Chapter 5 Time waits for me
Chapter 5 Time waits for me
Forty or fifty million yuan of R&D investment is naturally nothing to those international giants, and may even be only a fraction of their annual R&D investment of several billion yuan.
Under normal circumstances, if you want to make a smart phone, even if it is just assembly and research and development, without considering the subsequent mass production and stocking and marketing expenses, assembly and research and development alone are very difficult...
But the same thing goes...Weiku Electronics' R&D costs are much lower than other companies. As to how much lower, it depends on the actual subsequent R&D progress!
But no matter what, Xu Shenxue has confidence.
Xu Shenxue, who had already made up his mind, asked Xie Jianyong to come up and talk about smartphones, not to seek consent or have a discussion, but to assign a task.
"When the R&D department recruits people later, in addition to the existing feature phone projects, you should also recruit a group of talents to be responsible for the smart phone projects to carry out the preliminary preparations for the smart phone projects. The salary can be slightly higher than the market price. Submit the recruitment requirements to the Human Resources Department and let them start the work as soon as possible. The personnel must be in place as soon as possible!"
After Xie Jianyong from the R&D department went downstairs, Xu Shenxue called up Luo Yinian, the HR manager. Luo Yinian was a middle-aged man in his forties who had been highly valued during Xu's father's time. He was very good at recruiting people and controlling salaries.
After Luo Yinian arrived, Xu Shenxue didn't waste any time and directly told him to do a good job of recruiting personnel for the R&D department:
"The R&D department will submit a recruitment demand for R&D personnel later, and the HR department will have to move faster in recruiting R&D personnel. In addition to the personnel demand for the feature phone project, the R&D department has also set up a smartphone project team. The HR department will recruit a group of R&D personnel as soon as possible, and let the R&D department set up the framework for the smartphone project and start the preliminary work."
"In addition, we need to maintain close cooperation with various human resources companies and pay close attention to senior technical personnel and even project leaders of smartphone projects in the market today. If there is an opportunity, we can directly recruit them with high salaries."
"If they don't come with 1.5 times the salary, then double it. Don't be too restrained when it comes to salary. Be bolder."
"If you have a high-tech talent at the expert level and you are having trouble deciding on salary and benefits, just tell me and I will talk to him in person!"
It is unreliable for a small company like Weiku Electronics to attract truly high-tech talents by promising promising company prospects... The only reliable way is to just spend money!
You may not be able to find relevant high-tech talents even if you spend money, and it is even more impossible without spending money.
Besides, time waits for no one. Xu Shenxue doesn’t have much time left. With the global hot sales of fruit phones, the smartphone market has been taken seriously by almost all mobile phone manufacturers.
Nowadays, many domestic manufacturers are developing smart phones, such as Meizu, Zhongxing, Huawei, Lianxiang, etc., and there are even more foreign manufacturers.
Although most mobile phone manufacturers are not clear about the technical route of future smartphones, especially the system route, there are still many manufacturers that are developing Android phones. Some manufacturers are walking on multiple legs, not only developing other systems, but also Android systems.
After all, Google's appeal is still very strong, and some big manufacturers are willing to give Google a face...
This means that by next year there will be quite a few Android smartphones available, and even domestically produced Android phones will be on the market!
There is not much time left for Xu Shenxue!
However, from another perspective, if Xu Shenxue could develop mobile phones fast enough and launch an Android phone priced at more than 2,000 yuan before other domestic mobile phone manufacturers, this would not only gain him huge reputation and establish his brand, but also allow him to gain an extremely valuable market window period.
What is the market gap? Because other Android smartphones from Taiwan and foreign brands are too expensive, almost all of them are over 3,000.
This means that consumers will not be able to buy Android phones under three thousand yuan in the next year.
Xu Shenxue planned to build an Android phone for them that costs less than three thousand yuan. When that time comes, if consumers want to buy an Android phone under three thousand yuan, they can only choose Xu Shenxue’s phone, and consumers will have no second option!
This is also the reason why Xu Shenxue directly targeted the mid-range price range of more than 2,000 yuan when making mobile phones.
