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In recent years, the changes in smartphones can be divided into two main categories: "function" and "form".

There is no need to say much about the functions. After all, brands with a little software development capability have already positioned AI as the future development direction of the enterprise.Some brands even "stop making mobile phones" and focus on researching "AI devices".

As for the changes in hardware, it goes without saying that it must be a folding screen.As the folding screen technology matures, more and more mobile phone brands have joined the folding screen mobile phone camp. Increasingly fierce industry competition has also caused the prices of folding screen mobile phones to continue to drop.The prices of some “small foldable” phones have also reached the price range of mid-range phones of the same brand.

However, the "folding phone" we are going to talk about today has nothing to do with the "large and small folding phones" I mentioned just now. Some time ago, Xiao Lei was surfing in the "seafood market" to find out if there are any weird mobile phones that he can buy back to show everyone for fun.Suddenly, a very familiar mobile phone attracted Xiao Lei's attention with an absurdly low price.

Taking the "low-definition large picture" below as an example, I wonder if you can recognize what kind of mobile phone this is?

Image source: JD.com

That’s right, it is Gionee V35.

"Small folding" mobile phone for the elderly with "connected hearts"

At first glance, the Gionee V35 is indeed very impressive, and its design is even similar to Huawei's folding screen mobile phone. However, it must be admitted that the Gionee V35 has nothing to do with Huawei's Pocket series.

Image source: Gionee

first,Gionee V35 is a keypad phone. When unfolded, the lower half of the phone is a huge T9 keyboard that is enough to reveal its age. The actual screen is only in the upper half of the phone. After removing the double-layer large frame, the screen area is only 2.4 inches.

Image source: JD.com

Some people may say, "Xiao Lei, didn't your previous article say that the Android system is not suitable for physical button interaction?" Indeed, modern Android apps that mainly rely on clicking, sliding, and dragging can hardly work on physical keyboard devices.But this actually has nothing to do with the Gionee V35, because it is not an Android phone at all, and it is not even a lightweight smartphone or an "outdated smartphone". It is just a feature phone through and through.

Image source: JD.com

As for the "external screen", it is actually three indicator lights that are used to indicate battery level, text messages and missed calls.Fortunately, the camera on the back of the V35 is not just for decoration, it can actually take pictures.However, Xiao Lei searched through Gionee's related pages and could not find any information about this camera. There are also no specific parameters for the V35's "large capacity battery".But no matter what, the V35 finally supports USB-C charging. I suggest that some sentimental mobile phone brands that stick to MicroUSB charging should learn from it.

Image source: JD.com

Actually, according to the original plan, Xiao Lei was going to buy this phone. After all, it has such an interesting appearance, and it would be nice to buy it to compare with Pocket. But seeing its high price of 469 yuan on JD.com, Xiao Lei finally gave up and decided to read the comments of netizens and just "experience it online".

But in the picture comments of V35, Xiao Lei saw an "old acquaintance": Why is the system interface of V35 exactly the same as those senior phones I wrote about before?Is Gionee also starting to become the "Antarctic man among mobile phones"?

Gionee, whose ancestors were wealthy

Although Gionee now looks like a "South Pole man", 20 years ago, Gionee was actually living a very comfortable life:In 2004, the era of "mobile phone approval system" officially ended, and the mobile phone industry entered the era of "approval system". With the help of the general environment, the second generation of Chinese mobile phone companies represented by Gionee, Tianyu and ZTE were established.

Gionee was founded by Liu Lirong in 2002. Its main business was to manufacture mobile phones, similar to Foxconn, and it had its own factory. Two years after the factory was built, the mobile phone approval system was introduced.In 2005, the Gionee factory successfully obtained the "mobile phone manufacturing qualification" and began to produce its own mobile phones.

Image source: Gionee

Unlike other mobile phone brands, "marketing" or "good at advertising" has always been Gionee's corporate label. In its heyday,Not only did Gionee spend a lot of money to invite Andy Lau, one of the "Four Heavenly Kings", it also asked Feng Xiaogang to personally shoot the commercial, and then spent a huge amount of money to carry out a 24-hour brainwashing cycle on CCTV.

Under the constant bombardment of advertisements,The slogan "Golden Quality, Stand in the World" spread from the mouth of King Liu to every corner of the country, big and small, comparable to Melatonin's slogan "I will not accept any gifts this Chinese New Year, and the only gift I will accept is Melatonin."From then on, Gionee became an instant hit, with its mobile phone sales skyrocketing year by year. Later, it even became the number one domestic brand, second only to Samsung and Nokia in the same year.

