outside world is talking more and more about "Energy Internet" and "Photovoltaic Intelligence", many people think that Sungrow will focus more on power station development, engineering construction or power station management in the future. Cao Renxian, the founder and general manager of Sungrow, once said seriously: "Equipment manufacturing business is Sungrow's fist business and has always been the company's core business. Sungrow must firmly make inverters the first in the market. Without inverters, we are nothing."

China Energy Network found that before Huawei appeared, Sungrow's strategy was very interesting: their strategy was not to consider strategy too much, but to focus on making the product itself perfect. In order to achieve this goal, Cao Renxian cut off many profitable businesses and persisted when the core business was impacted.

UPS was Sungrow's golden business many years ago, but Cao Renxian reluctantly gave it up when it was profitable. "Because it is not in the new energy industry, we need to be rooted in consumers. UPS has been out of the new energy industry, and the customers do not overlap. I think it is better to do some subtraction when it is prosperous, because it will be too late when it is declining."

However, things are different now. Yangguan Power is also changing and optimizing its strategies and "playing style".

There is no denying that an opponent is an opponent. But for Sungrow, which has been a bit of a lone warrior, Huawei's challenge is not all bad. Historically, fast-growing companies often have one or more powerful opponents, and both sides progress through "fighting each other", such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi, Mercedes-Benz and BMW, McDonald's and KFC, and 360 and other Internet giants.

Looking at the "temperament" of the two companies, both Sungrow and Huawei have a strong sense of crisis. Ren Zhengfei wrote the famous article "Huawei's Winter" when Huawei was doing well. Cao Renxian, general manager of Sungrow, also cut off UPS and other businesses that were not closely related to new energy while making profits. Cao Renxian, who is good at subtraction, even though there were no competitors, still regarded himself as an imaginary enemy and reflected on himself.