Xiaomi is still so fast. After encountering the worst financial report in a single quarter since its listing, Xiaomi quickly made its own adjustment in the personnel organization structure. However, this adjustment may be temporary, and the real result may not be completely settled until the results of the 816 Thanksgiving season.
Liu De in the rumor of retirement
Last weekend, a document of Xiaomi group's Organization Department was exposed on the Internet, which is a notice of Xiaomi's internal organization adjustment and cadre appointment.
As of press time, this coincidental "leak" has not received any formal reply from Xiaomi group, but Liu De's introduction on Xiaomi's official website has been changed from the head of the group's Organization Department to the head of the group's general cadre department.
The news about Liu De's retirement has been a topic of great interest to those who care about Xiaomi in the past year.
On April 6, Lei Jun successively posted two versions of group photos of executives of Xiaomi group in Beijing on his microblog. The second official version is from left to right: Zhu Dan, Zhang Feng, Wang Chuan, Lin bin, Lei Jun, Lu Weibing, Yan Kesheng, Cui Qiubao and Lin Shiwei. The first group photo taken in the flower bed, Yan Kesheng and Cui Qiubao changed their positions, while the participants in the group photo did not change.
In the two photos, Liu De, Wang Xiang and Zeng Xuezhong were not present. Compared with the "sense of distance" between Lu Weibing and Lei Jun, Liu De's absence makes people daydream. In terms of job responsibilities, Wang Xiang and Zeng Xuezhong are more external, while Liu De is more internal, which should appear most among the three absent executives. An insider told leifeng.com (official account: leifeng.com) that the group photo of senior executives was notified the night before, while liude was in Beijing at that time.
According to comprehensive information from various parties, Liu De's retirement is only a matter of time, but there are still several variables when and how to retire.
There are different opinions on the reasons for Liu De's retirement, which can be roughly divided into two categories: passive retirement and active retirement.
The theory of passive retirement is related to the previous March incident of "it is said that the regulators investigated the projects of Xiaomi industrial chain and the IPO policy of Xiaomi industrial chain is limited". Affected by this storm, although the regulators and Xiaomi group have ended the rumor, the "public opinion storm" caused by it has not stopped within Xiaomi group, and Liu De, who was once in charge of the ecological chain business of mobile phone department, is the object of the storm, Even Gao Ziguang, who left before, was rumored to be held accountable.
Public information shows that Liu Dejiao's birth chain business has been for four or five years. Even if there is a pot, the disaster cannot reach Liu De, but Liu De's active retirement is more credible.
As early as the middle of 2021, Lei Feng was informed by a person who was preparing to leave Xiaomi that he could often meet Liu De at that time. Because it was the handover period of resignation, he clocked in on time as soon as he got off work, and during this period, he often met Liu De. at this time, Lin bin stayed in the United States and Liu De was the actual No. 2 person in charge of the company at that time. It was somewhat surprising that the president got off work on time.
Lei Jun did not comment on Liu De's retirement request, but hoped that Liu De could play a role in Xiaomi's car making career and discuss the retirement issue after Xiaomi's car making reached a milestone.
On September 1, 2021, while Xiaomi announced the establishment of the car manufacturing company, Lei Jun also released a group photo of him and some key members of the car manufacturing team, a total of 17 people. In the group photo, Li Tianyuan, the only former senior designer of BMW group with automobile industry experience, is also a student of Liu De. During his stay at BMW, Li Tianyuan was responsible for the exterior decoration design of I series of BMW electric vehicle production line.
According to people familiar with the matter, Lei Jun and Liu De have different opinions on when to build a car. At present, an important time point for Xiaomi to build a car is the beginning of 2024, which Liu De can't hold.
Another thing that can support Liu De's initiative to retire is that Kaiyun borrowed Xiaomi to build a car to rub hot spots.
