A series of articles on large Chinese companies is coming to an end. The first material was released in November 2017 – a detailed analysis of the failure of LeEco. Since then, there have been seven more stories about Xiaomi, Meizu, OnePlus, Lenovo, Huawei, Oppo and ZTE. Among the subsidiaries of the Chinese corporation BBK, only the brand Vivo remains to be disassembled.
In my opinion, the story Vivo is the most boring and straightforward, but without this material, the analysis of Chinese companies would be incomplete.
Start
The company Vivo carefully hides its foundation date – there is no information about this on the official website for Russia, China and the global market. Wikipedia and other sources write that the company was founded in 2009. I cannot refute or confirm this information, because on the Internet no one gives a link to the original source, everyone simply copies from each other.
Shen Wei (right) with the Indian minister / photo twitter.com/naralokesh
Vivo did not appear on its own, it became a subsidiary of the BBK Corporation. The story of the founder of the new brand, Shen Wei, is shrouded in mystery – where he worked before, how he got into BBK and other details of his biography are unknown. Otherwise, Shen Wei does not lead a public life, like, for example, Pete Lau from OnePlus. Only occasionally does Shen comment on the news and talk about the company's products on behalf of Vivo.
We don't know anything about the foundation of the company, but we can say for sure that the first smartphones from Vivo appeared in 2011. Although the company on its official website for some reason does not talk about them either. They only mention the world's first smartphone with a separate DAC Vivo X1, which appeared at the end of 2012. But before that there were several more smartphones – the first was Vivo V1, and after that Vivo Y1 came out.
Vivo V1 has become a typical low-cost smartphone of 2011 with a 3.5-inch display and Android 2.3. The second Y1 smartphone looks more interesting due to the quirky design. You can see the parent company logo on the lid.
After them, the flagship appeared – Vivo S1. He already received a 4-inch Super AMOLED display and a top-end Snapdragon MSM8255T processor with a frequency of 1.4 GHz.
At the start Vivo, it was primarily aimed at a young audience, so the first models looked so unusual and were inexpensive. In addition, the new brand was promoted using the well-known name BBK, which had previously produced phones, DVD players and other equipment. In the future, the BBK logo was not put on the body of smartphones.
In 2012, the company released several smartphones – Vivo E3, S6, S7, S9 and S12. Only after that did it come to Vivo X1, which became the first smartphone with a separate audio chip. This smartphone has become a landmark for the company – thanks to this announcement, Vivo was recognized outside of China. Large foreign publications like Engadget wrote about the record smartphone, and there was even news on Mobile-Review.
Apparently, the company liked the attention in the media, so in the future the company continued to practice with record smartphones.
At the end of 2013 Vivo introduced the first Xplay 3S smartphone with a 2K screen resolution (QHD or 2560 × 1440 pixels). Now this permission has become the standard in flagships, but the Chinese company has outstripped the market. At the same time, Xplay 3S was inexpensive – 3,500 yuan, or about 18 thousand rubles at the rate of that time. He also had a fingerprint scanner, which had to be swiped, not just applied.
Together with Xplay 3S, the company presented its own shell for its Android – smartphones – Funtouch OS. There was nothing remarkable about it, it is a typical Chinese mobile system.
Despite being related to Oppo, smartphones Vivo were very different. It is enough to compare the Oppo Find 5 and Vivo X1 models, which were released at about the same time. But Oppo by that time had already gradually stormed other markets, and Vivo sold smartphones only in China and did not even make it into the top 10 in terms of supply in its home market.
-
Oppo Find 5
-
Vivo X1
New Markets
But 2014 became more fruitful for Vivo. In May, a new line of camera phones was opened – the first was Vivo Xshot with a 13MP main camera and an f / 1.8 aperture lens. The smartphone itself is not very interesting, but it Vivo started selling in Thailand. The company made a big presentation for this.
At the end of the year, the X5 Max smartphone was presented with a record thickness of 4.75 mm, which took the title of the thinnest from the Oppo R5. So there was even some kind of competition between related companies.
