On July 19, at the 2024 Lei Jun Annual Speech, Lei Jun, founder of Xiaomi Group (1810.HK), told the story of the three years of car building. At the beginning, Lei Jun recalled the reasons and process of building a car on the spot. He said that at around 7 a.m. on January 15,

7On July 19, at the 2024 Lei Jun annual speech, Lei Jun, founder of Xiaomi Group (1810.hk), told the story of the three years of car building.

As soon as the show started, Lei Jun recalled the reasons and process of building the car. He said that at around 7 a.m. on January 15, 2021, he received a call from a friend and was told that Xiaomi had been sanctioned by the United States. He was asked by the director at the subsequent emergency board meeting, "If the mobile phone cannot be repaired, what will happen to your 30,000 to 40,000 employees (employees)?" ) What should I do? "Should we seriously consider building a car?"

Afterwards, after more than 70 days, visiting more than 10 cities and holding 4 executive meetings, Lei Jun chose to "enter the game", among which Wei The "persuasion" of Li Bin from Lyft Auto and He Xiaopeng from Xpeng Motors also played a key role.

At that time, Xiaomi was in troubled times. It had been on the market for two and a half years. Lei Jun said that the entire company was in the process of transforming from a guerrilla army to a regular army. High-end development had just begun. The former CFO who had been trained for many years and had high hopes resigned, and everything was in doubt. Crossed together. On March 30, 2021, Lei Jun officially responded to the board of directors, leading Xiaomi to build cars and investing US$10 billion in 10 years.

In addition to the automotive business, Lei Jun also released the large folding screen mobile phone Mix Fold 4, the small folding screen Xiaomi Mixflip and a variety of terminal products. At the

site, Lei Jun said that Xiaomi's small folding screen mobile phone project was launched three years ago, but it has not been released because the team believed that the small folding technology was immature, and the industry even called the category "beautiful little waste." This time, Xiaomi’s two folding screen mobile phones are manufactured by the new generation Xiaomi mobile phone smart factory. The factory is located in Changping, Beijing, with an investment of 2.4 billion yuan, a construction area of ​​81,000 square meters, and an annual production capacity of 10 million units of flagship mobile phones. It has won the “National Intelligent Manufacturing Benchmark” Enterprise Certification.

In March 2021, Xiaomi released its first foldable screen mobile phone, xiaomi mix fold, which started at 9,999 yuan. As the technology gradually matures and product prices fall further, more and more mobile phone manufacturers focus on folding screen mobile phones. Cinno Research predicts that the global folding screen mobile phone market sales are expected to reach 24 million units in 2024, a year-on-year increase of 33%. Among them, the sales of folding screen mobile phones in the Chinese market will reach 9.6 million units, a year-on-year increase of 41%.

Lei Jun hosted a mobile phone conference again this time, triggering a discussion on the Internet about "Lei Jun's return". In February this year, Lei Jun stated on Weibo, "In order to focus more on the automotive business, the company has decided that group president Lu Weibing will also serve as general manager of the Xiaomi brand. He will also be the speaker of future Xiaomi mobile phone conferences. The first one will be Xiaomi 14ultra." ”

Now, the mobile phone industry has entered a new competition cycle. Commenting on the new normal of the global smartphone market, Ankit Malhotra, senior analyst at counterpoint research, said: "The global smartphone market has entered a slow and steady growth stage driven by the replacement cycle. It is now a zero-sum game between mobile phone brands. It is expected that Smartphone sales will grow slowly in the next few years, but due to the premiumization in various regions, especially the rise of new forms and features, such as folding screens and genai, smartphone revenue is expected to grow faster than sales.”

Xiaomi. It is necessary to seize this wave of growth. The first-quarter financial report shows that Xiaomi’s smartphone business revenue in the quarter was 46.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 32.9%; the asp (average selling price) slightly decreased by 0.6% from 1,151.6 yuan per unit in the first quarter of 2023 to 1144.7 yuan, mainly due to seasonal factors and rapid growth in low ASP areas.

The replacement cycle and high-end strategic needs have made Xiaomi pay more attention to investment in mobile phones this year, including Lei Jun once again personally presiding over the release of new mobile phones. The counterpointresearch report shows that global smartphone sales increased year-on-year for the third consecutive quarter in the second quarter of 2024. Samsung maintained the first place, Apple declined slightly year-on-year, and Xiaomi grew the fastest among the top five original equipment manufacturers, with a year-on-year increase of 22%. .

Hong Kong stocks closed today, Xiaomi Group’s share price fell 1.9% to HK$16.52.

(This article comes from China Business News)