[Editor's Note] The author of this article is Love to play computer games Special author Nuo Bei, whose readers can follow on Sina Weibo 。

In late November 2012, Sharp executives revealed that their cooperation with Hon Hai was temporarily stalled due to huge losses. This also led to the failure to continue to launch high-end smartphones in China with Hon Hai. Sharp, which once occupied the top three in the domestic high-end mobile phone market and was obsessed by countless white-collar women, has now reduced its mobile phone output to 3-5 models, with the price falling below 2000 yuan.

The era of smuggled goods in hand

In the early years, Japanese anime, film and television works swept through the country, and also spread the Japanese mobile phone culture in the country. At that time, the mobile phone industry was still "trendy", which was led by Symbian system dominated by Nokia and Windows Phone system dominated by Dopod. Numerous mobile phone forums have emerged to teach you how to play smart phones: how to swipe the phone and how to crack it. It seems that if you want to keep up with the trend, you must develop towards the technology house and study the skills of the system.

Japanese mobile phones, however, have avoided this path, and have attracted many fans in China by focusing on high-resolution screens, high-quality camera effects, and non intelligent systems with perfect built-in functions and intimate settings, plus the classic flip design.

But after Kyocera abandoned the Chinese market in early 2008, there was no Japanese mobile phone manufacturer in China. It is very difficult to use the mobile phones made in Japan in China: Japanese mobile phones have mobile phone locks, and the SIM cards of non Japanese telecom operators cannot be used. People who want to use Japanese mobile phones invented "stickers" to disguise the SIM cards of domestic telecom operators as the SIM cards of Japanese telecom operators, and trick the machine to activate communication functions, but the stickers are not very stable, "Out of the circle" often occurs, and the SIM card must be inserted into an ordinary mobile phone to retrieve the signal and then put into the Japanese mobile phone for reuse, which also led to the people playing with Japanese mobile phones at that time to keep two mobile phones, and the one that retrieved the signal was jokingly called "nanny machine"; In addition, the Japanese mobile phone does not have a Chinese character library, so it is unable to input and display Chinese characters normally. As a result, if you want to send a message, you can only use letters. Some people joke that the English level improved rapidly during the period when you used the Japanese mobile phone.

While people are struggling to use Japanese mobile phones, Sharp, which has occupied the first place in the Japanese mobile phone market for many years, decides to enter China.

2008: a blockbuster

It is said that as early as early as the beginning of 2008, Sharp had customized the 920SH and 923SH systems with high sales volume in Japan for Softbank and produced them after localization, and intended to sell them in China. Sharp executives mean that these two mobile phones have already been manufactured, so they can test the water in the Chinese market. Make a profit if you can sell out, and deploy the development strategy in China's mobile phone market based on the sales situation; If you can't sell it, you won't lose much, and you won't eat the hard and soft cake of the Chinese market. What they didn't expect was that these two phones could sell so well.

In June 2008, the 9010C, a non smart phone based on 920SH, was marked as a high price of 4800 yuan by Sharp in the nature of playing tickets. The first Sharp mobile phone, which was displayed on the counter of a Dixintong in Shanghai, was quickly "snatched" by consumers at a price of 5600 yuan.

If this example doesn't make you realize Sharp's hot sales, then the 9020C launched in October 2008 with the 923SH as the prototype, its listing price was less than 5000 yuan, but after a year of sales, its price unexpectedly rose to more than 5200 yuan. This is shocking for electronic products whose general rule is that they will only depreciate over time.

At that time, there were only four people in charge of Sharp's mobile phone business in China. On the 27th floor of the Ocean Building, not far from the Shanghai Municipal Government, they were so busy that they worked late into the night almost every day. From time to time, I received calls from dealers all over the country asking for replenishment. In addition to the limited resource channels for the first time entering the domestic market, even the promotional leaflets used by the store had to be sent through the postal channels of Sharp LCD TV Department. That period of time was a happy busy time for these people.

What is happiness? The low manufacturing cost and the high selling price make Sharp's gross profit rate surprisingly high. The Sharp mobile phone just filled a blank market in the mobile phone field in China at that time, that is, white-collar workers living in the first and second tier cities did not have much time to study how to use smart phones. Instead, they urgently needed a "simple mobile phone" with fashionable appearance, comfortable use and no loss of face. Sharp mobile phones have become recognized as a high-end brand by fashion people at a price of four or five thousand yuan.

