Luo Yonghao Joins LeTV? Is hammer this brand is about to become history?

Recently, the news that “Luo Yonghao entered LeTV and nuts went out to Ali” was the same. Although Luo Yonghao denied on August 17th by Weibo, he responded that he was “false,” but the Hammer Tech official still did not respond to it, and its attitude was ambiguous. At the same time, there is another saying that LeTV may acquire a hammer, but given that LeTV currently has multiple brands such as LeTV, Coolpad, and just launched COOL phone, it is very unlikely that another weak brand will be acquired.

This is not the first time that Hammer Technology has been acquired this year. Things to be said from the end of June this year, Hammer Technology conducted a change in the equity pledge information, its CEO Luo Yonghao will produce a stake in the 205.381776 million shares of hammer technology to Alibaba. At that time, the argument that the hammer might have been acquired by Ali would rise again. Subsequently, the hammer continued to spread the storm of executives away, to some extent to verify the rumors.

Luo Yonghao's low-key prior to his resignation, frequently appeared at the summit and volunteered for interviews in an attempt to resolve questions from the outside world. He even did not hesitate to speak out again and said surprisingly, "The realization is the best period in the history of the hammer." At the same time, he also said, "A hammer even if there is any problem, it is also acquired rather than closed down," which to a certain extent, the default of the possibility of outside acquisition of rumors. Therefore, when the rumors of a hammer being committed to Ali were once again revealed, it was difficult for the outside world to believe Luo Yonghao's argument that “the best time in history”.

Hammer financing is unfavorable and the funds are hungry and thirsty

From inborn pride to deep enthusiasm for acquisitions, today's hammer is very helpless, so that it has no nerve to announce the equity pledge at the end of June this year, and did not disclose the specific amount of money pledged to obtain funds. However, the information disclosure of the company's credit information disclosure system clearly shows that the hammer and Ali are together. Since the C-Financing round, although the hammer has revealed relevant news from time to time, even once it has reported financing of 500 million yuan and is about to land on the new board, it has not made any substantial progress. The initial financing income was not much, and the cost of the low hammer yield of the Hammer 1 was far higher than expected. The poor sales caused the funds not to be returned in a timely manner. In recent years, the operation has been very loss-making, making the hammer's thirst for funds doubled.

Since the beginning of Q1 last year, the growth of the domestic smart phone market has been sluggish, the overall real economy has been sluggish, and at the same time, the financing environment has undergone a major shift. The hammer with poor market prospects has made it difficult to raise funds from the capital market. In the past, the arrogant investors have always believed that Luo Yonghao’s strong supporters, Zheng Gang and Tang Yan, did not continue to supplement the ammunition for the hammer, forcing the hammer to find another way.

As a result, in July last year, according to the Beijing Enterprise Credit Information Network, Suning Yun Merchants appeared in the Hammer Technology Investor Directory, and the identity was a corporate legal person shareholder. This was an additional legal entity after the hammer technology C round of financing. Shareholders, but also did not disclose the specific amount of funds, and later revealed that the news is 50 million yuan. Low profile to the need to find clues from the corporate credit information network, which is clearly not Luo Yonghao's consistent style of work, obviously the hidden situation only the talented people understand. In the following August, a major event occurred: Ali's strategic investment in Suning. Therefore, the hammer also indirectly connected with Ali.

And this time this year, Luo Yonghao's pledge of equity was simply a repeat of Suning’s shareholding last year. Only last time Suning became a direct shareholder of Hammer Technology, but this time Ali was only a creditor. Luo Yonghao used his personal name as collateral for nearly half of his hammer shares. This shows two things: The hammer is now very short of money and faces financing difficulties.

Why Ali is not investing and chooses to give money to the hammer

What is curious is that since the two sides want to cooperate, why does Ali not directly invest in hammers? Why is it so costly? Although the news that Ali can lend money to the hammer, that Ali is very much in recognition of the value of the hammer, but the fact may not be the case, and may even be the opposite.

