Vivo’s Market Strategy

In the market, mobile brands increasingly customize product systems to meet consumers’ various needs, combine in-person services with online advertising to attract consumers, and cooperate with other brands to improve their reputation. This article takes a brand from China called Vivo as an example to illustrate those strategies. By analyzing Vivo’s strategy, it shows that following consumers’ needs, improving technology, and searching for a partner to cooperate are crucial for a brand to survive in such a market.

Introduction

Mobile phone has become an indispensable part of life; we use it for payment, transportation, communication, and many other things that occur in our everyday life. According to the data of the Prospective Industry Research Institute in 2022, the development of China’s cell phone industry began in 1983 and has gone through three major development stages: function-driven market, performance-driven market, and smartphone-driven market, respectively. Since then, China has become one of the largest smartphone markets in the world. During the long-term evolution of the smartphone market development, the current competitive landscape of China’s cell phone market has gradually formed, that is, the domestic cell phone camp represented by Huawei, Xiaomi, Honor, oppo, and Vivo and the foreign cell brand player camp represented by Apple and Samsung.

In the past 15 years, mobile phones have experienced dramatic development. It has changed in every way, and according to the data of the Prospective Industry Research Institute in 2021, the generational evolution of communication networks, from 1G to 4G and 5G, which directly led the cell phone industry to switch between incremental market and share market. Due to people’s increasing demand for mobile phones, many new mobile phone brands have spread out over the years, some of them have disappeared, but many others still stand in the market. With the development in the past 15 years and the current competition stage in the smartphone industry, the major brands of smartphone field shovel flat layout homogenization is serious. Each company in the field of smartphone layout is a comparative indicator of type convergence. In this competitive situation, major phone brands have chosen mobile phones as a starting point and chosen the layout of other electronic products to improve the competitiveness of enterprises, so it is very important to analyze their market strategies. This essay is taking Vivo as an example to analyze market strategies. Vivo is a brand from China that has survived the intense market competition.

In 1995, Vivo’s predecessor, “Guangdong BBK Electronics Industry, was established, and in September 2010, “Vivo Mobile Communications Ltd.” was established in Dongguan, China. Vivo brand products include smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, etc., and as of August 2022, it has been present in more than 60 countries and regions, with a global user base of more than 400 million people. In November 2011, the Vivo brand officially entered the smartphone field, releasing the smartphone VIVO V1, which supports SRS sound, and the concept of music phone advertising is deeply rooted. In May 2014, Vivo released the first product of the high-fi extreme shooting series Xshot series, Vivo Xshot, and joined National Geographic Magazine to hold a Vivo Image City Hunting activity to record the beauty of urban humanities and geography through Xshot cell phones. The photo function of the product was widely praised On December 17, 2022, Vivo announced a strategic cooperation with Zeiss for global imaging. This article will summarize Vivo’s main market strategy and provide statistics in the actual market to provide some experience and lessons for mobile phone companies.

Increasingly customized product system

1) A decade ago, the demand for mobile phones was not as big as today. People only wanted a phone with a nice appearance and basic functions such as making phone calls, sending messages, listening to music, and taking photos. Therefore, people at that time were easily satisfied and did not care much about the phone performance. Vivo was aware of the consumer mind and grabbed the chance to produce mobile phones with nice appearance. It used amazing craftsmanship to carve some lines, which made the phone shine in the light. With the development of the mobile phone market, Vivo found that only a nice appearance cannot satisfy all kinds of consumers, so Vivo began to explore new series with new advantages.

2) Today, Vivo has four series, and all those series focus on different groups of consumers. The Y series focuses on old people who only need the basic functionality of mobile phones; the T series focuses on people with low salaries; The S series has a very beautiful shape and color, focusing on people who like to take a selfie; and the X series is the flagship and a comprehensive mobile phone, they are focusing on high technology and good performance. Thus, when people want to buy a new phone, there are different types of phones with unique advantages that target different consumer groups to better meet their needs. Over the years, the high-end market began to become an important part of the mobile phone market, and people are looking for a high-end product. Vivo has made significant progress in China’s mid-to-end segment. Its market share in the $500-$599 price band (wholesale price) has grown from 10% in September 2020 to 20% in September 2021. This was driven by the performance of the Vivo X70 Pro launched in September. Vivo moves up the value chain with relentless efforts in research and innovation in camera technology, including entering into a strategic partnership with optical technology leader Zeiss. Vivo chooses the X series to be a high-end product with all-new technology. With this change, Vivo gained more and more recognition by consumers and a better brand reputation.

3) With the increasing number of people using mobile phones to play games, a more comprehensive function is required for cell phones. As a result, a new kind of phone was created that focuses on performance and better game experience, it attracts many people who like to play phone games, mostly students. Vivo found this growth space and created a new brand as its subsidiary corporation- IQOO, a brand for a better game experience.