Then at the end of 2008, The 1810C, which is almost the same as Japan's 8 million pixel camera, was used to light up the proud performance of that year. In 2008, Sharp let people feel the elegant shape of its flip rotation, and its proud AQUOS LCD HD screen and HD camera. The authentic Japanese lineage and the high-end and elegant brand image lead to many people looking at the crisp voice of closing the cover after answering the phone in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

2009: Ambitious

I didn't expect Sharp to be so brilliant in its first shot, and quickly began to actively respond to the Chinese market. After analyzing its own selling points, which lie in its hardware advantages and brand image, in July 2009, Sharp launched a series of 9120C, 6110C and other models that use the MTK mobile phone solution of MediaTek. At that time, MTK was the mobile phone solution used by most domestic counterfeit machines with hundreds of yuan. Sharp sold these low-cost machines to the middle and high-end price of two to three thousand yuan by virtue of its brand advantage. Although Sharp is trying to fill its market share in the domestic mid tier mobile phone market, there is no OSE system that pays attention to humanized settings. The shrunken Sharp characteristic LCD screen has caused Sharp users to complain. This business philosophy of blindly diluting costs but trying to sell high prices is not the attitude that big brands should have.

As the construction of facilities around Sharp's mobile phones, Sharp's after-sales service was gradually spread throughout the country in 2009. The official website "Sharp Blessing Bag", which is used to expand Sharp's mobile phone application resources, was also launched in this year. Sharp was looking at the fat cake of China's mobile phone market with great ambition. In August, we spent a lot of money on brand road shows in more than ten cities across the country, and broadcast 9110c, 9120c, 9130c TV ads endorsed by Liu Ruoying in the same month. In December, we also held a national three-month winter interactive experience exhibition, which can be said to have done enough for brand promotion.

In October 2009, Sharp held a face-to-face exchange meeting with domestic fans in Shanghai. The general manager of Sharp's intelligence and communication department, Junichi Iwaki, and other Japanese executives came to the scene with Sharp's new machine in Japan to ask what Chinese consumers like about Sharp and what kind of machine Sharp China wants to launch. When fans loudly say that they want the same non shrinking screen and system as those launched in Japan, these Japanese executives are thinking about how to solve the contradiction between cost and gross profit after listening attentively.

After this meeting, fans spontaneously organized to chat in the shelter. When they took out their mobile phones to take a Sharp family photo, one fan was embarrassed to say that he only brought another mobile phone today, a brand called Apple, which was the latest model at that time: 3Gs.

2010: Look around blankly

As early as at the 2008 China Telecom Exhibition, Sharp's booth, which had just entered China, had only three mobile phones. In order to avoid the monotony of the product line, we had to make the best use of the three mobile phones, and put them in different colors and different opening and closing models. By the end of the decade, Sharp had already launched its products in the low, middle and high-end markets in China, with a variety of models: 9 series for the main rotary screen, 8 series for the main sliding cover, 7 series for the main torsional screen, 6 series for the main flip cover, 1 series for the main camera, and contract machines launched in cooperation with major telecom operators.

According to the concept of mobile phone manufacturers at that time, the tactics of "Jihai" are the most powerful guarantee for seizing the consumer market. Although it is still unable to get rid of the shrinking screen and MTK, which have been criticized by consumers as cheap products, Sharp is still relieved by the overall distribution strategy, which has finally occupied the Chinese market. There is always one model that will suit you.

When Nokia dominated the market, few people thought there was anything wrong with this idea. Until the release of Apple's iPhone 4 in June 2010, Jobs proved to people that it was enough to make a good phone with heart.

