China's mobile king is fading

Bird, the mobile phone company that beat Nokia and Motorola in China, is at risk of being delisted from the stock exchange due to heavy losses.

Bird was once the largest mobile company in China. Photo: Yicai .

Founded in 1992, Bird started in the pager market. Half a decade later, the Chinese homegrown company had sold more than 1 million devices, capturing 20% of the market in the country of a billion people. As pagers were replaced by mobile phones, Bird launched its first product in 1999.

The company reached its peak shortly thereafter. By 2003, it was selling more than 10 million devices a year, a number that helped Bird surpass both Motorola and Nokia to become China’s largest phone company.

The Bird S2000 model with a flip design and strong signal reception was the standard for emerging entrepreneurs in the 2000s. Affordable, stylishly designed models aimed at female users were also popular in the country of a billion people.

Bird's S2000 flip model. Photo: QQ.

The turning point came in 2007 when the iPhone was released, ushering in the smartphone era. Bird was stuck between continuing to make cheap knockoffs or investing seriously in smartphones. They no longer had a competitive advantage when their products lacked a highlight, and their low-cost advantage was gone.

By the 2010s, Bird began to abandon its brand and turned to original design (ODM). They earned “small change” by making smartphones and selling them to emerging countries. The lack of core values caused this manufacturer to gradually fade away and be eliminated by the market. By 2022, the number of devices they shipped was less than 500,000.

In 2023, Bird’s revenue is expected to be around 500 million yuan, down 11%. They have a net loss of 43 million yuan as investments have not worked out. This puts the company at risk of being delisted. The future of this company is as uncertain as Coolpad or Gionee, other Chinese phone giants that have gone bankrupt because they are slow to change.

The company also has ties to Transsion, the Chinese-based “African smartphone king.” The company’s founders were part of Bird’s overseas development team, but they operate independently and have no financial ties.

Source: https://znews.vn/vua-di-dong-trung-quoc-lui-tan-post1550802.html