GLOBAL TOP BRANDS

The award ceremony of “2012-2013 Consumer Electronics Top 10 Brands from China” was held in Las Vegas today, and the 46th Consumer Electronics Show (CES) made the grand opening yesterday. The ceremony attracted the presence of more than 300 media outlets home and abroad and drew attention from the industry around the world. As the seventh annual event, this year the theme is “convergence and penetration, focus on intelligent innovation”. Ten Chinese enterprises were selected as canonical in business convergence and penetration – namely Haier, Hisense, Changhong, Lenovo, TCL, Great Wall, Konka, BOE, Desay and Huawei – came under the spotlight on the award ceremony, where they received medals from Bob Carrigan, CEO of International Data Group (IDG). In particular, TCL, Hisense, Changhong and BOE won special awards from the organizing committee. The award-winning companies collectively show the world that Chinese enterprises have successfully broken through the bottleneck of development via intelligent innovation and found a path to a sustainable future.

Today, inter-connectivity, intelligence and convergence have become the three major trends in the international consumer electronics industry. The acceleration of 3C convergence and tri-networks integration, coupled with scale production, socialization and service-orientation of the consumer electronics industry, are bound to result in profound changes. The industrial chain restructuring and structural adjustment as a consequence of the changes will also have far-reaching influences on the industry. In face of both huge opportunities and challenges, Chinese enterprises have to back themselves on constant innovation to move ahead and find a path to success. Meanwhile, in the last couple of years, Chinese companies have shifted their roles and positioning in the consumer electronics industry from the previously market and production base to branding-based and up-scale-based. On the platform of CES, Chinese consumer electronics industry has an opportunity to collectively demonstrate their brand strengths and showcase their premium quality and wisdom to the world.

The “2012-2013 Consumer Electronics Top 10 Brands from China”, sponsored by IDG and co-sponsored by top research firm IDC and CEO CIO Magazine, aims to present the glamour of Chinese brands to the world, to have their voices better heard in the international arena, and to find a solution to branding sustainability, thus pushing forward the development of consumer electronics industry in China. The event has been successfully held for seven years. This year, it continued to follow the principle of openness and transparency, and selected the final 10 winners through third-party data evaluation, online vote, and assessment by the judge panel, which was made up by experts from the sponsor, co-sponsors, and renowned vendors and patent organizations in the world. The award ceremony was held in the same period that CES takes place, an event regarded as the herald of the consumer electronics industry, so that the winner companies successfully demonstrated their R&D capabilities to Chinese and foreign media, generating remarkable coverage on CES Daily and TWICE CES Special, and hot discussion and follow-up reports by more than 300 media outlets from China and rest of the world. At the same time, the Chinese companies also get a chance to quickly find international partners, strengthen overseas channels, and proactively expand the overseas market while also enhancing brand image in the oversea market.

Though the global consumer electronics market for the first time exceeded USD 1 trillion in 2012, the developed and the major emerging economies in the world are suffering from economic sluggishness, while the three major economic engines in the world fail to concert at the same time. Europe is witnessing a slump of economy, and the U.S. and China are undergoing economic slowdown. China has become a major destination where global consumer electronics giants make premier release of their latest technologies and products, as well as the origin place and test field for new technologies and products. It is expected to replace the U.S. to become the largest consumer electronics market in the world. But there are meanwhile obvious signs that China´s economic growth is slowing down. The consumer electronics industry in China, in seek of new prosperity of the industry and source of growth other than GDP growth rate and PMI index, will have to carry out inside-out reform to keep unleashing the growth vigor. It is more important than ever as about how to find a path between business internal development and the market-driven growth in order to mount onto a higher level of the value chain. It will also be an important task for ambitious companies to better integrate specific technologies, R&D and production, to converge marketing, sales and value creation, and to penetrate these elements into different layers of the enterprise and the market.

In addition, despite the fact that the R&D investment from China accounts for 13% of the global total and that China’s R&D forces are good at progressing the engineering innovation, Chinese enterprises in the future will need to focus more on product innovation, organizational management and integration of new information technology, bio-technology and material technology. Meanwhile, the large number of patent registration in China has covered up its weakness in dimensions such as cited patent. Chinese enterprises have to design smarter manufacturing strategies and, by adapting themselves to the new condition, beef up both soft and hard power of the innovation and technology competition. In this situation, “2012-2013 Consumer Electronics Top 10 Brands from China” builds the right platform for Chinese brands to collectively showcase their power to the world. In the new age, convergence and penetration, plus intelligent innovation of brands, will enable a greater number of Chinese enterprises engaged in consumer electronics to embrace the challenge of globalization and seize the best opportunities to take the vantage point in the global competition.

On the award ceremony, Jennifer Xu, Vice President of IDG Asia Pacific, said, “Today, China’s consumer electronics companies are supplying increasingly greater driving forces to the global industry. Meanwhile, the convergence, penetration and innovation by the Chinese companies are acceleratingon the whole. IDG would like to give them an opportunity to display on the international arena. As every year the CES attracts the most excellent consumer electronics vendors and hundreds of thousands of professionals from around the world, the 2012-2013 Consumer Electronics Top 10 Brands from China event enables the Chinese consumer electronics companies to stand out from the peers on this influential show, so that the prominenceof the Chinese brands could be recognized by consumers around the world.”

