Gree 5G mobile phone is quietly launched. A few questions for Sister Dong

       Recently, Gree's official mall quietly launched its "Dasong" brand 5G mobile phone, equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G extreme 5G chip, supports 4-band dual-mode 5G full network access, and provides 6+126GB and 8+256GB memory options, with a starting price of 2,699 yuan.

　　As early as 2015, Gree started making mobile phones. Gree Electric Appliances Chairman Dong Mingzhu once publicly stated: "Gree can kill Xiaomi in a minute if it makes mobile phones." However, in the past five years, Gree's first generation of mobile phones has sold less than 100,000 units, and the new generation of Gree Mobile Phone 3 launched in 2019 has only sold dozens of units, with very bleak sales.

　　With the acceleration of 5G commercialization and the new trend of the Internet of Everything, can Gree, which is obsessed with making mobile phones, make a comeback?

　　Question 1: Can Gree’s launch of 5G mobile phones reverse the situation of “many people watching but few placing orders”?

　　Judging from the configuration of the phone, this 5G phone is equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 series processor that matches mid-to-low-end models, which means that the market positioning of this 5G phone is a mid-range phone, and other functions and configurations are also lacking. For the same price, consumers can buy a mid-range Huawei flagship phone or even a mid-to-high-end Xiaomi phone.

　　Despite the pitiful sales in the past, Dong Mingzhu never gave up: "Gree has always adhered to independent creation, independent research and development, and independent design. It just takes time, so I never think that my mobile phone has failed."

　　Question 2: Why is Gree obsessed with its mobile phone dream and what kind of blueprint is it drawing?

　　In the product details of the new 5G mobile phone, Gree focused on the functions of the mobile phone that can realize intelligent interconnection and customizable control of smart home devices. In other words, Gree hopes to make the mobile phone the "hub" of the smart home.

　　Looking at Gree's IoT industry layout, at the end of 2019, Gree introduced its smart home blueprint of "Internet of Everything, One Call, Hundred Responses" at a press conference. Gree said that it will achieve the interconnection of all Gree products through five control entrances: Gree voice air conditioner, Gree+ App, IoT mobile phone, smart door lock, and Rubik's Cube Wizard, create multiple smart life scenarios, and provide users with personalized whole-house smart solutions. On Gree's official website, there has long been a column for smart home products. The 2020 semi-annual report shows that Gree Electric's smart equipment segment achieved revenue of 209 million yuan during the period, accounting for only 0.3% of total revenue, which is not worth mentioning compared to the air conditioning segment, which achieved revenue of 41.33 billion yuan in the same period.

　　Wei Jun, founder of Zhiyu Consulting, said in an interview with China Electronics News that in recent years, the demand for traditional home appliances such as air conditioners has experienced an overall slowdown. Gree is in urgent need of finding new growth points to digest the increase in its internal production capacity. In the future development trend of smart homes and the Internet of Things, mobile phones are the closest to users and can be the core touchpoints of all other smart products. For Gree, which has ambitions for smart homes, the importance of the mobile phone business is self-evident. However, judging from the current competitive situation in the mobile phone and air conditioning industries, Gree is anxious and it has become "urgent" to make its own mobile phones.

　　Question 3: What does it mean when Gree mobile phone is renamed “Dasong”?

　　The 5G mobile phone launched by Gree this time is not named "Gree", but uses the name of Gree's household appliance brand "Dasong". Regarding the changes in Gree's mobile phone brand strategy, there were actually "signs" before. In October 2019, Gree Electric Appliances removed "operating telecommunications business and value-added telecommunications business" from the company's business scope. In mid-November last year, Wang Jingdong, then secretary of the board of directors of Gree Electric Appliances, said that in the future, the mobile phone business will not be placed in the parent company, and the application entity will be placed in the subsidiary, and not all businesses will be carried out by the parent company.

　　Wei Jun said that using the "Gree" brand to name its own mobile phones would dilute Gree's expertise in the air conditioning field to a certain extent. In the minds of consumers, Gree is equal to air conditioning, and air conditioning is basically equal to Gree. Gree's brand is very professional and complete in the field of air conditioning. If it expands horizontally, it will easily ruin its reputation if it fails. Putting the mobile phone business under "Dasong" is actually a compromise.

　　Question 4: Can Gree make a comeback with the help of the smart home trend?

　　For the purpose of their own development, home appliance companies such as Haier, TCL, and Hisense have all tried to "cross over" into the mobile phone field. However, home appliance brands are not seen in the mainstream mobile phone market, and Gree's previous mobile phones also had dismal sales. With the help of the smart home trend brought by 5G, can Gree make a comeback?

       In this regard, industry insiders told reporters that it is a good thing for home appliance companies to dream of smart homes, but users' core demands for mobile phones are more about content, entertainment and application services. The mainstream demand for mobile phones is fun and interesting combination of software and hardware. Using mobile phones to remotely control homes is not a pain point or demand for most users.

　　Wang Xi, research manager of IDC China, told the reporter of China Electronics News that the logic of making mobile phones and home appliances is completely different. Mobile phones and other communication products can be said to be at the top of the pyramid of the manufacturing industry. In addition to precision manufacturing capabilities and various reliability tests, communication products also require a series of communication capability tests in different scenarios, including cooperation and joint debugging with various operators, which is very different from making home appliances. In addition, compared with traditional home appliances, mobile phones have faster iterations, high mobility, and stronger social decorative attributes. They are currently the core Internet entrance for most users. Traditional home appliance companies have relatively weak historical accumulation of software, Internet thinking and genes.

　　Wei Jun also pointed out that mobile phones are a highly technological industry that seeks innovation and change. It is obviously not feasible for traditional home appliance companies to use the efficiency of home appliance companies to make mobile phones. They can only look up to them in terms of pace and investment. In this context, if traditional home appliance brands "rashly" enter the mobile phone market, it will affect the professionalism of their own brands, and these historical assets will become historical baggage.