Since last year, Hammer Technology's name began to appear with Ali. Luo Yonghao himself was also discovered as the platform of Ali's Yun OS. However, Luo Yonghao was always proud of his Smartisan OS. In April this year, he and Ma Yun appeared at the same time in Hangzhou to participate in activities. The relationship between the two warming ups is not going away. At that time, Pan Jiutang, an electronics industry analyst, broke the news on Weibo, saying that Ali will invest 1 billion yuan in strategic investment in hammer technology.

As we all know, Ali launched its own Yun OS in recent years, claiming to be the third largest operating system in the world, but other influential brands could not be found other than Meizu. Even Meizu has not yet implemented Yun OS on all product lines. Therefore, Ali urgently needs to find other big brands to support Yun OS in order to expand their influence in the industry.

Domestic first and second-tier brands basically optimize the system on the basis of Android to highlight their own differentiated advantages. For example, Xiaomi has MIUI, and Huawei has EMUI. They are not willing to give up their efforts, and therefore there are very few respondents. As a characteristic and potential niche brand, hammer has become a target for Ali. It can be said that before Ali had sought a hammer, he had to ask for more than the hammer for Ali. This is why both sides can approach. However, over time, the sales of hammers have not improved. The annual sales volume is only a few hundred thousand units, which is equivalent to only 1% of Huawei's millet, and even less. The small size of the body, coupled with the impact of micro-, hammer to join Yun OS's help is not great, Ali's attitude towards the hammer is naturally worse.

Ali finally gave up the risky strategic investment and changed to a more secured pledged equity loan. As an outsider, it is difficult for us to know the details of this pledged equity transaction. But at least it can be understood that Ali does not recognize the current value of the hammer and its future prospects.

According to the C round valuation, Luo Yonghao pledged 205.38176 million shares of hammer technology worth about 750 million yuan. However, how much real money can Lo Yonghao borrow from Ali? Some people have speculated that at least 5 billion yuan or even higher. I think this speculation is overly optimistic. We must understand that the estimation of the company and its equity is itself a paper value. It is more subjective speculation about the future market prospects of the company. The status of the hammer is far from comparable at that time. Personal speculation that the money pledged to borrow cannot be more than RMB 500 million, and it is even possible that it will be less than 50% of the valuation. Otherwise, Luo Yonghao and his hammer will not be very secretive about this.

There is no difference in the advantages, marketing failure, hammer is difficult to improve

The hammer from the entrepreneurial star of the year to today's dilemma, in addition to the design of the hammer 1 is difficult to make the flaw of the accidental factors, the most fundamental reason is that the product does not attract the user's characteristics and differentiated advantages.

Some people may say that the hammer has feelings. At best, this is a corporate culture and cannot be characterized as a product. The hardware parameters are not as good as other brand flagship machines, and the price/performance ratio is difficult to match with thousands of Yuan machines. Industrial design is overly pursuing the extremes of style while ignoring practicality. The only feature that can be said is SmartisanOS. However, the non-mainstream UI design that is intended to be materialized has no advantage as a result of differentiation. In the end, it can only please Luo Yonghao’s few diehards, leaving out more mainstream users.

As the hammer mobile phone enters the mobile phone industry later, it not only lacks the right to speak in the supply chain, but also has little technology accumulation. Speaking from publicly-applied patent data, the statistical results of professional lawyer Gao Jinrong at the end of last year showed that there were only 15 patents successfully applied for hammer mobile phones, which could not be compared with Huawei's ZTE, and it was also far behind the millenium of millet. And it is very interesting that they are basically all signed by Luo Yonghao. Is it true that Luo Yonghao, who is an English teacher, is an all-rounder? According to Gao's analysis, there are two possible reasons: either Luo Yonghao is too fond of taking the limelight and one person in the company has the final say; or Luo Yonghao is too ambiguous. According to state regulations, the service invention is to give the inventor a certain amount of bonuses. By signing your own words, you can save this expenditure. Uh huh huh, how does it matter with money?

In marketing, the hammer mobile phone can be described as Luo Yonghao and Luo Yonghao. Luo Yonghao's own red-letter temperament has brought a high degree of attention to the hammer, but it has also caused an irreparable defeat to the hammer because of its over-high profile and unobstructed reputation.