In the middle of 2021, driving a cloud to build a car caused a lot of waves inside and outside Xiaomi. In particular, Liu De and Huang Jiangji, another co-founder of Xiaomi technology, both took shares in Kaiyun in their personal capacity and served as independent directors. In addition, Zhao Caixia, former vice president of Xiaomi ecological chain, also joined Kaiyun automobile and served as chief operating officer. It is worth mentioning that Liu De was the direct leader of Zhao Caixia during her tenure in Xiaomi, and this information was publicly disclosed by many media.
This intentional or unintentional hint is the hot spot that Kaiyun is rubbing against Xiaomi. If Liu De has not made up his mind to retire from Xiaomi, he will definitely not let Zhao Caixia and Kaiyun publicly rub against the topic of Xiaomi's car making.
The addition of Liu Wei, an old minister of Jinshan, is considered to be a plan for Liu De's retirement.
According to the exact information provided by several insiders of Xiaomi group, Liu weinian has joined Xiaomi and served as the former deputy director of the organization department. He was at the same level with Jin Lingping to assist Liu De and others.
Liu Wei has served as senior vice president in Jinshan for many years. He has always played the role of housekeeper of Lei Jun and has a very good working tacit understanding with Lei Jun himself.
One theory is that Liu De recommended Liu Wei to Lei Jun, not Lei Jun. However, Liu Wei's participation ensures the combat effectiveness of Xiaomi Organization Department itself.
Since the second half of 2021, Xiaomi began to promote the partner retirement plan. Interestingly, bat has promoted the retirement plan of partners, but in the process of promotion, there is a bug that the partner who wants to retire at position 1 did not retire, and the partner who does not want to retire did. For example, when Baidu pushed the partner plan, it actually wanted to let Xiang Hailong leave, but Zhang Yaqin took the lead in applying for early retirement. This situation has also occurred in Xiaomi push partner plan. In addition to Andy Lau, Hongfeng, Wang Chuan, Wang Xiang and other partners have fallen into rumors of retirement. Every 816 Thanksgiving season is a big day for Xiaomi, and this year is no exception. When those partners retire, the dust will probably settle.
Wang Xiang asked Ji and Wang Chuan to wait for their comeback
520 the day of this adjustment, the relative substantive move is to appoint Xu ran as the general manager of the group's strategic cooperation department and report to Wang Xiang, President of the group.
This indicates that Wang Xiang began to be not only a mascot president responsible for foreign government relations and partners, but also a key figure involved in strategy implementation and resource mobilization.
On the evening of May 20, Wang Xiang, dressed in jeans, appeared again in public view and was invited to serve as a platform for Qualcomm's latest mobile platform "Xiaolong 8 +" at its online press conference. At the press conference, Wang Xiang shared the cooperation between Xiaomi and Xiaolong: Xiaomi and Qualcomm have been jointly commissioned for several months. From the measured data so far, "Xiaolong 8 +" has a very beautiful power consumption performance!
Although Wang Xiang appeared at the earnings call on May 19, this press conference is one of the few public appearances of Wang Xiang in recent years. According to public information, the last time Wang Xiang spoke on behalf of Xiaomi, except for several reports in April and recently, dates back to November 2020. The long-term fading out of the president of Xiaomi group has given the outside world a lot of "reverie". Even on the day of the rice noodle festival on April 6, Wang Xiang, as the partner and President of Xiaomi group, failed to appear in the group photo of Lei Jun's senior executives in Beijing.
In the circle of friends, there are also statements by former executives of Xiaomi about the return of Wang Xiang and the king.
Lei Feng learned that Wang Xiang had worked in Qualcomm for many years and had deep contacts and good reputation in the industry. He was good at dealing with people and familiar with the business. He was a doer with high Eq.
Wang Xiang's position indicates that Xiaomi starts more from business, merges more similar items, forms more joint forces, reduces internal friction, and changes the situation that Xiaomi used to throw pots at each other through reform.
