From the 65.438 billion gambling contract to the real knife and gun, Gree Xiaomi will have a battle.

Lei Jun and Dong Mingzhu bet 65.438+0 billion on March 2065.438, which is the most interesting story in the science and technology circle in recent years.

This year, there have been many new developments in their gambling contract. One of the most important changes is the revenue confrontation between Xiaomi as a new economic company and Gree, an established manufacturing company. Now it has become a contribution competition between the two technological giants in manufacturing.

In May, Lei Jun and Dong Mingzhu said that they would re-bet to promote "Made in China". In August, in Xiaomi's 10th anniversary speech, Lei Jun raised this topic again. Recently, Dong Mingzhu responded from a distance: "Lei Jun can't win."

"Billion Bet" Because in the fifth year-2065438+08, Xiaomi's revenue did not exceed Gree, so Lei Jun also admitted that Xiaomi lost. But after renewing the gambling contract, will Xiaomi lose to Gree again in smart manufacturing? Judging from the current progress of Xiaomi in the intelligent manufacturing industry, Xiaomi is likely not to fail again this time.

Xiaomi's "intellectual creation" should not be underestimated.

As a technology giant rising rapidly from the smart phone industry, Xiaomi also has the common problems of mobile phone manufacturers, that is, product production relies heavily on OEM and OEM, and its self-production ability is insufficient. There is nothing wrong with this in itself. After all, in addition to Samsung, industry leaders including Apple and Huawei also take the OEM route.

However, compared with other giants, Xiaomi has two major defects and is more motivated to intervene in manufacturing.

First, Xiaomi's control and bargaining power over upstream manufacturers is not strong enough. Because of its rapid rise and short development time, Xiaomi's brand influence is not too strong among OEMs. Similarly, Xiaomi is more dependent on suppliers in core technology. Under the superposition of the two, Xiaomi is bound to be more vulnerable to the impact of upstream manufacturers.

Second, Xiaomi's own profit margin is low, and the OEM model is difficult to do well. Before Xiaomi's impact on the high-end market failed to achieve results, the profit margin of Xiaomi's hardware products could only be maintained at a very low level. Therefore, after adopting the OEM mode, Xiaomi can only reduce costs, including OEM costs, material costs and even research costs, on the premise of ensuring the user experience. Always walking a tightrope between user experience and cost, Xiaomi will inevitably roll over occasionally.

These two problems that Xiaomi needs to face in the OEM mode have put it under great pressure for a long time, but at the same time, it has also provided a powerful driving force for it to penetrate into the upstream of the industrial chain. So a long time ago, Xiaomi launched an offensive in the manufacturing field, such as the "Ecological Chain Plan" launched by Xiaomi at the end of 20 13, some of which were suppliers and OEMs.

Of course, Xiaomi's real big move in manufacturing is still a recent thing. 20 19, 1 1 At the World 5G Conference in June, Lei Jun suddenly released a heavy news, announcing that Xiaomi's own "future factory" with an annual production capacity of 1 10,000 mobile phones will be put into production soon. Lei Jun said that in the future, the factory millet will use automated production lines, 5G networks, robots, big data and other technologies on a large scale, and its production efficiency will be 60% higher than that of traditional factories. On average, 60 mobile phones can be automatically produced every minute.

In the keynote speech on the 10th anniversary of Xiaomi in August, Lei Jun said that the first phase of Xiaomi Smart Factory has been officially completed and put into production, and it is a "black light factory" with a fully automated production line and an annual output of one million high-end mobile phones. The first product produced is the newly released transparent version of Xiaomi 10 Extreme Commemorative Edition. At the same time, he also revealed that there will be the second phase of Xiaomi Smart Factory in three years.

Recently, Lei Jun further explained that in addition to the mounter, all the production equipment in the second phase of the smart factory was developed by Xiaomi or the company invested by Xiaomi. In other words, Xiaomi can not only build its own smart factory, but also develop and produce intelligent manufacturing equipment. In the field of intelligent manufacturing, Xiaomi has penetrated into the most upstream and bottom.

Gree's intelligent manufacturing foundation is deeper.

