Interview with OPPO product manager: Make the phone you want

IT168 information on the OPPO mobile phone, the industry is mixed. Although most of the network sound quality is considered low cost performance and serious appearance homogeneity, OPPO still achieved the second-highest domestic shipments in the first half of this year. For the second half of the year, the OPPO R9s is undoubtedly the star product of the main push. Compared to the Flash Charger that R9 is mainly responsible for, the OPPO will focus on the top of the camera and return to the positioning of the camera phone. At the same time, it also abandoned the slogans popular in the north and south of the Yangtze River. “Charging for five minutes and talking for two hours” was changed to “This moment is very clear”. So what kind of story behind this series of changes? We IT168 interviewed OPPO's product manager Li Sheng and video product manager Cai Ye, listening to them tell the story behind the product.


Cai Yi, Image Product Manager (left), Li Sheng, Product Manager (right)

Cooperation with Sony

For this launch of the new OPPO R9s, its highlight is undoubtedly the first Sony IMX398 camera sensor. This CMOS is 1/2.8 inch in size and can capture up to 16 million pixel photos. It supports F/1.7 aperture and advanced dual-core focusing technology than ordinary PDAF. Judging from the parameters, the overall quality of IMX398 is absolutely first class, showing the determination of OPPO to take photos as the core selling point. But behind the launch of IMX398, it is definitely not just to reach out to Sony.

OPPO product manager Li Sheng mentioned in the interview: IMX398 has worked together for about a year. The dual-core focusing technology will not be put into use until 2017, according to Sony's own schedule. Because OPPO and Sony jointly developed, to advance the time to complete this year and deploy in the new IMX398, this is a mutual technical cooperation.

It can be seen that the IMX398 sensor carried by the OPPO R9s is jointly developed by OPPO and Sony. According to the author's understanding, OPPO will initially propose customized requirements for Sony to COMS, and some customized solutions will require OPPO and Sony to cooperate in research and development. It is precisely because of this close cooperation that the "dual-core focusing technology" can be quickly introduced into mobile phones, leading to competitive products in the same period.


OPPO R9s

How does OPPO define cost-effectiveness?

Today's OPPO interprets its own brand image with words such as "this part" and "beautiful demand". However, from the current public opinion, the impression given by OPPO is a representative of “low cost performance”, which is exactly the opposite of “hardware free” advocated by domestic manufacturers. This phenomenon can not help but give people doubts, because the "point of duty" and "low cost" seem to conflict with each other. On this issue, OPPO itself has a different understanding.

Different from what everyone understands, the OPPO sees the “price” as a value rather than a price. Due to higher shipments and cost estimates, OPPO holds the initiative in the face of upstream supply chains. This has a positive impact on the quality control and process level of the final product, and at the same time it will increase the value of the product intangibly. In addition, for consumers, the products they buy can effectively solve their pain points and user experience is the most important. OPPO also captured the pain point of the phone's easy “paste” and only paid attention to the improvement of the camera's imaging quality, so that consumers could feel that it was worth buying this phone.

In addition, if you want to press the hardware price of your mobile phone enough to attract people, then in addition to streamlining offline channels, it will inevitably affect the user experience. For example, the blind pursuit of high-performance chips has led to serious heat generation in the mobile phone, which has greatly affected the user experience. In addition, the inclusion of advertising in the system will not affect normal use, but it will always leave visual pollution. Compared to these phenomena, OPPO is more willing to formulate its own supply chain needs and provide consumers with better products and after-sales services.


OPPO R9s

Choice of popular features

For emerging market solutions such as the popular dual camera, hyperbolic screen, and no border, OPPO has its own set of views. First of all, OPPO has its own R&D factory for these technical solutions, and it also maintains technical follow-up. However, compared with upstream suppliers, OPPO is more willing to listen to consumers' feedback. Through the market research of the current users, as far as possible to select the function of the user really needs rather than gimmicks, and then follow-up is the OPPO approach. In addition, the precise control of the budget is also the focus of OPPO. The introduction of some unnecessary functions would be counterproductive, resulting in an imbalance in the supply chain, which may lead to increased costs and insufficient supply.

According to the author, OPPO is a market-driven company. It puts user needs first and what the target user wants to do. The premise is that the functional or technical costs of blessings are already within the overall budget. This also explains why OPPO's flagship product line “ Find ” series has not been updated.

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