At the beginning of the year, due to the serious internal wall and low overall efficiency, Xiaomi executives had hoped to optimize eight general managers, but they were more about eliminating dissidents from Baifang and others. On the contrary, the practice of merging similar items this time is effective. The previous integration of MIUI and mobile phone BSP departments by Jin fan is a successful example.
Wang Xiang also broke door-to-door views, solicited opinions from all parties, especially former cadres of Xiaomi, on the current situation of Xiaomi, and tried to break the situation with a realistic attitude.
Like Liu De and Wang Xiang, Wang Chuan, another party involved in the rumor of being retired, was also asked how Xiaomi solved it. According to Wang Chuan, someone did find himself. Once general Lei called, it was incumbent on him to go through fire and water.
After the 816 Thanksgiving season, it is not only a good time for Liu De to retire, but also the best opportunity for Wang Chuan to return.
Lu Weibing faces 618 exams
For Wang Xiang and Xiaomi, 618 before 816 is a more direct and severe challenge.
"In this quarter, more than 50% of Xiaomi's high-end smartphones were sold through offline channels, which also proves that offline stores have brought us new users, which is the positive impact of offline channels on our business. We have 10000 stores, and how to improve store efficiency is the main goal this year," Wang Xiang said in a telephone conference on May 19
Interestingly, the adjustment on May 20 was hardly related to Lu Weibing. In the previous two quarterly adjustments, whether Gao Ziguang's resignation or Shang Jin and Zhu Lei's resignation were to clear the obstacles for Lu Weibing's unification. Within Xiaomi, there has always been a saying that Lu Weibing should be in charge of the whole mobile phone business, but it is obvious that this adjustment is the biggest negation of this statement, Even good people judged Lei Feng that this was the beginning of Lu's loss of power within Xiaomi.
This year, Lu Weibing successively stepped down as the legal representative and manager of the two companies associated with Xiaomi home. Among them, Xiaomi home commercial Co., Ltd. was replaced by Sun Bo.
After Lei Jun announced that he would build a car, he once spent a lot of energy on building a car, even at the most important product finalization meeting and sales leveling meeting of Xiaomi mobile phone. These two meetings, which are known as the core of Xiaomi mobile phone, Lei Jun himself did not participate for some time and gave them to Lu Weibing. However, in the second half of the year, as the sales flow of Xiaomi mobile phone began to slow down, Lei Jun put some of his energy back on Xiaomi mobile phone, Lei Feng learned that the situation is between 37 and 46, and most of his energy is still in building cars.
As Lei Jun put his energy back on the mobile phone business, Zeng Xuezhong's position became important, and even Q4 asked Zeng Xuezhong to participate in the investor docking meeting on behalf of Xiaomi. In addition to the laptop being incorporated into the mobile phone department this time, Hongmi was also incorporated into the mobile phone department before. Ling Xiaobing, the former Department of Zeng Xuezhong, succeeded Wang Teng as the manager of red rice products and reported to Lu Weibing and Zeng Xuezhong. In the two recent adjustments, Zeng Xuezhong's authorization began to increase, which means to help Lei Jun share Xiaomi's mobile phone business with Lu Weibing.
Many former colleagues who had cooperation experience with Lu Weibing discussed Lu Weibing with Lei Feng. They unanimously commented that Lu understood the mobile phone business, but he was not sharp enough and liked to walk around when encountering problems. This is why boss Jinli adjusted his domestic business from hard hitting to more overseas businesses that need layout and planning.
In the view of Lu Weibing's opponents, Lu's cause today comes from the fruit of that year.
Previously, the strategy of vigorously distributing offline channels led by Lu Weibing has been in a state of difficulty. As of March 31 this year, Xiaomi had more than 10500 offline retail stores in Chinese Mainland, but the large number of stores did not bring a good situation to Xiaomi. In the view of a mobile phone industry practitioner, Xiaomi home's asset investment was too heavy, and the cost of opening a store was as high as hundreds of thousands. However, Xiaomi's profit sharing to customers was not generous enough, which also led to customers' lack of motivation to help Xiaomi distribute, and the layout of offline channel strategy was in a dilemma.
