news

한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina

Last month, Meizu, which had not appeared in the smartphone market for a long time, suddenly released the Meizu 20 AI phone, a product developed in cooperation with the operator China Mobile and equipped with the Unisoc T765 processor. Unlike the previous "youth quality products", Meizu also followed the AI ​​route of the main brand Meizu and repositioned itself as a "thousand-yuan AI phone".

In addition to the new Meizu Blue phone, Meizu also has another new phone targeting the mid-to-low-end market that will be launched in the near future.This new phone will be a new phone in the Meizu M series, tentatively named Meizu M20.

(Photo source: GIZMOCHINA)

When it comes to Meizu's M series, it may be the youthful memory of countless "Meizu fans". In 2009, Meizu's first smartphone M8 was officially released, and the M series was born. However, with the continuous adjustment of the product line, Meizu has now completely replaced the M series and the former Pro series with digital series, and those classic designs no longer exist.

Objectively speaking, Meizu's restart of the M series is not to restore the cost-effective flagship route of the past, but to set the price at 1,000 yuan to compete head-on with the Redmi digital series. Unexpectedly, after several years of twists and turns, Meizu and Xiaomi are once again competing in the 1,000 yuan market.

Meizu is helpless to bring back the M series

In 2009, Meizu released its first smartphone, the Meizu M8. As Android was still not a mainstream mobile operating system at the time, Meizu chose to cooperate with Microsoft on this phone, porting Windows CE to the mobile platform and creating the first customized operating UI "MyMobile", which is also the predecessor of Flyme.

The second product of the M series, Meizu M9, was officially launched in 2011. Starting with this phone, Meizu turned from Microsoft to Android. At that time, this phone was also known as the "domestic Android king". Its successor product was renamed Meizu MX, and the M series has been replaced with the prefix MX since then.

(Image source: Medium)

In the first few products of the M series, Meizu has always positioned the series as a high-end flagship.For example, the price of Meizu M8 is nearly 3,000 yuan, and the top-end version of MX2 is priced at 3,999 yuan.However, in the smartphone market at that time, cost-effectiveness was always the trend. The starting price of Xiaomi’s digital series was 1,999 yuan, and that of OnePlus was 1,999.99 yuan, which had a huge impact on the market.

Meizu also started to follow the "1999 yuan" route with the MX3, but started to launch both the standard and Pro versions with the MX4, going hand in hand and capturing both the cost-effective and high-end markets. In 2016, Meizu reached its historical peak, with shipments in the Chinese market reaching 22.1 million units that year, accounting for about 4% of the market share. However, Meizu's high shipments are mainly due to Meizu Blue, especially the Meizu Blue Note series.

(Photo source: Meizu)

The life of the M series finally came to an end in 2016, when Meizu announced that the next generation flagship phone would be named "Pro 6" and would no longer carry the MX prefix.

It can be said that the M series, as the pioneer of Meizu, did not have a clear product positioning and route like Xiaomi and OnePlus, and missed the perfect opportunity to impact the market due to some patent disputes. The next time we met the M series was in 2019, when Meizu released the Meizu M10 for the overseas market.

Meizu M10 is a model targeting the mid-to-low-end market. Its core configuration is only equipped with MediaTek Helio P25 chip, 6.5-inch water drop screen, and fingerprint recognition on the back. It is not difficult to see that the positioning of Meizu M series has changed from the initial high-end flagship to the "thousand-yuan machine" that focuses on the mid-to-low-end mobile phone market, and the recently launched M20 will also be positioned in this way.

(Photo source: Meizu)

According to the digital blogger @数码闲聊站,Meizu is preparing a new mid-range phone this year that will be equipped with a 6000 mAh large-capacity battery.The configuration is similar to Meizu M20, and the price is also less than 2,000 yuan. It will be released at the end of the year at the earliest. Compared with the network information, it may be the Meizu M20. Although with such configuration and pricing, Meizu may find it difficult to find an advantage among competitors, but the mid-range market must not be abandoned.

According to data from market research firm Strategy Analytics, the global low-end and mid-range smartphone market will reach approximately 250 million units in 2023, accounting for nearly 30% of the total global smartphone shipments, which shows the huge potential of the low-end and mid-range market. Meizu is trying to win back this part of the market by launching the Meizu M20, especially those users who are price-sensitive and have a certain sentiment for the brand. The pricing and configuration of the M20 may attract many users who originally tend to buy low-end and mid-range models from brands such as Redmi and Honor.

Aiming at the mid-to-low end, is Meizu taking the right approach?

In 2018, Meizu launched a new digital series, and the first model was the Meizu 15/Plus, which attracted great attention from the market with its unique design. However, Meizu Blue, which was responsible for the mid-to-low-end market, had a bad start. Even with the launch of Meizu Blue S6, Meizu Blue E3, Meizu Blue Note8 and other models, it was difficult to hit the pain points of Meizu fans, resulting in sales that were not as expected. In order to streamline the company structure, the Meizu Blue mobile phone business was merged into the main Meizu brand this year.

