Understand vivo: Be friends with users and compete in endurance with time.

In 2024, the global smartphone industry finally "saw a glimmer of hope". 

Not only did the Q3 shipments reach 307 million units as counted by Counterpoint, maintaining growth for four consecutive quarters, but also the annual shipments in 2024 reached 1.2 billion units as announced by Canalys, with a year-on-year growth of 7%. It can be said that the sluggish state of the global smartphone market in the past two years has come to an end. 

In the past two years, when the mobile phone shipments in the global and Chinese markets have hit a ten-year low, and the replacement cycle of users has been extended to 34 months, a lingering haze has shrouded the smartphone industry, and the view that smartphones will become "obsolete" has emerged one after another in the market. 

However, looking back at 2024, when the large model was installed in smartphones, and the AI Agent's proxy operation made it start to become "intelligent". At the same time, along with the rapid development of mobile imaging, screen technology, and satellite communication, smartphones have once again proved their tenacious vitality. 

From the hardware form to the software interaction, from the application scenarios to the industrial collaboration, this terminal hardware with the goal of "handling everything" is constantly breaking people's imagination of mobile phones. This is also why the smartphone, which has never stopped the pace of innovation, has created one of the most fiercely competitive industries in the world in the past two decades. 

Especially in the Chinese market, when the five major mobile phone manufacturers compete for the wallet share of every mobile phone user with nearly ten brands, this not only makes the global mobile phone industry leader Samsung become a member of the "others" share, but also makes the leading Apple in the high-end camp unable to resist the pressure of price reduction brought by market competition. 

But in this red ocean market, there is such a manufacturer that is not afraid of the fluctuations brought by the cycle. According to data agencies such as Canalys, it has continuously become the TOP1 in domestic mobile phone sales in the Chinese smartphone market for four years - it is vivo. 

The latest data released by Canalys shows that in 2024, vivo ranked TOP1 in the Chinese smartphone market with a 17% market share. At the same time, according to Counterpoint data, vivo's overseas business also expanded in 2024, firmly ranking among the TOP5 in global sales. 

On the verge of its 30th anniversary, Shen Wei, the founder, president, and CEO of vivo, reviewed the development of 2024 in his speech at the internal annual meeting on January 15 - growing into an international technology enterprise that serves more than 60 countries and regions around the world and covers more than 500 million users. There are no lack of pressure, crises, and temptations in the process, but vivo has always practiced people-oriented and user-demand-oriented, moving forward on the road of creating value and beauty, and finally reaping rich fruits. 

Shen Wei talked about the significance of 30 years in his speech: "Thirty years is not a short time, nearly one-third of a person's life, and it also carries the passionate youth of many old colleagues; 30 years is not long either. For an enterprise like us with the vision of pursuing a healthy and long-term development, it is just the beginning of a lasting foundation." In his view, always putting people in the primary position of concern is the key for vivo to grow for 30 years.

How can vivo, which has reached the age of 30, be friends with users and compete with time?

No invincible enterprise, only innovation that is out of touch with users

If we count from the first smartphone IBM Simon in 1994, vivo's 30 years is also the 30 years of smartphones. 

In 2007, Apple released the first-generation iPhone, drawing a watershed with feature phones mainly with traditional buttons. Smartphones that cover thousands of human needs such as clothing, food, housing, and transportation have greatly changed human life, just as Kevin Kelly's 5000 Days Later Rule predicted. 

However, while smartphones are vigorously changing the world, few people will notice that two-thirds of the mobile phone brands have exited the historical stage. 

According to the data statistics of Counterpoint Research, the global smartphone brands have decreased from about 720 to about 250 from 2017 to 2023. The convergence of appearance, function, and configuration, and the lack of selling points and innovation have caused these mobile phone brands to fall one after another on the road of communication transformation from 3G to 4G and then to 5G. 

There is no denying that we have entered a world where the threshold of perceived innovation is getting higher and higher. Especially in an era of excessive performance, consumers are increasingly difficult to perceive explicit innovations such as appearance design and major functional updates. 

As a result, multiple terminal hardware that claims to replace smartphones have moved to the center of the stage. 

For example, smart glasses in the metaverse era. Even with a technological optimist like Zuckerberg who firmly believes that smart glasses will be the next-generation personal computing platform, it is difficult to resist the fact that Meta's metaverse business has accumulated losses of more than $58 billion. 