As mentioned above, Sharp's advantages can be compared with Apple:

1. Sharp is a pure Japanese design with mechanical keyboard and flip model. In this regard, Apple has led the concept of keyboard free touch screen. Although it is completely two almost opposite design concepts, we can not tell who's design will be more attractive to consumers at this time;

2. The AQUOS LCD screen, which Sharp is proud of, may be shocking when it launched a 480 * 854 resolution screen at 9010C in 2008, but the OEM screen that has not improved much or even shrunk a lot in domestic products until 10 years ago has no advantage over the 960 * 640 of Apple Retina imaging technology;

3. As for MTK, there is no It is necessary to make comparison.

Perhaps it seems boring to compare Sharp with Apple, which defeated too many mobile phone manufacturers this year. Apple has made mobile phone manufacturers understand what kind of phones consumers need. Consumers don't care how much your mobile phone hardware scores. They just want an easy to operate display with good results, and focus on fun applications instead of cleaning the phone every day to do the system. Apple seems to have robbed Sharp of its market share. This year, all mobile phone manufacturers are thinking, where is Apple's success?

The result of Sharp's thinking is, oh, I lack smart phones.

In November of that year, Sharp cooperated with Innovation Works to launch the first batch of smart phones SH8118U and SH8128U equipped with snack OS, which is based on Android, Android is also a system designed for interaction based on the touch screen. How to make Sharp, which features a mechanical keyboard, use this system? The snack team has spent a lot of manpower and material resources on the problem of operating the system with the keyboard.

2011: full of patterns

In March 2011, Sharp launched the second batch of smart phones equipped with dim sum OS when the sales volume was relatively good. This cooperation has a good reputation in the industry, which also makes many domestic mobile phone manufacturers in the transition period follow the reputation of dim sum.

Sharp has also actively tried various new models in China, including memory screen phones, solar powered phones, and naked eye 3D smartphones launched in May 2011. Sharp relies on its own technological advantages to constantly make stunts about mobile phone functions. Memory screen mobile phones are not practical, and the so-called solar charging is better than nothing. Like Nintendo's 3DS, there is not much visual enjoyment for naked 3D viewing on this small screen. In addition to the lack of 3D resources, the sales of these special function phones have not improved much.

However, these attempts were brave and commendable. Sharp was the first company in the world to have the courage to combine mobile phones with cameras, which did not fully explain why communication tools needed to take photos at that time. But now the camera function is the standard configuration of mainstream mobile phones.

After that, Sharp courageously pursued and even launched the Japanese prototype SH8298U in China in good faith. But now the domestic market is not the same as it was when it could sell without shrinking. Even when the Japanese market is occupied by iPhones, Sharp feels bad.

2012: no time

This year, Apple was still on fire, and Samsung, which had copied Apple secretly, also caught fire with S3. Nokia gambled on the LUMIA920 after it gambled with Microsoft. Dopod has changed back to HTC, casting nets in many places, and is now in a confused period. At least, they are all trying to find a way out for mobile phones.

Sharp lost more than 300 billion yen in the first half of the year, which made the whole company busy with downsizing. For the Chinese market with LCD TV as its main product, the mobile phone business that came for gambling at that time was too busy. It is different for us to entrust our mobile phone business to Datang for sale on a commission basis in the early years.

Hon Hai makes full use of its cost control advantages to produce low-cost mobile phones. Then, the gross profit will be increased by pasting the old high-end brand label "Sharp". This suicidal practice will only lead to sharp's brand image in China plummeting. However, Sharp's own status of bankruptcy has not allowed it to take these into account.

After the worsening impact of the Diaoyu Island incident on Japanese products, Sharp and Hon Hai's smartphone cooperation agreement was also forced to terminate due to their own financial problems. The Sharp counter in the former mobile phone store has been occupied by OPPO and other domestic mobile phone manufacturers who started by imitating Sharp's style, and the business is booming. The Sharp mobile phone that has been moved to the corner has dropped to about 1000 yuan or even hundreds of yuan, and few people pay attention to it because of after-sales security and other issues.

The author once found that the driver was using the Sharp SH7218U when taking a taxi. This is a horse racing lamp that lights up when making a phone call. It is an eye-catching "tide machine" when used in a nightclub. The driver said that this machine was eliminated after his daughter replaced the iPhone 4s. He felt that the screen was large enough and the buttons were large enough to be suitable for the "old man machine" used by the presbyopian. At this time, the taxi was blocked on the ring road of the capital, and many people took out their mobile phones to play with it. It seemed that there was no flip phone in those windows.

Wen/Nuobai