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Wen/Qin Haiqing
Source: Baobian News
Huawei's 2021 annual report conference attracted much attention. Four years later, Meng Wanzhou appeared again.In the days when Meng Wanzhou disappeared, Huawei carried out a series of difficult self rescues, launched the Hongmeng system, and tried to save the consumer business.To this day, Meng Wanzhou said that Huawei had passed through the black barrier area of this disaster, and that Hongmeng, who was expected to run for nearly 1000 days, was in what state now?What role did it play?
Seven years ago, Ren Zhengfei pointed out the three major functions of mobile phones "communication, image and operating system" at the lunch meeting with the consumer BG management team.Communication is Huawei's old line, and there is no reason why it cannot do well;No one does a very good job of image, and Huawei is hopeful to make a breakthrough.Only on the operating system, Ren Zhengfei said, "We can't do the best in the world, so we will not do it".
Huawei did not do it, but planned a bigger picture.
In December 2018, after the "Meng Wanzhou Case", Huawei's situation turned sharply downward.In May 2019, Huawei was listed in the "Entity List" of the United States. After two rounds of sanctions, Huawei's mobile phones were completely stuck in the neck. Advanced manufacturing process mobile phone chips can no longer be added. It can only "continue for a second" for Huawei's high-end mobile phones by slowly consuming inventory to extend the brand vitality.Now Huawei mobile phones are only "others" in the world, even in the Chinese market.
Three months after Huawei entered the "Entity List", Hongmeng System came out with the aura of "savior".Huawei has repeatedly stressed that the Hongmeng system is not tailored for mobile phones, but an operating system for the next generation technology and the Internet of Things era.Huawei understands that Hongmeng cannot solve the "neck jam" problem, so it has opened up a new path.
Now Meng Wanzhou has returned to China for half a year and appeared at Huawei's 2021 annual report conference in black on the afternoon of March 28. Judging from Huawei's performance, despite some achievements, there are still worries.Hongmeng's sprint for nearly 1000 days has brought hope to Huawei, but its power is fully visible, and it has not stopped Huawei's anxiety about the decline of its overall business, especially consumer business.
Where is Huawei's "Spring"?
The last time Meng Wanzhou attended Huawei's performance conference was four years ago.
Meng Wanzhou Appears at Huawei's 2021 Annual Report Conference
In the annual report press conference of 2018 to 2020, which Meng Wanzhou missed, the United States imposed more and more sanctions, and Huawei's growth stalled. Meng Wanzhou is now facing a difficult Huawei.
According to the annual report, Huawei's net profit in 2021 increased by 70% year on year, but its total revenue was 636.807 billion yuan, a decrease of 254.5 billion yuan from the previous year, with a year-on-year decline of 28.56%, which is the largest decline since Huawei was founded.
Meng Wanzhou said that our scale has become smaller, but our profitability and cash flow acquisition ability are improving, and the company's ability to deal with uncertainty is constantly improving.
Huawei's last negative revenue growth was in 2002, when its revenue fell by 12.2%.The year before, Ren Zhengfei wrote the famous "Huawei Winter".At that time, the outside world was puzzled. When Huawei was at its peak, where did "winter" come from?
This time, in the "cold winter" of Huawei, it is the consumer business led by smart phones that has dragged down the company's revenue sharply.
Data shows that Huawei's operator business revenue in 2021 will reach 281.469 billion yuan, down about 7% year on year;The business income of the enterprise was 102.444 billion yuan, a slight increase of 2.1% over the same period;Consumer business income was 243.431 billion yuan, down nearly 50% year on year.
In 2018, consumer business surpassed Huawei's old operator business for the first time, becoming the largest source of revenue, accounting for 48% in that year;In 2019 and 2020, the consumer business accounted for more than 54% of Huawei's total revenue for two consecutive years, and the proportion dropped to 38% in 2021.
In the past decade, the consumer business has been Huawei's revenue growth engine, and the total revenue growth trend has kept parallel with the consumer business.
(Data source: Huawei annual report)
The engine has stalled.As high-end mobile phone chips are jammed, Huawei's mobile phone sales plummet.According to data from third-party organizations, Huawei's global market share of mobile phones will drop from 17.6% in 2019 to about 3% in 2021.
Smart phones cannot continue the glory of consumer business. In 2019, Huawei proposed a full scenario strategy of "1+8+N", in which "1" refers to mobile phones, "8" includes eight types of terminals, such as tablet computers, PCs, VR, and mobile phones, and "N" refers to pan IOT devices.