Combine in-person services with online advertising

Vivo built its in-person stores all over China so that consumers can easily try new productions and enjoy a comprehensive after-sales service. This is why Vivo can have a stable consumer base at the beginning stage. But with the rapid development of mobile phone market, it is getting harder and harder to take new shares from the market, so Vivo has started to turn its attention to the online market. Vivo invited some famous stars to its advertisement to attract its target young consumers. Most of its advertisements were brainwashing and easily missed by consumers.

Today people can see a lot of information about Vivo’s latest product on social media, and people can watch videos about these products and help Vivo advertise their products to more people. Before the new product comes out, a lot of people will be talking about it, like what price it will be, what is the new technology on it and how good it will be, so a lot of people will pay attention to it. Vivo will release some information to social media and get a lot of traffic from it to let more people know about this brand and their new product, which can provide better sales volume in the future.

Vivo is one of the sponsors of FIFA, and during the World Cup, you can see Vivo’s advertisement. Before each game, Vivo created an online buzz about the game; because of this, Vivo gained a lot of attention from the world and advertised their latest mobile phone to the world. Many advertising films were made especially for the World Cup to associate Vivo’s product with the football game and championship. Vivo’s market strategy was smart enough to take advantage of the fame of the World Cup to advertise itself to the large international market and show the world its confidence in its product.

Cooperation with other brands

1) In 2020, according to the Vivo Imaging Strategy Conference, Vivo officially established a strategic global imaging partnership with Zeiss. Vivo and Zeiss strategically focus on long-term imaging technology innovation based on a common imaging philosophy, combining cutting-edge optical technology with smartphone innovation to provide consumers with the most advanced product experience. In the future, the two companies will further develop optical quality standards for mobile imaging based on cooperation in optical imaging technology, explore and realize the miniaturization of lens modules, aiming to create a more exciting mobile imaging experience and raise the expression of mobile photography to a new level. Zeiss is an internationally leading technology enterprise operating in optics and optoelectronics, which stunned the entire market. In the past, only Huawei had the chance to work with Leica (one of the most prestigious names in photography). They only worked on the improvement of the color of the photo without any substantial research or invention. Yet, the collaboration between Vivo and Zeiss was different, they built a laboratory together and Vivo was authorized to use Zeiss t* coating to help Vivo improve the photo quality, which solved a big problem faced by other brands. This makes people call Vivo a night vision device; the result of Vivo is that people began to associate image capability with Vivo, so many shutterbugs have become consumers of Vivo. Vivo worked with Zeiss and took the feature of Zeiss lens to mimic the effect and combine it with Vivo Portrait Mode, and this mode was recognized by many people to take a good portrait photo. Co-engineered with Zeiss to successfully make vivo a brand that uses imageability as an advantage and lead a new trend in the mobile phone market. With the help of Zeiss, vivo finally takes place in the high-end market.

2) In 2020, IQOO, a subsidiary of vivo, officially partnered with BMW and added the three-color bar elements of BMW M Power to the phone, launching a new color scheme – Legendary Color. After the cooperation with BMW, IQOO has once again carried forward the brand’s concept of pursuing the ultimate performance and combined it well with BMW M Power to further develop a new group of consumers through cooperation with BMW.

Internet Of Everything

With the increasing importance of mobile devices, multi-screen collaboration has become a new competitive field for every brand. In order to remain competitive, the 2021 Vivo Developer Conference was officially held, and the theme of this conference is “1 to Infinity”, which is Vivo’s development path to create a digital world, which aims to show that Vivo wants to start from the origin and build a diversified future with infinite possibilities. In 2018, Vivo proposed the “Jovi Internet of Things” plan. Since then, it has focused its strategy on “smart connection”, believing that using mobile phones as an entry point to control the Internet of Everything will be the next development direction. When it comes to the Internet of Everything and IoT, there are countless products on the market. Still, the biggest problem is the fragmented experience, which does not create a seamless connection experience. Based on its insights into consumers, Vivo believes that it needs to transform from “Internet of Everything” to “intelligent connection of everything” that can bring a better experience.” To achieve this goal, Vivo started to develop a new device, a Vivo Watch and Vivo Pad, which were built for the Internet of Everything.

Conclusion

Based on the above analysis, we can see that for mobile phone companies that want to survive in the intense market competition, many successful experiences can be learned from Vivo’s market strategy. First, it is important to follow the market lead and optimize your product system to meet the different needs of different consumer groups. Second, keep sensitive to the future of the market and devote enough effort to research and technology advancement to be well prepared for the new needs of consumers. Third, identify the brand’s weaknesses and find a partner with comparative advantages to achieve a win-win situation.

Read Also:

1. DNA Integrity Problem By Mobile Cellular Phones
2. Effect Of Electromagnetic Waves Emitted From Mobile Phones On Male Fertility
3. Research On The Long-Term Effects Of Radiation Emitted From Mobile Phones On Kidney Cells
4. Development and Future Forecast of China’s Mobile Phone Industry
5. List of 195 Mobiles Phones Companies in All Over The World For Vlogging
6. Effect Of Cell Phone Radiation On Buccal Mucosa Cells
7. Smartphone Market Shares

 

1001900cookie-checkVivo’s Market Strategyyes