Luo Yonghao has sprayed almost all of Apple’s mobile phone brands, including the respected Nokia and Motorola. If these brands are not good enough, will their users not be the fools of Luo Yonghao? Therefore, it naturally offended the fans of these mobile phone brands and planted the misfortune of marketing. In the face of Wang Ziru's doubts, Luo Yonghao did not hesitate to face the masses when he was face-to-face. While wining the little young man happily, he also tore the craftsman's spirit rendered in marketing in front of all the people. The best mobile phone in the Eastern Hemisphere was Talk about laughter. Since then, no matter how hard Luo Yonghao and his hammer team work how to whitewash, but the resulting brand image is deeply rooted, sales have been difficult to improve.

When China’s main technology, millet-based cost-effective, VIVO/OPPO main marketing, even Nubia stressed the gimmick of the stars, the hammer only left the so-called empty feelings.

The best outcome of being acquired or a hammer

After Suning was introduced last year, Luo Yonghao also hoped that he could use Suning channels and funds to help. The hammer is expected to gain a foothold in the next smart phone market. However, I don't know if Suning's resources are not very strong, or whether the impact of the hammer brand online is really too small. It seems that one year later, Suning did not bring any substantial help to the hammer. On June 28th, some media issued a statement saying that the sales volume under the hammer line was bleak, and Suning’s monthly sales of the flagship store could not even sell one, and its official agent sales fell from 60 units to 1, 2 units a day.

So what happened after being on Ali? How much better would it be than Suning? Frankly, for hammers, carrying YunOS may not be a plus, but Ali's online resources are more efficient than Suning's offline stores. Hammer is an internet brand and the audience is mostly online. The rumors are "nuts to Ali" instead of hammer technology as a whole, which also shows that Ali is more optimistic about the prospects of low-end Internet brands.

But now there are two prerequisites that need to be resolved: First, whether Ali treats the hammer like the Meizu, because the weight of the hammer is very different from the Meizu, and Ali’s resources have the same opportunity cost; the other is whether Luo Yonghao can accept it. Ali fully grasps the initiative. The two premise issues need to be solved at the same time and are indispensable. From the perspective of Ali accepting only pledged loans, the hammer does not seem to be the brand Alibaba is willing to pay for.

With the smart phone market entering the inventory stage, the competition has become more intense. The latest market data shows that both Apple and Xiaomi once again fell sharply in sales. The lack of a competitive advantage is even more difficult to imagine. Luo Yonghao obviously does not want to hang on the tree of mobile phone business forever. For this reason, it is rumored that it has entered the hottest realm of virtual reality nowadays, and Luo Yonghao also emphasized in the recent interview. In addition, the hammer also makes SmartisanOS and Mac software while making a mobile phone.

The lack of funds and weak technology accumulation hammers can be of great value in the fiercely competitive VR market, and it is also unknown. SmartisanOS market response is flat, such as access to Ali's YunOS will be beaten. What really makes a difference is that it may be an unremarkable development of Mac software. If this is the case, the hammer will basically say goodbye to the mobile phone.

In fact, if it can really be acquired, for the current hammer and Luo Yonghao, is it not a good thing, and may even be the best ending. Learning to give up can sometimes be more difficult than insisting on stubborn persistence, but it also requires courage. This is especially true for people like Luo Yonghao who have always been extravagant. From Luo Yonghao's recent statement, he seems to have had such courage, after all, companies and brands can survive stronger than anything. Can give up for the survival of enterprises and brands and naturally arrogant, this aspect must be liked by Luo Yonghao.

In fact, Luo Yonghao can not make much choices. Most of his shares are pledged to Ali. The initiative is no longer in his hands, unless someone is willing to redeem the equity for him. Do not think LeTV will be willing to pay for this high price, but added that "Luo Yonghao entered LeTV, nuts to Ali" program is more likely. Regardless of the outcome, the Luo Yonghao era of the hammer is about to end, 88.