Huawei believes that the Internet model centered on individual single devices has shown a declining trend. Global mobile phone shipments are declining, mobile phone APP innovation tends to be homogeneous, and the time consumers use mobile phones tends to be stable.
At the same time, Huawei judges that IoT will be a historic opportunity for the development of the mobile Internet industry in the next decade. Consumers will move from the era of smart phones to the era of smart terminals, and the demand for multi device collaborative experience is growing.Therefore, Hongmeng system came into being.
To put it bluntly, there is no room for progress in the smartphone industry, and the next explosive point is IoT.However, considering the reality of Huawei, to some extent, it can also be understood that there is no mobile phone to sell, but other ecological products can also be sold.With Hongmeng, "8+N" is easy to sell.
Hongmeng completed the "small target" of 300 million sets
Although Huawei released the Hongmeng system in 2019 and immediately applied it to the smart screen (smart TV), the real outbreak of Hongmeng was two years later.
On June 2, 2021, Hongmeng System 2.0 was officially launched into mobile phones, tablet computers, smart watches and other applications.On this day, the Baidu search index of "Hongmeng System" reached a historical peak.Since then, the number of Huawei intelligent devices equipped with Hongmeng system has risen rapidly.
In addition, in terms of ecological layout, Huawei also upgraded HUAWEI HiLink and Powered by Harmony OS to Harmony OS Connect, that is, "Hongmeng Zhilian".
Huawei's annual report shows that by the end of 2021, the total number of Hongmeng devices has reached 335 million, of which the number of Huawei devices equipped with Harmony OS has exceeded 220 million. In 2021, the new shipment of Hongmeng Zhilian products will be 115 million.
If we follow Wang Chenglu, the president of Huawei's consumer business software department and the "trader" of Hongmeng system, who has set a goal of 300 million yuan, Hongmeng has overfulfilled the task in 2021.
Does the achievement of short-term goals mean Hongmeng has become a success?
Wang Chenglu once said in an interview with the media that Huawei has analyzed the ecological development of the PC industry and mobile industry in the past two decades, and found that 16% of the market share is a watershed, and more than 16% of the ecology is basically successful.Yang Haisong, Vice President of Huawei Consumer Business AI and Smart Full Scene Business Department, regards 16% as Hongmeng's "life and death line".
It is worth noting that 16% of the life and death line is Huawei's own judgment, and there is no such standard in the industry at home and abroad.
Galaxy Securities, based on the information disclosed by Google's Global Developers Conference in the first half of the year and the market share statistics of third parties, currently has about 3.5 billion active devices carrying mobile operating systems (Android, iOS, WP) worldwide, while the 16% lifeline of the operating system means that the number of active devices carrying Hongmeng system needs to be no less than 560 million.
In other words, with 335 million devices, Huawei has only gone more than half the way, and has not yet crossed the 16% line of life and death.
In addition, the change data of global operating system market share provided by CIC Insight Consulting to Panther Change shows that in 2021, the market share of Windows, macOS, iOS and Android will reach 97%.
Wang Haifeng, director of CIC Insight Consulting, believes that if the market share of the operating system ecosystem has to reach 16% to escape the life and death line, there is still a long way to go. There are Microsoft, Android and Apple on it, so Hongmeng is far from real success.
However, Galaxy Securities believes that in terms of the current growth rate of carrying capacity, it is optimistic that Hongmeng will cross the life and death line of the operating system.
Hidden worries behind the "life and death line"
Before the official release of Hongmeng System, Ren Zhengfei said in an interview with the media in June 2019 that the most important thing for the operating system is to establish an ecosystem, and it will take about two or three years to re-establish a good ecosystem.
In the PC era, Microsoft has established a Windows ecosystem;In the era of smart phones, Google has built an Android ecosystem.In the seemingly unreachable era of the Internet of Things, whether Huawei can build a Hongmeng ecosystem depends on the shipment of Huawei's own equipment, and more importantly, how many partners Hongmeng can attract.
For "1+8", Huawei can only rely on its own equipment, because although Xiaomi, OPPO, VIVO and other manufacturers ship a large number of smartphones and other terminals every year, as Huawei's competitors, they have no reason to use the Hongmeng system at present.Surprisingly, at the end of March, Russian media reported that the smart phones of BQ had been testing Huawei's Hongmeng operating system, but Huawei responded that it had no plans to launch phones equipped with Harmony OS overseas at present.
Therefore, the most important thing for Huawei is to find partners on "N".
