Xiaomi's Lu Weibing talks about the difficulties of the gaming phone industry: differentiation for differentiation's sake

On the afternoon of May 3, Lu Weibing, partner of Xiaomi Group, president of China and International Division, and general manager of Redmi brand, talked about the plight of the gaming phone industry on his personal Weibo. Lu Weibing said that the gaming phone industry has been in a long-term slump with annual sales of more than 1 million units, and some models have less than 100,000 units in their entire life cycle, and the R&D costs and marketing costs cannot be shared.

Lu Weibing believes that "the design of 'differentiation' for the sake of differentiation has become a vicious circle of products that are converging: fancy appearance, heavy body, and expensive price. This also hinders young people from buying professional gaming phones. And they are the main force of gaming phones."

At the end of last month, Redmi launched the K40 gaming enhanced version, representing Xiaomi's official entry into the field of e-sports mobile phones. The brand's general manager Lu Weibing said: The gaming mobile phone industry has been in a long-term downturn, with annual sales of only more than 1 million units. The shipments of some models in their entire life cycle are less than 100,000 units, and it is impossible to share R&D and marketing costs.

The Redmi K40 Game Enhanced Edition aims to change all this and save the sluggish gaming phone industry. It does not use fancy appearance and heavy body as gimmicks, but attracts young users with reasonable prices, breaks the "pseudo-demand" and becomes the main phone for young consumers to play games.

Although there are many gamers, as many as 600 million according to statistics, most of them are not professional gamers, and games are more of a form of entertainment. Therefore, for these 600 million people, gaming performance is not the only criterion for purchasing a mobile phone. In fact, for most ordinary gamers, the flagship phones launched by major mobile phone manufacturers on the market can meet their needs. From this perspective, although the gaming phone market is "huge", it is actually not as big as imagined.

Mobile phone manufacturers' efforts to promote gaming phones are simply an attempt to seize the niche market, especially at a time when global smartphone sales are in a "stagflation" phase, and they are trying to attract consumers through new "ways of playing".

Of course, Redmi is using the Dimensity 1200 processor and a starting price of 1,999 yuan to "fool" consumers. The author wants to say that Redmi should not treat consumers as "fools"!