Due to the impact of the epidemic situation, the uncertainty of the international situation, the longer season change cycle and the shortage of supply chain, the smartphone industry as a whole is under pressure, and the global smartphone market is declining.
This is not the worst. At present, Xiaomi is facing the most troublesome problem, and the channel pressure is serious.
"Take the folding screen as an example. There should have been hundreds of thousands of forecast before. Now there are still a lot of inventory." A person familiar with the matter said that unlike conventional mobile phones, folding screen mobile phones use customized materials rather than general materials. Once the inventory is overstocked, it is very troublesome to deal with it.
Not only are high-end mobile phones facing the problem of inventory backlog, but red rice, which is famous for its cost performance, has also encountered this problem.
On March 17 this year, red rice released redmi K40S, priced from 1799 yuan to 2399 yuan. This mobile phone, which should have impulse, did not meet Xiaomi's expectations.
"The sales volume of redmi K40S in the first week is only 18000 units, and the usual price range of mobile phones (sales volume in the first week) is at least 100000 units. 18000 units are too few. The stock of this model needs 5 million units to see if it can be pulled up in the back." The aforementioned insider said.
The problem of pressing goods is directly reflected in Xiaomi's performance. In the first quarter of 2022, Xiaomi's smartphone business revenue was 45.8 billion yuan, down 11% from 51.5 billion yuan in the same period last year; Xiaomi's global smartphone market shipped 38.5 million units, down 21.4% from 49 million units in the same period last year. A person familiar with Xiaomi's mobile phone industry disclosed that Xiaomi's original annual shipment target was 190 million units, which has been reduced to 150 million units.
How to revitalize these more than 10000 stores and deal with inventory is the first mess that Xiaomi, especially Lu Weibing, has to clean up.
In the long run, high-end is indeed the only solution for Xiaomi to break the situation. For channels, high-end machines can bring high profits, and they are also motivated to actively distribute. Lei Jun also said many times: the high-end road is the only way for Xiaomi to grow and the battle of life and death for Xiaomi's development. Separating Xiaomi from Hongmi is also a good move, but it backfires in specific implementation.
A former employee of Xiaomi told Lei Feng that Lu Weibing's behavior style is relatively strong and focuses on KPI orientation. Due to the research and development of the public part of Hongmi and Xiaomi's mobile phone department, Lu Weibing, who is good at playing machine sea tactics, has a large demand for research and development. On the other hand, due to the problem of red rice product positioning. On the whole, the internal settlement system of Hongmi is one or two hundred pieces lower than that of Xiaomi. When there is no gap between the configured product positioning and Xiaomi, that is, Hongmi grabs its own share of Xiaomi, which is one of the reasons why Xiaomi can't do high-end.
In the short term, 618 is a good opportunity for major mobile phones to turn around. The second quarter of each year is the peak season for domestic mobile phone manufacturers to sprint sales. Under the practice of "gold, silver and four" in the industry, new mobile phones will be intensively listed at the end of the first quarter and the beginning of the second quarter, stimulating users to have a wave of change of phones. Lin Shiwei, CFO of Xiaomi, believed at the earnings conference that with the easing of supply shortage, with the help of 618 promotion in the domestic market in the middle of the year, Xiaomi's smartphone shipments will increase.
But this year's 618 is far from that simple. When the whole market plate shrinks by 20-30%, Xiaomi is not the only one who presses the goods. Each year, in order to impact the online sales, it usually adopts the way of pressing the goods offline. If the existing inventory has not been cleared, can the channel providers still follow?
At present, as Xiaomi's main domestic rivals, oppo and vivo have come up with their own 618 layout, paying more attention than in previous years, while watching Xiaomi may fall behind due to the adjustment of organizational structure.
There is not much time left for Lu Weibing. It is likely to be a crying 618 in this inner roll.