And then to the rumored production halt of Apple Vision Pro, which claims to start the era of spatial computing at the end of 2024. Even AI Pin, which caught the heat of AI hardware and was even called the "iPhone Assassin", was sold by its founder after more than a month after the flagship product was launched. 

Standing in 2024, the first year of the AI Phone, has the smartphone been replaced? 

The answer is no. 

According to the latest report of the survey agency Exploding Topics, in 2023, the global average person uses a smartphone for 4 hours and 37 minutes per day, equivalent to about 70 days per year. Relatively speaking, in this battle for attention, mobile phones still obtain the most terminal user duration per unit. And as AI penetrates from the software application layer to the bottom layer of the operating system and the development of user demand integration, it will further consolidate the super-terminal status of the past two decades. 

The shipments hitting a ten-year low may have further strengthened the "smartphone replacement theory" represented by Bill Gates in the market. But for every user, the smartphone is still the core port for us to connect with the outside world. 

That is to say, The user dividend has not disappeared, but the innovation of mobile phones in the stock stage needs to pay more attention to individual needs. Especially when the penetration rate of mobile phones in China exceeded 103% in 2023, the industry has ushered in an era of intensive cultivation of the unit user value. At this time, putting users first is the key to invincible innovation.

Vivo's ability to top the Chinese mobile phone market in 2024 also confirms this truth. This company has repeatedly stated in public that compared with sales achievements, the internal focus is more on user reputation. 

Looking at vivo's user-oriented innovation, for example, the vivo self-developed mobile phone intelligent entity "PhoneGPT" carried by OriginOS 5, which is a multimodal assistant based on user intentions and habits, that can disassemble demands in real-time and actively plan paths. Taking the "Little V Reservation Assistant" function as an example, as long as the user tells the intelligent entity the type, time, and number of people of the restaurant they want to reserve, the system can automatically jump to the relevant APP, find a restaurant that meets the needs, and automatically make a phone reservation. 

Another example is the vivo X200 series supported by Blueprint Imaging, which also allows users to feel that "the top of the mountain is also VIP". Aiming at the pain point that users cannot carry professional equipment for shooting, the vivo X200 series is equipped with Zeiss 200MP APO super telephoto, and combined with the Blueprint Imaging algorithm large model image quality enhancement technology, it can achieve a significant improvement of more than 20 times in detail performance, helping users clearly record every wonderful moment of the concert. 

The real value will only be born at the moment when the user's needs are solved. And this moment is also summarized by Shen Wei, the founder, president, and CEO of vivo, as the "vivo moment". 

In his view, when "vivo sees" tells visually impaired users that "the sky is blue", "the sunset is beautiful", "the one on the left is body wash", "Gate 23 has arrived", it is the most warm and vivo moment of the Lanxin large model; 

When the delivery person holds vivo Y300 and travels through the city, it is the moment when the 6x volume, 120HZ ultra-bright eye-protection screen, and three-way positioning enhancement technology escort him, allowing them to work more efficiently and live more happily. This delicate attention to user needs is also very vivo; 

When the vivo X Fold3 series breaks the ice in Antarctica with the Chinese scientific expedition team, witnessing the 30th anniversary of the Antarctic scientific expedition and the opening of the Qinling Station, it is a very vivo moment, and the Blue Sea Battery also becomes meaningful. 

It can be said that These innovations of vivo are not only to "show off strength", but more importantly to bring practical value to users. Compared with showing "innovations" that have not yet left the laboratory at the lively and extraordinary large-scale technology exhibitions, vivo cares more about whether this innovation brings meaningful changes to the users' lives and the world.

Nowadays, in the slowing down mobile phone industry, it is more about the value remodeling of individual users. When mobile phone manufacturers no longer focus on rapid distribution and popularization, but turn to the deep cultivation of the existing user group, vivo, which is "concentrating on planting the seeds", illuminates the way forward for the confused and involuted market. 

"Firmly practicing user orientation is the greatest common sense for vivo's development, and always putting people in the primary position of concern is also the value orientation of user orientation." Shen Wei believes that the more noisy and rising the era is, the more we need to calm our hearts, return to common sense, and hold onto common sense.

Self-research as the root, collaborative research as the leaf: vivo competes with time

In 2007, when the era ushered in the leap from feature phones to smartphones, a large number of local industrial chain enterprises successively entered the complex technical tracks such as screens, chips, Wi-Fi, communications, and operating systems. 

