Along with a farewell letter, "Meitu will close the mobile phone business" once again boarded Weibo hot search.
From May 2013, Meitu Kiss was born, and now the last self-produced mobile phone Meitu V7. In the past 6 years, Meitu has made many attempts, but it has stumbled all the way.
The mobile phone business suffered serious losses, and the number of users of the company was greatly lost. The acquisition of the shares of the game company was also rejected by the shareholders. Recently, the US company suffered setbacks in succession. On the 10th anniversary, it proposed to transform into a social strategy, and whether it can bring the next decade to Meitu? Does the new incoming beauty hardware set off the revenue banner?
Mobile phone business retreat
The Meitu phone was initially at a loss.
After the end of Meitu's first mobile phone Meitu Kiss conference, Meitu CEO said frankly to the media that in the early days, he honestly said that there is no profit, it is a loss.
This is the first time that he has stood in front of the stage and spoke for more than an hour. From the inside, he recalled that the scene of the day said "super nervous, even some resistance", but the mobile phone attempt was taken for Meitu. A big step represents the company's transition from pure software to soft and hard.
This front camera has 8 million pixels and a price of 2199 yuan. After the launch of the self-timer camera that can be called, the response in the market is not bad. In 2013, Meitu’s smart hardware revenue exceeded 50 million yuan, accounting for beauty. The total revenue of the chart is nearly 60%.
However, a retouching software company suddenly started the hardware, and directly into the mid-to-high-end market, Meitu has also been questioned by the industry. In this regard, the CEO explained that many people ask him why Meitu is a mobile phone instead of a camera. The camera does not have a mature ecological chain in China, and we can find a very mature ecological chain from the era of functional machines. Very deep accumulation. The idea of making a mobile phone has not much ambition, just want to be a continuation of a product.
After the initial results, Meitu mobile phones gradually formed three series of M, V, and T, and launched a total of more than 20 mobile phones. But at the same time, it takes a lot of money to do mobile phones. Before that, only two rounds of financing Meitu accelerated the pace of finding funds. From 2013 to IPO, three rounds of financing were completed in three years, totaling more than 500 million US dollars.
After the listing, Meitu's mobile phone has doubled year by year in terms of sales volume and revenue, accounting for more than 90% of the company's overall revenue. However, the mobile phone business has not brought much profit, but the company has been losing money.
Since 2013, Meitu has been losing money every year. By 2018, the company's annual loss has exceeded 1.2 billion yuan, of which the mobile phone business has lost 500 million. Meitu has reduced the replacement of mobile phones since 2018. The release of only one T9 mobile phone in a year has already indicated that this business is coming to an end.
The industry believes that Meitu's mobile phone positioning is very accurate, beauty functions, customized mobile phones are the primary factors for women to choose mobile phones, and even expensive women are willing to accept, but this is also destined to be the life of Meitu phones.
CEO is also very clear about this. When he was interviewed by Sina Technology during the World Internet Conference last year, he also said that the mobile phone market has entered a fierce competition, so the omnipotence of mobile phones is very important. The longboard is very long, but other aspects have not kept up. It is difficult to make the user the main model.
The competition is very cruel now. Compared with Huami Ov, these after-sales head manufacturers are more versatile. It is conceivable that the pressure will be relatively large, but if it is not all-powerful, it will not work. Although CEO saw the space of the vertical class but faced Almighty competition, a relatively small group of beautiful pictures is difficult to compete, and finally chose to abandon the model of self-production and sales, and licensed the brand to Xiaomi.