After the merger of Meizu Blue, Meizu's mobile phone product line has become more streamlined. In 2019, it only launched four models: Meizu 16s, Meizu 16XS, Meizu 16sPro, and Meizu 16T. In 2020, it only launched two new models: Meizu 17 and Meizu 17 Pro. The gradual loss of the mid- and low-end market has reduced Meizu's competitiveness in the overall market. According to Counterpoint data, Meizu's market share in 2020 has fallen to less than 1%.

(Photo source: Meizu)

This year, Meizu not only used the Meizu Blue brand to launch a new phone, Meizu Blue 20, but also brought back the Note series and released the Meizu 21 NOTE. Now the Meizu M20 has also been connected to the network and is expected to be released within the year.With three new mid- and low-end phones in one year, Meizu may have to change its focus.

This is actually easy to understand. Xiao Lei has experienced three new phones this year, Meizu 21, Meizu 21 PRO and Meizu 21 NOTE, and the conclusions are basically the same: the user experience is very good, but there is still a gap from the mainstream flagship phones. These gaps are mainly reflected in performance release and imaging, which is also Meizu's long-standing weak project.

Take the Meizu 21 PRO as an example. The "super cup" flagship, priced at 4,299 yuan, only has a triple-camera combination of OV50H + 10-megapixel vertical telephoto + 13-megapixel ultra-wide-angle. This solution is only the standard version configuration on vivo and OPPO. Meizu's advantages are Flyme, 2K screen, ultrasonic fingerprint and oversized vibration motor.

(Photo source: Meizu)

Meizu has been a leader in customized Android in China since the release of FlymeUI. Many Meizu fans insist on buying Meizu phones because they cannot do without Flyme's smooth and rich system animations. This is Meizu's advantage. If Meizu wants to try to focus on the mid-to-low-end market without competing in hardware, then Flyme will be a huge plus. However, once it competes with the current mainstream flagship phones in hardware, Meizu's chances of winning are relatively small.

(Photo source: Meizu)

Of course, it is hard not to worry about Meizu's decision to change track at this moment. After all, Meizu's current shipment volume is not high, and its market share has no obvious upward trend. If it gives up the flagship mobile phone market, it may further lose its voice in the market and gradually become an OEM manufacturer. Judging from the mobile phones launched by Polestar and Hongqi, Meizu seems to have such a tendency.

I hope Meizu doesn't become the next LeTV

When talking about the changes in Meizu's market strategies in recent years, one cannot help but think of LeTV, which was also once popular.

LeTV phones have caused quite a stir in the market. In 2015, LeTV released the world's first mass-produced Snapdragon 820 processor phone, the Le Max Pro, which quickly gained market attention for its high performance and low price. LeTV phones were once regarded as the "disruptor" of the industry. Its "eco-phone" concept and highly competitive pricing strategy attracted a large number of users. According to IDC data, LeTV's phone shipments reached about 20 million units in 2016, accounting for about 5% of the Chinese smartphone market.

(Photo source: LeTV)

However, with LeEco's broken capital chain and misjudgment of market prospects, LeEco's mobile phone quickly went from glory to decline. Due to the lack of continuous R&D investment and market support, LeEco's mobile phone product quality gradually declined and its innovation ability was greatly weakened. By 2018, LeEco had almost withdrawn from the mainstream mobile phone market and turned to launching "copycat phones" that looked like iPhones.

(Photo source: LeTV official Weibo)

Unlike LeEco, Meizu is still launching smartphones at a normal pace, and is even in the first lineup of Qualcomm Snapdragon flagship chips, which is much better than LeEco. However, the current problem of Meizu is still that the shipment volume is too small. If it continues to launch only flagship models, it seems difficult to squeeze into the mainstream brand range.

In addition, unlike LeTV, Meizu still has a group of loyal users and strong brand sentiment. Just like Xiao Lei, he also bought several Meizu phones when he was a student. Even though Meizu is no longer the first choice for buying a phone, he will always give priority to buying Meizu phones when the price is right.

(Photo source: Meizu)

Meizu has started to launch more low-end and mid-range smartphones, which is beneficial to Meizu itself and the entire market. On the one hand, Meizu can increase shipments with low-end and mid-range models, feed back to the flagship digital series, increase Meizu's market share, and thus have more say in the supply chain and fill the gap in hardware; on the other hand, the advantage of Meizu Flyme is that it is smooth and has fewer ads (some models do not have system ads), which undoubtedly increases the options for friends who like pure systems.

Then again, if Meizu were to restart the M series or MX series, continue Meizu's previous classic designs, and position them as high-end flagships, would today's Meizu fans still support it?