With the continuous increase of upstream component suppliers, the continuous progress of technology and craftsmanship of midstream manufacturing enterprises, and the fierce competition in the downstream terminal market, the innovation cycle of consumer electronics has shortened from 5 - 10 years in the past to 1 - 3 years now. 

What the market consumers see is that the chip manufacturing process is continuously shrinking to below 5 nanometers; the display technology is constantly breaking through towards higher resolution and higher refresh rate. And the imaging has also changed from a simple pixel competition to the integrated innovation of multiple functions such as multi-camera combinations, optical zoom, night scene mode, and AI photography. 

Facing this impetuous and involuted market, how should a mobile phone manufacturer plan its own innovation path to cross the cycle? With the launch of the Blue Technology self-research technology brand, vivo presents to the market a high-end path completely independent of Apple and Huawei. 

From the landing of the new self-developed Lanxin large model matrix, to the V-series Blueprint Imaging Chip combined with algorithm optimization for shooting effects; from the Blue Sea Battery Life System that realizes efficient and accurate power management, to the Blue River Operating System that supports the flexible end-cloud deployment of Lanxin Intelligence - in 2024, the Blue Technology matrix welcomed a new member - Blueprint Imaging, which is a collection of vivo's imaging technologies such as self-developed sensor technology, self-developed algorithm, and self-developed imaging chip. 

If the past high-end was symbolized by self-research of chips and operating systems, then the "Blue Technology" that realizes the transition from technology to brand is one of the paradigms for the next stage of mobile phone manufacturers' bets on the underlying technology. 

Large models, chips, operating systems, battery life - these underlying technology investments that determine the user experience are not achieved overnight. Just as Jia Jingdong, vice president of vivo brand, strictly defines Blue Technology, "It must be a long-term track that can form a long-term barrier to be called Blue Technology".

And the self-research of Blue Technology is the root that vivo has planted in the past, and the collaborative research that drives the integration of the industrial chain is the leaf that has grown. 

In 2019, Chinese technology companies including Huawei were sanctioned by the United States, making the era emotion of domestic substitution push technology self-research to become the high-end symbol of the mobile phone industry. For a considerable period of time, having its own chips and operating systems once became the path for Chinese mobile phone manufacturers to impact the high-end market. 

But from a common sense perspective, the smartphone is a global industry that emphasizes division of labor and collaboration. Self-research requires a huge amount of capital and a large number of R & D personnel.  

Moreover, the technical fields involved in the mobile phone industry are extremely scattered - chips, storage, display screens, batteries, imaging, operating systems, from hardware to software to communications, which may be as many as dozens. If every direction pursues self-research, it will not only lead to the dispersion of R & D resources, making it difficult to make breakthroughs in every field, but also cause the enterprise to bear an excessive financial burden, affecting the normal operation. 

And vivo's collaborative research comes from a kind of "flying together to reach far". As Shen Wei said, "One person can walk fast, but a group of people can walk farther". 

In his view, the resources of any enterprise are limited. Only by achieving the extreme in its own core fields and carrying out collaborative cooperation with industrial chain partners to create a mutually beneficial and win-win ecosystem can enterprises achieve the most efficient delivery and maximize user value, promoting the sustainable development of the entire industry. 

In other words, what vivo wants to do is to use Blue Technology as the root to drive the leaves of the entire industrial chain innovation, thereby completing the value delivery to users. In March 2024, vivo's executive team visited the Zeiss headquarters and further deepened the cooperation to jointly explore mobile optical technology; in September, vivo and Arm established a joint laboratory, dedicated to optimizing the user experience through chip design. 

In mobile imaging, vivo not only launched the fifth vivo x FIRST Ultra Short Film Competition in April, but also released the forward-looking layout of the three new trends of imaging security, 3D imaging/XR, and visual health future imaging at the vivo Imaging Festival in July, jointly working with upstream and downstream partners in the imaging industry chain to create a better mobile imaging experience for users. 

A good enterprise makes itself live well, and a better enterprise makes more people live well. 

Communication, chips, imaging - around the user experience, vivo, which promotes the common progress of the industry, is still constantly pursuing the breaking of the limit and competing with time. This is not only a kind of persistence, but also a kind of love. Because vivo, with self-research as the root and collaborative research as the leaf, wants to be the "better enterprise" that makes users happy.

Move forward with love, and be "more in love" in the next journey.