As a veteran home appliance giant, Gree's starting point in manufacturing is much higher than Xiaomi's. Therefore, although Gree entered the intelligent manufacturing track in 20 13, based on more than 20 years of manufacturing experience, Gree started with intelligent equipment.

After several years of development, Gree has possessed the key technologies in the fields of industrial robots, CNC machine tools, intelligent logistics and warehousing, intelligent detection and automation integration. The self-developed high-performance servo motors and drivers for industrial robots have reached the "international advanced" level, among which the performance indexes such as power density and overload capacity of servo motors have reached the "international leading" level.

Gree's intelligent equipment enters the market while meeting the transformation and upgrading of its own intelligent manufacturing, helping other manufacturing enterprises to optimize and upgrade the intelligent manufacturing of products. In 20 19, as an export product, intelligent equipment brought Gree more than 2 1 100 million yuan in revenue.

Compared with Xiaomi, Gree's achievements in the field of intelligent manufacturing are undoubtedly higher. Even in the first phase of Xiaomi Smart Factory, it is hard to say whether Gree's smart devices are used.

However, the competition in the field of intelligent manufacturing is completely different from that in traditional manufacturing. R&D, design, technology and production are of course important, but in the era of intelligent manufacturing, the relationship between manufacturing and sales service will be closer, so we should fully consider other capabilities of intelligent manufacturing enterprises.

Taking flexible production as an example, in order to adapt to the more personalized market consumption trend, quickly adjusting the flexible production capacity of production according to market changes has become an essential skill for intelligent manufacturing enterprises. However, flexible production not only tests the production control ability, but also tests the market control ability.

Who can be better than Xiaomi or Gree in a comprehensive intelligent manufacturing competition like this?

Will Xiaomi have a chance to surpass Gree in the future?

It is actually an interesting topic to compare the supply-side control ability and consumption-side control ability of Xiaomi and Gree, because they have asymmetric competitive advantages at a single level, but under the comprehensive evaluation, the development of intelligent manufacturing may be evenly matched.

In terms of manufacturing capacity, Gree, which has exported smart devices, has an absolute advantage over Xiaomi. After all, in 20 19, the global shipment of Xiaomi mobile phones exceeded 1 100 million units, but the annual production capacity of Xiaomi smart factory is only1100 million units, which means that the self-production capacity of Xiaomi is insufficient 1%, and Xiaomi will still be unable to get rid of the OEM mode for a long time to come.

However, in terms of market control, Xiaomi, who has been deeply involved in the Internet for many years, is far from being comparable to Gree. Xiaomi's Xiaomi Youpin has become the leading e-commerce platform in China; Dong Mingzhu started broadcasting e-commerce live this year because of the epidemic, and Gree's online channel development has indeed improved. In contrast, it is easy to see that Xiaomi's online consumption channels are clearly ahead. Of course, marketing channels are only one aspect. Xiaomi can better control market changes with Internet thinking, based on Internet genes and proficient in Internet gameplay, which is the essence.

The contrast and contest between Xiaomi and Gree can actually represent two different ways of playing in the two camps of intelligent manufacturing.

Xiaomi, Ali, Tencent, Baidu and so on. It belongs to the cross-border flow of the Internet. They are usually more user-oriented and more sensitive to market changes. They are often better at advanced Internet technologies such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence and industrial Internet, but lack the technology and experience accumulated by manufacturing industry.

Gree, Midea, Haier, Hisense and so on. It belongs to the upgrading flow of traditional manufacturing industry. They often have deep accumulation in manufacturing, but they are not very good at technologies such as cloud computing and artificial intelligence. Compared with Internet marketing channels, they are more dependent on traditional distribution and distribution channels, and have multiple layers of isolation from users, so they are relatively slow to change the market.

In the field of intelligent manufacturing, if we want to talk about the cross-border flow represented by Xiaomi and the upgrade flow represented by Gree, which party will win? So in the short term, it is obvious that the upgrade stream players have greater advantages, but in the long term, I am afraid that cross-border Internet streaming will overtake the traditional upgrade stream.

In fact, in the sixth year of "1 100 million gambling contract", it was also the first year when Xiaomi smart factory started production-2019, and the total revenue of Xiaomi surpassed Gree. Although this has little to do with their intelligent manufacturing, it is also a sign.