According to Baobian, the current ecological partnership system of Hongmeng Zhilian falls into three categories:
The first is "ecological product partner", that is, the partner who completes the development, certification, mass production and promotion of intelligent hardware products based on Hongmeng Zhilian technology.For example, Midea, Jiuyang, Supor, etc.
The second category is "ecological solution partners", which provide intelligent hardware solution development, module production or chip design and other service capabilities for Hongmeng Zhilian ecological products.For example, China Soft International, Softcom Power, Core Sea Technology, etc. are also the "Hongmeng Concept Stocks" that are popular in the capital market.
Another type is "ecological channel partners", which refers to the officially authorized partners who have the sales authorization of Hongmeng Zhilian ecological products within a certain range, cover the subordinate channels, or sell to the final consumers.At present, Huawei's own channels include the Huawei Mall with more than 300 million users and more than 60000 offline stores.
Huawei's annual report shows that at present, more than 1900 partners have joined Hongmeng Zhilian, and there are more than 4500 types of products certified by Hongmeng Zhilian.Huawei's terminal business line told Panther Change that "Huawei will attract more manufacturers to join Hongmeng Zhilian through leading technologies and solutions, as well as comprehensive support for developers."
According to the observation of Panther Change, Midea embraces Hongmeng very strongly. Huawei's official mall has a large number of Midea products.According to the data from Midea, there are more than 230 Midea products supporting Hongmeng Zhilian.However, not all major household appliance manufacturers are as active as Midea.
Wang Haifeng, director of CIC Insight Consulting, analyzed with Panther Change that home appliance manufacturers themselves have insufficient technology accumulation in software. Choosing Hongmeng's open source system is a good choice at the moment. It can quickly realize high-level IoT functions such as intelligent operation of equipment, which may win the market, but just like Hongmeng used to be Huawei PlanB,These home appliance manufacturers are also expanding their software teams, and naturally they will have their own PlanB. After all, the current Internet of Things is still unable to achieve a true degree of openness of the "Internet of Everything". All manufacturers are building their own closed-loop Internet of Things ecology, such as Xiaomi's ecology and Haier's ecology.
As early as August 2015, Haier Smart Home and Huawei Consumer Business reached a strategic cooperation. In terms of intelligent routing and modules/chips, Huawei HI-LINK protocol will be deeply compatible with Haier U+protocol, realizing the connection between the two parties at the bottom.But after Hongmeng came out, Haier did not act.
In June 2021, the interface news report said, "The cooperation between Haier and Huawei Hongmeng has not been officially released, but Haier has its own home system, and its products can be interconnected. Haier will access Huawei's system on the one hand in the future, but will also continue to invest in the construction of the home system."
In addition to Haier, Gree is just a "muzzle gun" at present.Dong Mingzhu, who has always regarded Huawei as a model for Chinese private enterprises, has said on many occasions that "Hongmeng system is introduced".In addition, Securities Daily reported in November last year that Gree Electric had made a connection with Huawei on the "landing of Hongmeng system on Gree products".
Investors have a very high voice for the cooperation between Gree and Hongmeng.According to the statistics of Baobian, on the investor interaction platform, investors asked Gree Electric about the cooperation with Hongmeng for more than 50 times, but Gree Electric never replied with a few words.
Up to now, we haven't seen any products from Haier or Gree in the Hongmeng Zhilian area of Huawei's official mall.Similarly, in the official malls of Haier and Gree, there is no trace of Hongmeng.
In fact, it is understandable that the cooperation between some home appliance manufacturers and Hongmeng has progressed slowly. This hidden worry of Hongmeng has been reflected in the promotion of Huawei's automobile business.
In June last year, at the shareholders' meeting of SAIC Group, investors asked whether they would accept the automatic driving full stack scheme similar to Huawei's. Chen Hong, Chairman of SAIC Group, said frankly that automatic driving technology is the "soul". If they do not master it, the car enterprise will become a "body".
Similarly, in the wave of "software engulfs the world", the leading household appliance manufacturers are no longer just hardware manufacturers, but software technology is another half life.If you give half your life to others, you will inevitably have concerns.
Wang Haifeng predicted that in the coming quite a long time, the respective IoT ecosystem will still be the mainstream of the market. As for the long future, it is still unknown whether there will be a real third-party IoT platform to realize the interconnection of all devices, and whether this platform will be built based on Hongmeng OS.
As Ren Zhengfei said, "Hongmeng has begun to move forward, and we are still looking forward to it with apprehension."
(Statement: This article only represents the author's view, not Sina.com's position.)