Of course, we all know what happened next - after the relevant industry thresholds were removed, the domestic mobile phone market was quickly reshuffled:Low-priced Nokia, Samsung, LG, and Sony (then called Sony-Ericsson) quickly occupied the domestic high-end mobile phone market; the smart phone era created by Google, Apple, Samsung, and HTC killed all the domestic and foreign brands mentioned above; Xiaomi, with its flagship configuration and super high cost performance, overturned the stereotype that domestically produced products can only make low-end customized phones with overwhelming momentum...

Image source: Xiaomi

Under Liu Lirong's leadership, Gionee lost all its chips in the repeated reshuffles in the domestic mobile phone market.Coupled with some off-field factors unrelated to the mobile phone market, it is not surprising that Gionee is heading towards the end and will launch "public model phones" or directly sell brand licenses.After all, for Gionee now, the only valuable asset it has is the "brand" it built up in the early days of feature phones and smartphones.

It is difficult to grow and become strong through OEM

However, this "open brand licensing" approach, which allows other brands to use their own branding, is obviously not a long-term solution.

Although opening up the brand to other manufacturers to produce products can bring certain economic benefits in the short term, in the long run, this approach is clearly more harmful than beneficial.Putting aside the dilution of brand value, open licensing will blur the overall brand image and reduce consumer trust.Brand reputation will also be damaged, especially when quality problems arise in authorized products, consumers tend to blame the brand, making it difficult to repair the brand reputation.

Relying on brand licensing for short-term profits will also lead to the neglect of the brand's own innovation and R&D, weakening the brand's core competitiveness.If this continues, the brand's position in the market will gradually decline and it will be difficult to win consumer recognition.

In addition, after the brand is opened,The brand's control over the product is weakened, and it is difficult to ensure that all products meet the brand's quality standards and design concepts. This loss of control will not only affect product quality, but may also make the brand image run counter to its original intention.Once a brand relies on the licensing model for a long time, it will become extremely difficult to re-establish brand independence.

Besides, the uncertainty of OEM is always higher than that of own brand. The examples of Wanglaoji and Jiaduobao, Huabin and Austrian RedBull tell us thatThe reputation earned by OEM products will eventually belong to the original brand. In order to avoid the situation of "working hard for others" from happening again, almost all OEM brands will not carefully manage these purchased "brands".The ultimate outcome of doing this is,Naturally, the mobile phones produced are just so-so and consumers just ignore them.

Image source: Gionee

Take Gionee as an example. Before launching the "Mini Fold", Gionee did launch many Android phones, such as Gionee F1 Plus and Gionee F3 Pro.It's just that one of these phones looks like a poor imitation of the iPhone, and the other also looks like a poor imitation of the iPhone.

The "big OEM era" has become history

In fact, except for Gionee,Many brands that were once popular in the domestic mobile phone market but were "eliminated" by mobile phone giants around 2018 have chosen OEM as a business model to "exploit brand surplus value".For example, Xiao La Jiao, Cube, DOOV, and NOKIA, which you may be relatively familiar with.

Due to the poor performance of the Windows Phone project, Microsoft "sucked the marrow" out of Nokia's mobile device services department.In 2016, Nokia (Nokia Mobile Devices) sold its smartphone business to HMD Global, a partner of Foxconn. Simply put, HMD does the design, Foxconn is responsible for manufacturing, and finally sells it under the NOKIA trademark.

In the domestic market, the phenomenon of OEM mobile phone is even more common. Some people may think that the domestic Android mobile phone market is very competitive, but they don’t know that the domestic Android market is now a rare period of market calm after the bloody storm. In the transition period from feature phones to smartphones from 2011 to 2014, countless domestic mobile phone brands fought closely in the Android market, and Internet mobile phone brands that are different from traditional offline mobile phone brands also emerged in the market like mushrooms after rain. Brands that are familiar to old players such as Da Kele, Bumblebee, Xiao Lajiao, and IUNI were born in that era.

Of course, we are all very clear about the ending of these brands. After all, it seems now that Coke, Lajiao, and today's protagonist Gionee are just insignificant "victims" in the process of OEM factories filling the low-end mobile phone market space.

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As a new media focusing on AI hardware, especially the mobile phone and digital industry, Lei Technology has been fortunate to participate in many of the press conference reports, new product experience reviews, technical analysis and popular science, and industry observation outputs.

There is still a long way to go in the future. We will continue to focus on AI hard technology, record the more exciting AI industry era, and serve our millions of subscribers well.

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