Sina Technology Li Heran Hou Zhiyong

Near the end of the year, the mobile phone, digital and other electronic consumer goods markets, which are thriving due to the circulation of gifts, have not brought warmth to the traditional mobile phone channels. In this happy and peaceful day, all traditional mobile phone channels only feel the cold wind.

Last Friday, Aishide, the largest mobile phone sales channel in China, and Tianyin Telecom respectively announced their financial forecasts. Tianyin Telecom had an advance loss of between 323 million yuan and 357 million yuan in 2014, and the company also made a profit of 27.48 million yuan last year. Although Aishide is expected to make a profit of 5 million to 25 million yuan, the company made a profit of 784 million yuan last year, and the expected profit in 2014 is down by more than 96% compared with last year. The net profits of the two companies fell precipitously.

In fact, the sharp decline in net profits of Aishide and Tianyin Communication is not an individual case. At least for more than two years, the decline of traditional mobile phone channel manufacturers has emerged, but now it is time for these channel manufacturers to make changes.

"One Year" Hexi

Ten years to the east, ten years to the west. When the ever-changing e-commerce gradually infiltrates into the communication field, there is no doubt that the rapid development of the former has accelerated the market changes in the communication field. It doesn't even take ten years for traditional mobile phone distributors to turn from "Hedong" to "Hexi" within one year, which makes life difficult.

When Sina Technology visited a Dixintong in Beijing, it found that in the one hour period from 9:00 to 10:00 in the morning, except for a few staff members, no customers entered the store. Some bored shop assistants were sorting out containers, and some simply played with their mobile phones. Of course, this does not represent the situation of all traditional channels, but it is also a microcosm of the loneliness of traditional channels today.

As for the huge losses of traditional mobile phone channels, the explanation of Tencent Communication is as follows: 1. The sales pattern of the mobile phone industry has changed greatly, and the market of some mainstream mobile phone brands represented by the company has shrunk seriously; 2. The company's planned sales profit of new products fails to reach the expected goal; 3. With the issuance of 4G license, the company cooperated with manufacturers to vigorously clean up the 3G product inventory, and the gross profit margin of product sales was affected periodically; 4. The company's mobile Internet business and mobile resale business are still in the investment period.

Although Aishide did not explain why its profits declined significantly, it can be seen from the financial report that, in addition to the shrinking profits of its own mobile phone distribution and retail business, the continuous investment in mobile Internet and mobile resale business also made its performance worse in 2014.

As for the difficult situation of the two companies, Wang Yang, director of iSuppli China Research, told Sina Technology that, in addition to the rise of e-commerce channels, the decline of traditional channel providers also stems from the current price war between mobile phone manufacturers. Mobile phone manufacturers' own profits are severely compressed, and the channel's profit space will be more limited.

In addition, in 2014, while mobile phone manufacturers fought a price war, subsidies from the three major operator channels also disappeared quietly, which made the traditional mobile phone channel providers and operator channels in the same running line, intensifying the competition between channel providers.

Online channel sneaks away

What really caused heavy losses to traditional channel manufacturers were various online channels that used to sneak into the market. They were seizing the market share that should belong to traditional channel manufacturers through some entrances closer to users.

Now more and more mobile phone manufacturers are turning their sales channels to online, and some flagship products are also launched, pre-sales and sold through cooperation with e-commerce platforms.

For mobile phone manufacturers, through cooperation with large e-commerce platforms such as Tmall and JD, it not only simplifies the middle link of mobile phone product sales, reduces the cumbersome procedures of layer by layer agents, but also saves the cost of offline physical stores, thus improving the profits of the manufacturers themselves.

For users, mobile phone products are sold online with more transparent prices, avoiding the chaos of "price increase" and "bundling" in some offline channels, which is naturally welcomed by users.

The online channel is becoming a larger and larger mobile phone sales channel, which is not only pleasing to mobile phone manufacturers, but also popular with users, coupled with the improvement of logistics and distribution services.

In fact, the collective surge in online sales of domestic mobile phones proves the great potential of e-commerce channels.

On the Double 11 E-commerce Shopping Festival last year, mobile phones became the largest category of sales, among which Xiaomi mobile phones ranked top with an order amount of 1.56 billion yuan. Huawei's glorious sales reached 1.06 billion yuan, a sharp increase of more than 25 times compared with last year, while Meizu mobile phones also grew 10 times on the Tmall platform, ranking in the top three of Tmall mobile phone category sales.

In addition, in addition to the online e-commerce channels of third-party platforms such as Tmall, more and more mobile phone manufacturers have begun to build their own online sales channels.

Xiaomi has become a rapidly rising mobile phone brand relying on the sales channels of e-commerce. After it, many mobile phone manufacturers also began to pay attention to online channels to further enhance users' loyalty and stickiness to mobile phone brands.

Xiaomi Co founder Li Wanqiang It was disclosed that Xiaomi mobile phones shipped about 16 million units in the second quarter of last year, of which 11.19 million were shipped through online channels, accounting for about 70%, and the sales exceeded 10 billion yuan.

Although it is still difficult for e-commerce channels to sink to third and fourth tier cities and even rural areas, further sinking should also be the general trend. Sina Science and Technology learned that the mobile e-commerce platform "Maimai Bao" for the third and fourth tier cities set a sales record of 50 million yuan per day during the Double Twelfth Festival last year, with annual sales between 1.5 billion yuan and 2 billion yuan.

Both the sales channels dominated by the third party and the self owned channels dominated by mobile phone manufacturers are suppressing and eroding the cheese of traditional mobile phone channels. From the current situation, this trend will only become more and more intense until the traditional channel operators are marginalized.

The transformation prospect is unknown

The traditional business continues to be sluggish, and traditional mobile phone channel vendors are also anxious to transform. Among them, Tencent Communications, Aishide and China Post Putai have chosen the "virtual operator" business as a breakthrough. Previously, the three companies were also included in the pilot list of domestic virtual operators.

Although we got the license and squeezed into this market, from the development over the past year, the business of virtual operators is not enough to become the business growth point of these traditional mobile phone channel operators.

According to the latest statistics, as of December 31, 2014, the number of domestic virtual operation users was only more than 1 million. If the average number of users of each virtual operator is only tens of thousands, it is unrealistic for Tencent Communications to expect profits.

It should be pointed out that before obtaining the corresponding benefits from the virtual operator's business, Tianyin Communications has invested a lot of resources to establish a support system that can match the business operation, including billing, customer service, etc. This means that in the case of a sharp decline in core business, Tianyin Communications is actually facing huge operational pressure.

Of course, the national agents did not hang on the tree of virtual operation. For example, Tianyin announced on September 9 that it plans to invest 380 million yuan to set up a wholly-owned subsidiary, Tianle Lianxian Technology Co., Ltd., to enter the mobile Internet. Its business involves mobile games, mobile reading, mobile browsers and other industries, while also focusing on emerging industries such as mobile health.

In addition, mobile phone manufacturers also give channel operators another choice. Coolpad's ivvi brand is jointly built with traditional channel operators. They expect to improve the enthusiasm of all parties through this form of community of interests. However, this model is still facing the impact of e-commerce and other channels, and its future is still unknown.

Now, the precipitous decline in net profit has sounded an alarm for traditional mobile phone channel manufacturers. When the core business is accelerating to decline and the prospect of new business is bleak, traditional mobile phone channel manufacturers should really think about where your future lies.