Vivo The X5 Max is interesting not only for its record thickness, the company entered the Indian market with this smartphone, but it did not stop there. A year later Vivo became the main sponsor of the Indian Premier League in cricket – this is the main sport in the country. To understand the level of the event, it is necessary to clarify that the previous sponsor was PepsiCo. The partnership Vivo and the cricket league will last until 2022.
Despite working with other markets, the main sales Vivo come from China – that was then, and nothing has changed now. But in 2015 Vivo it entered the top 5 smartphone manufacturers in the Chinese market for the first time and caught up with Oppo. The main smartphone for that period was Vivo X6 – it received a fast fingerprint scanner, it looked like iPhone 6 and was inexpensive.
photo Android Authority
The main growth Vivo is in 2016 – according to the results of the first quarter, the company took 4.3% of the market in terms of smartphone shipments and released 14.3 million devices. This is more than double the last year's result. So Vivo, mainly due to sales in China, has become a global manufacturer and consolidated in this position.
In 2016, Vivo came out with some interesting models – in the first half, the Xplay5 appeared, which was the first with 6 GB of RAM, and then the Xplay6 was shown with a curved screen on the sides and a dual camera. There were also smartphones Vivo X7 and X7 Plus, which copied even more iPhone.
Vivo Xplay6 is hard to tell from Galaxy S6 Edge / Photo by Engagdet
At the end of 2016 Vivo released a little more than 69 million smartphones and became the third manufacturer in the world in terms of shipments. The company was outstripped by a small margin Huawei and the 'sister' Oppo.
Vivo in Russia
By 2017, the company's smartphones were already being sold in Malaysia, Myanmar and other smaller Asian countries, but the company continued to expand into new markets – Sri Lanka, Pakistan and several other countries. We are primarily interested in Russia.
Vivo entered our market with a strange strategy and repeated all Oppo's mistakes. The first Vivo V7 was officially brought to Russia – a smartphone with an HD display and a budget Snapdragon 450 processor, which cost 22 thousand rubles at the start. This is too high a price tag for a brand that no one knows.
The launch Vivo in Russia can be objectively considered a failure. The company planned to take 5-7% of the market share in 2018, but in the first quarter it sold about 15 thousand smartphones. Strategy Vivo in Russia was analyzed by Eldar Murtazin in Divanny Analytics.
Apparently, the company hoped to attract attention to its smartphones by sponsoring the 2018 FIFA World Cup, which was held in Russia. But this did not help either – at the end of 2018 from IDC, Vivo took a share of less than 2% in the Russian market.
Work continues
It should be understood that sales Vivo in other countries are minuscule, only in India the company shows good results. For example, in 2018, it sold 79 million smartphones in its home market Vivo, and delivered 14.4 million units to India. It is wrong to directly compare shipments and sales of smartphones, but this shows a rough picture. In other markets, sales Vivo are several times less, so the failure in Russia will not prevent the company from releasing millions of devices.
Therefore, the company continues to work and even produce smartphones in Russia. In early 2018, it introduced the first X20 UD smartphone with an in-display fingerprint scanner. Back in the middle of the year, Vivo Nex appeared with small frames and a retractable front camera, in Russia it cost 47 thousand rubles at the start.
The last interesting novelty was Vivo Apex – a smartphone without connectors and buttons, and it also has a fingerprint scanner that works anywhere on the screen. But while this is only a concept, it is not a fact that it will get to retail.
photo Android Authority
Conclusion
Vivo is a typical commercial Chinese project. The company pours a lot of money into advertising and promotion, but has achieved success only in China and a little in India. The same situation has developed with Oppo, these two companies only create a kind of competition in their country, but outside they have no authority.
In addition, even the semblance of competition has now disappeared between Vivo and Oppo. Many models look the same and offer similar specs, only Vivo focuses on budget smartphones. Похоже, что так BBK экономит на R&D отделах и производстве.
Tell us in the comments if you have any experience with smartphones Vivo and how you feel about the company.