This is the seventh year in a row that Haier enters the winner list. The company takes the prize as a full recognition of its innovation and brand influence. Today, as smart convergence and mobile Internet has become the mainstream trend in the consumer electronics industry, Haier is endeavoring with all efforts to show its power of intelligence and innovation to partners and customers around the world and entering the global market with the self-owned brand. As the No. 1 large household appliance brand in the world, Haier will expand to multiple segments via overall arrangement and integration of global resources. The company will stick to indigenous innovation and strive towards a total solution provider of digital family and smart services, and constantly create brand value in daily practice.

Wang Zhihao, Vice President of Hisense, said, “Hisense has been upgrading the oversea developing strategies since May 2012. This revolution starting from the identification system signals that the globalization of Hisense has been accelerated. Driven by the dual forces – overseas independent branding strategy and intelligent strategy, Hisense witnessed rapid growth in major markets including the U.S., Europe, Australia and Africa. Today’s prize is a proof that our globalization efforts have been recognized by the market and the users. The prophecy that ‘the more profitable part lies in the overseas market’ by our President, Zhou Houjian, has proved to be right.”

Li Dongsheng, President of TCL, said, “Cross-boundary convergence in the consumer electronics industry is gaining speed. The heightened integration of industries such as electronics manufacturing, information service and digital content not only expanded the innovation frontier of the consumer electronics industry, but also brewed new industrial patterns. In this background, TCL will integrate effective resources to push forward multi-industry linkages and innovation through chained cooperation with Internet vendors, software vendors, operators, third-party application developers and even consumers. Thus we are able to bring brand new consumption experience to the consumers, enhance our brand power, facilitate the product-driven and industry-driven innovation and move towards a greater variety of value-added services.

Wu Jiang, Director of Board and Vice General Manager of Changhong, President and General Manager of Changhong Overseas Industry Group, said, “Today the global consumer electronics industry is in the period when challenges and opportunities co-exist. On one hand, the strategic adjustment of Japanese companies gives peers in the world, including those in China, unprecedented opportunities. On the other hand, the global macro-economy with huge uncertainty as a result of the financial crisis and the resurge of trade protection bring about lots of challenges. In the future, smart technology and new display technology will bring about new hope and driving force of new growth. Chinese company should seize the opportunity of industrial adjustment and technological revolution to develop the emerging markets. Changhong made noticeable achievements right with the co-existence of challenges and opportunities.

Yu Jiyong, Vice President of Great Wall Computer, said, “In the age of tri-networks integration, it is only sensible for companies to take part in industrial and technological convergence and innovative development. The technological convergence is rooted in innovation, while industry and technological convergence can provide broader market space for companies to utilize the competitive edges to develop core businesses and new industrial value chain, so as to beef up our core competency and branding power.”

Zhang Yu, Vice President of BOE, said, “We are greatly honored to receive this award. As the only high-tech company holding the complete core technology of panel display in mainland China, it is R&D, innovation and industry convergence that brought BOE to the position today. Innovation and convergence are the inexhaustible driving force for business sustainability. BOE will continuously and steadily invest in product innovation and branding to improve our brand awareness on the international market and raise our market share, to drive the development of China’s panel display industry in the long run.”

Chen Yuehua, President of Konka, said, “Our pursuit towards perfection is endless, and our innovation follows closely and ubiquitously with customer needs. We are very glad to receive the award. Combination of the two trends – 3-Screen convergence and intelligence -- brings about new opportunities to the color TV industry. Konka has acutely captured the trend of the industry and the key nodes in the development, and has achieved perfectly in product innovation and management innovation to become a leader in the market.

Jiang Jie, Chairman and President of Desay, said, “I’m delighted Desay entered the winner list again this year. Over the years, Desay has insisted on the business principle of ‘focus on core business, integration of manufacturing and financing, technological innovation, and profitability first’. Technological innovation is essentially important for our business to build core competency. Right because of the philosophy of driving development by innovation and heading towards to the future with technology, Desay has made profound progresses.”

In a context where China and the rest of the world are going through profound economic transformation, Chinese consumer electronics enterprises with the ambition of becoming a global leader need to capture the opportunity of integration and penetration, and keep enhancing their core competency of intelligent innovation. The  Consumer Electronics Top 10 Brands from China award ceremony serves as the arena for Chinese companies to collectively showcase their abilities to the world during CES. Over the seven years since it was initiated, the event  has been continuously driving Chinese consumer electronics companies to build core competency, elevate competitive edges, realize further innovative upgrading, win more discourse in the international community, and enhance the globalization of Chinese brands. We believe China’s consumer electronics industry headed by the leading players, which have been already recognized by the international industry, will bring wonders one after another to the world.