As for the specific two thousand or so, it depends on the research and development and the market competition situation at that time.
If everything goes well, we can even make a low-end chip version of Android, and launch a low-end Android smartphone priced at over a thousand yuan to see the market acceptance.
In order to realize these beautiful ideas, we must develop smartphones before other domestic mobile phone manufacturers, so as to occupy the strategic window period.
Once this period of time has passed, for example, if the release of the new phone is postponed to 2010 or even 2011... well, the reputation and profits are gone, and it can only compete with other domestic smart phones.
It will be much more difficult to start again at that time. After Xu Shenxue studied and analyzed the current situation of the mobile phone industry in the past half month, he quickly decided to enter the smart phone industry.
Of course, even if everything goes well with the smartphone project, it will probably take a year or two, and it would be good enough if it can be completed before next fall.
Before that, Wecoo Electronics still needed to maintain the operation of low-end feature phones, not only to support hundreds of employees in the factory, but also to continue to make money to support the smartphone project.
If the low-end feature phone business is done well and the profits can be increased, for example, to a profit of three to five million per month, then it will be more confident to start making smartphones.
Therefore, he is not only concerned about the smartphone project, but is actually more concerned about the feature phone business.
Smartphones are the hope of the future, but feature phones are the foundation that supports the hope of the future!
----
After finishing a day's work, at around six o'clock in the evening, Xu Shenxue got into a new Mercedes-Benz S350 driven by a driver and left the company to go home. Although this car was Xu Shenxue's car, it was not his personal asset but a company asset.
Although WeCool Electronics is a typical family business, Xu Shenxue holds 95% of the shares, Xu's mother holds 3%, and Xu Shenxue's sister holds 2%. All the shares are in the hands of the Xu family.
However, in order to avoid debt risks, private assets and company assets must be strictly distinguished, and money can only be taken in the name of dividends, and taxes must be paid honestly.
Otherwise... humph, once the company goes bankrupt and personal assets and company assets cannot be sorted out, limited liability will become unlimited liability. Not only will you lose everything, but you will also have to work on a sewing machine.
In the car, Xu Shenxue sat in the back seat with his eyes slightly closed, still thinking about the company's business situation in his mind. He couldn't do much with smartphones right now, and the main thing was to make some preliminary preparations, and even with preliminary preparations he had to recruit people first.
As for the feature phone business, although Xu Shenxue proposed the high-frequency machine sea strategy, whether it will work in the end and how much effect it can play is still worth discussing.
Xu Shenxue still needs to continue to work on the feature phone business to see how to increase sales and profits.
Although Huaqiangnan's channel market is huge, there are also many competitors, and many channels are not accessible to you just because you want to.
The overseas market has been very prosperous in Huaqiangnan recently. In the Indian market alone, hundreds of thousands of units are shipped every month. However, Weiku Electronics has never been involved in overseas markets and cannot find a breakthrough point for the time being. It is impossible to stupidly set up branches overseas and sell mobile phones directly...
If you want to develop overseas markets, a mature overseas channel sales team is indispensable, but such people are not easy to find.
Directly follow the example of domestic mobile phone brands and establish offline channels in various places? This seems to be a feasible way, but this kind of direct offline channel is not easy to establish, it is very costly and takes a lot of time.
After much thought, Xu Shenxue felt that e-commerce channels were more suitable.
What are the advantages of e-commerce? Weiku mobile phones can directly reach consumers through e-commerce channels, eliminating the middleman. Although it is necessary to pay money to the e-commerce platform through e-commerce channels, this money is much less than the share of traditional offline channels.
what does this mean?
This means that there is a huge price gap between the ex-factory price and the terminal sales price... This price gap can pass part of the profit to consumers, allowing manufacturers to obtain higher gross profits. Of course, part of the profit will inevitably be shared with the e-commerce platform.
This is good for all three parties!
The only doubt is, can this e-commerce channel sell mobile phones?
In addition, if low-end feature phones of unknown brands are sold through e-commerce channels, will consumers trust them? How much concern will they have about product quality?
(End of this chapter)