Meizu: creative imitation

On December 19, 2010, the Meizu flagship store in Sanlitun, Beijing was crowded with fans of Meizu. The topic they were most concerned about today was the launch of the "Meizu M9" real phone. A week ago, the reporter visited Huaqiangbei, the "First Street of China Electronics", and also met a large number of fans who came to consult in the Meizu store with a striking blue logo. What followed was the continuous increase in the number of reservations. By the time Meizu M9 obtained the license from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the number of reservations nationwide had exceeded 40,000 units.

Not relying on a large number of advertisements on TV stations, but relying on the word of mouth of Meizu fans on the Internet, Meizu M9 ushered in a good start. Without the trouble of Apple's patent prosecution for the M8 a year ago, the birth of the M9 opened up Meizu's breakthrough from embarrassing imitation to innovation.

Meizu CEO Huang Zhang announced his plans on the Meizu forum as early as when the M8 was controversial: first, to improve existing products and invest in new product development at the same time; second, in addition to the forum, will adopt new Marketing strategy, including consideration of advertising, to enhance the brand height; the third is to launch a software center to encourage third-party paid software, while taking into account free software. The development direction of Meizu has moved from the initial product imitation to the business model imitation.

For a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises in China, the development of Meizu undoubtedly has the role of a wind vane. In the absence of sufficient research and development funds, and the technical strength is significantly lower than that of international counterparts, how can we capture the needs of local consumers and find our own way of innovation? How to achieve a leap in innovation on the basis of imitation?

With these questions, we interviewed Ms. Sun Changxu, Chief Analyst of Global Sources Electronics Industry, Mr. Xu Yan, Associate Professor of the Department of Information, Business Statistics and Operations, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Mr. Xie Zuchi, President of Booz Greater China, to share their insights Observation and forward thinking.

Combining customer needs with its own advantages

Grasping the key points of industry development trends and customer needs is the first step for entrepreneurial enterprises to innovate. Meizu's shift from digital products to 3G mobile phone market is in line with the needs of industrial development.

Ms. Sun Changxu, chief analyst of the electronics industry of Global Sources, said that in the 3G era, mobile phones have formed a trend of developing from traditional communication tools to smart terminals based on mobile Internet applications and mobile multimedia applications. Users of 3G mobile phones have demands for multimedia, including voice, video, and rich media experience. These are the strengths of digital manufacturers represented by Meizu, creating the best entry point for them to enter the 3G mobile phone industry.

At the same time, the advantage of digital manufacturers lies in their deep understanding and grasp of consumers' needs, such as what kind of interface consumers like, what multimedia functions they like, and how to set up the best socialized sales channels. "After the Meizu M8 was launched, its excellent control interface and excellent music performance made it one of the most popular music phones at that time. The user interface design of the M9 is based on the inheritance of the M8, and a lot of innovations have been made in details. "A well-known mobile website gave a positive comment to Meizu.

Iphone 4 has set off the trend of China's 3G mobile phone market, but for the vast number of Chinese consumers, there are two needs that are ignored by Iphone 4 but are extremely important: one is the high price of 5000-6000 yuan at every turn, allowing ordinary consumers Second, the in-depth understanding of Chinese consumers' usage habits needs to be improved. And Meizu "M9" detonated fans' emotions, it was the grasp of local users' "civilian fashion" trend demand.

From reasonable imitation to establishing innovation strategy

There were two events in 2010, which are destined to be commemorated by Meizu. On October 9, Apple filed a lawsuit with the Guangdong Provincial Intellectual Property Department over the appearance of the Meizu M8. Meizu CEO Huang Zhang announced that the M8 would be discontinued at the end of October.

On December 15th, Meizu M9 finally passed the approval of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, obtained the network access license, and is fully qualified for the official listing. The appearance picture and product configuration of M9 have been officially confirmed, which is a product with independent intellectual property rights in the true sense.

Meizu has achieved independent innovation from the original "illegal" product appearance imitation to new products, and its imprint is worthy of reference for most Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises.

The problem with the Meizu M8 is that it highly imitates Apple's shape, with almost the same super-large screen appearance and the same full-screen touch usage.

M9 is completely on the road of innovation. Hua Hailiang, marketing director of Meizu, revealed that the R&D strength of M9 is more than 10 times that of M8, and the software team alone has more than 100 people. M9 is much more powerful than M8, and the whole team has accumulated more experience, this phone has more Meizu characteristics, both from the appearance and the internal operating system.

The appearance of M9 is inspired by the deformation of the "m" letter, which not only echoes the MEIZU brand, but also names its name "Magic". The original "Meizu" font created by Huang Zhang is added to the upper right side of the screen. The Meizu M9 uses the Android 2.2 operating system , using up to ten screen home screen menu, built-in Google mailbox, Google map, Google talk, "information and weather" and even electronic market.

Meizu M9 comes with a "software center", which now has dozens of applications or games of various categories. After installing Adobe Flash Player, M9 can smoothly play Flash and streaming video on web pages.

What sparked fans' buying enthusiasm before and after the launch of the M9 was no longer "like Apple", but "charming my true colors".

Meizu's marketing director Hua Hailiang commented on his boss: "He is a technical madman and a perfectionist, but also has a strong aesthetic, stubborn and arbitrary. When developing the M9, what he pursues is not to be affected by the outside world. Interfere and make your own products seriously."

Establish a professional technical innovation team, Meizu develops new products with independent technological innovation, promotes the enterprise to move from imitation to real innovation, and strives for new development Advantage.

Combining the experience of Meizu, Mr. Xie Zuchi, President of Booz Greater China, suggested that Chinese enterprises can take two steps and make a reasonable transformation of imitation through innovation.

The first step is the imitation of an existing product on the market. It takes a certain amount of time for a new technology to fully saturate the market from its birth, so there is still a certain market space for innovative products to be put on the market, making it possible to imitate the technology.

In essence, imitation also drives the technological innovation activities of enterprises. Many enterprises start from imitating the technology of other enterprises. After the Meizu M8 was listed, it was once the best, and it made full use of this market space.

The second step is to innovate after imitation, which is to re-create the products that entered the market first, that is, after the introduction of other people's technology, after digestion and absorption, it not only reaches the level of the imitated product technology, but also surpasses the original technology through innovation. technical level.

Meizu chose this path of innovation. Enterprises must first master the technical know-how of imitated products, and improve product functions, appearance and performance to make products more competitive in the market.

How to avoid intellectual property disputes in imitation and avoid falling into a dilemma like Meizu? Xu Yan suggested that enterprises should attach importance to the management and development of intellectual property rights, and must establish relevant strategies to ensure that the company will become bigger and stronger in the future.

“Most private enterprises do not have enough knowledge of intellectual property laws, regulations and knowledge, while internationally renowned enterprises have set up intellectual property representatives with proper names. They are familiar with international and domestic intellectual property content and know how to How to start innovation under the framework. At the same time, government departments should give help to SMEs, such as conducting training for SMEs, teaching how to do intellectual property management, what strategy to adopt, what technology mix to maintain, and how to make the industry enduring for a long time.”

With the launch of M9, Meizu continues to explore new business models such as expanding its marketing platform and building a software center. We will wait and see how it develops in the future.