iQOO 13 Priced Starting at 3999 Yuan: Whats the Strategy Behind It?

iQOO 13 Priced Starting at 3999 Yuan: Whats the Strategy Behind It?Following the release of the new iQOO 13, its starting price of 3999 yuan has become the focus of attention. Amidst the general price increase, how did iQOO achieve this pricing, and how do they ensure user experience? Luo Feng, Vice President of iQOO Products, reveals the answers in an exclusive interview

iQOO 13 Priced Starting at 3999 Yuan: Whats the Strategy Behind It?

Following the release of the new iQOO 13, its starting price of 3999 yuan has become the focus of attention. Amidst the general price increase, how did iQOO achieve this pricing, and how do they ensure user experience? Luo Feng, Vice President of iQOO Products, reveals the answers in an exclusive interview.

Luo Feng frankly admits that the starting price of 3999 yuan for iQOO 13 exceeded many people's expectations, including his own. However, this pricing is not arbitrary but rather has long-term strategic considerations. In the short term, iQOO has sacrificed some profit at this price point, which can be seen as a long-term investment. Despite this, iQOO has not compromised on product durability, quality, or investment in core components. To put consumers at ease, iQOO has also adopted public notarization for full frame performance, testing randomly selected phones from the production line and demonstrating consistently excellent results, which fully proves the product's quality assurance.

In the long term, iQOO's goal is to achieve a qualitative breakthrough in the performance gaming user group as soon as possible, becoming a leader in product and experience in this field. China has a large mobile game user base, with 200 million heavy mobile game users, and iQOO's existing user base is close to 40 million, with annual sales between 13 and 14 million units. Although the market potential is huge, there is still a long way to go to truly penetrate the heavy gaming user market. Therefore, iQOO views this pricing as an investment in the future, hoping to gain reasonable returns in the long term by meeting users' needs for performance and gaming experience.

To meet the needs of heavy gaming users, iQOO 13 has spared no effort in performance investment. iQOO maintains a close partnership with Qualcomm. However, the system end requires Qualcomm to open up core underlying hardware information to improve collaboration efficiency, which is the biggest challenge. Luo Feng revealed that the two companies spent a lot of time discussing their concepts in the early stages. iQOO presented Qualcomm with the scale of the heavy gaming market and relevant data, and Qualcomm also conducted similar data discussions internally. Eventually, the two sides reached a consensus and the cooperation became smooth.

Future collaboration between the two sides will cover areas such as gaming, display, and AI. They will also embed the capabilities of the Q chip into Qualcomm's SoC to further enhance performance. The Q chip plays a key role in performance improvements in iQOO 13. After its hardware algorithm is hardened, its energy efficiency is significantly higher than the efficiency of general software algorithms running on the GPU, which is the core reason why iQOO uses a separate Q chip for super-resolution and super-frame.

iQOO hopes to integrate the features of the Q chip into SoC in a more efficient way in the future. When a consensus and complete ecosystem are formed, the Q chip's mission will be complete. However, in this process, iQOO will continuously explore efficient ways to integrate the Q chip into SoC to enhance overall performance. In the future, iQOO remains open to cooperation between the Q chip and Qualcomm. If Qualcomm or SoC manufacturers are willing to have a separate module for high-performance computing and design hardware circuits based on iQOO's algorithm characteristics, the two sides can collaborate.

Regarding the changes in imaging this time, Luo Feng stated that while iQOO 13 has made some trade-offs in imaging, its strengths in heavy game performance, battery life, screen, and eye protection have been extended sufficiently. For example, in terms of screen eye protection, it uses a screen from the domestic manufacturer BOE, and its eye protection effect has been well received by users. In terms of heat dissipation, to provide a better running environment for games, iQOO 13 has allocated the space for heat dissipation, while making the lens extremely thin to meet the gaming user's need for better handfeel. Additionally, it is equipped with a 6150mAh battery and 120W fast charging to address the issue of heavy game power consumption. In terms of software and algorithm optimization, performance scheduling algorithms such as frame sensing engine are constantly being improved.

iQOO 13 emphasizes the performance flagship positioning in product definition. Although there are some changes in publicity and design, the core is still to meet users' need for performance and gaming experience. When facing the competition from similar platform performance phones that may appear six months later, iQOO 13's advantage lies in its accurate grasp of target user needs, namely providing top-notch heavy game performance experience.

In the future, iQOO will continue to focus on serving heavy performance game users, providing the best gaming and performance experience across different price segments. At the same time, with the continuous development of technology, iQOO will continuously optimize product performance, while meeting the performance demands of games, it will also enhance aspects such as imaging when there are spare resources, to meet users' needs in more scenarios.