Meitu Inc. is a Chinese
technology company
A technology company (or tech company) is an electronics-based technological company, including, for example, business relating to digital electronics, software, and internet-related services, such as e-commerce services.
Details
According to ''Fo ...
established in 2008 and headquartered in
Xiamen
Xiamen ( , ; ), also known as Amoy (, from Hokkien pronunciation ), is a sub-provincial city in southeastern Fujian, People's Republic of China, beside the Taiwan Strait. It is divided into six districts: Huli, Siming, Jimei, Tong'an, ...
,
Fujian
Fujian (; alternately romanized as Fukien or Hokkien) is a province on the southeastern coast of China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, Guangdong to the south, and the Taiwan Strait to the east. Its capi ...
.
It makes
smartphone
A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...
s and
selfie
A selfie () is a self-portrait photograph, typically taken with a digital camera or smartphone, which may be held in the hand or supported by a selfie stick. Selfies are often shared on social media, via social networking services such as F ...
apps.
Meitu's photo-editing and sharing software for smartphones is hugely popular in China and other Asian countries, attracting 456 million users who post more than 6 billion photos every month. As of October 31, 2016, Meitu's apps have been activated on over 1.1 billion unique devices worldwide. According to App Annie, Meitu has been repeatedly ranked as one of the top eight iOS non-game app developers globally from June 2014 through October 2016, together with global Internet giants such as
Alibaba
Ali Baba (character), Ali Baba is a character from the folk tale ''Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves''.
Ali Baba or Alibaba may also refer to:
Films
* Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1902 film), ''Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves'' (1902 film), a F ...
,
Apple
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...
,
Baidu
Baidu, Inc. ( ; , meaning "hundred times") is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products and artificial intelligence (AI), headquartered in Beijing's Haidian District. It is one of the la ...
,
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
,
Google
Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
,
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...
and
Tencent
Tencent Holdings Ltd. () is a Chinese multinational technology and entertainment conglomerate and holding company headquartered in Shenzhen. It is one of the highest grossing multimedia companies in the world based on revenue. It is also the w ...
.
MeituPic, their top app, has 52 million active daily users and 270 million
MAU.
On December 15, 2016, Meitu went public on the main board of the
Hong Kong Stock Exchange
The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong (SEHK, also known as Hong Kong Stock Exchange) is a stock exchange based in Hong Kong. As of the end of 2020, it has 2,538 listed companies with a combined market capitalization of HK$47 trillion. It is repor ...
. The Hong Kong Exchange has not seen a technology offering of this size in nearly a decade.
Mobile apps
Meitu currently has 13 apps installed on more than 1.1 billion unique devices worldwide, generating approximately 6 billion photos per month.
According to App Annie, Meitu is the fourth largest app developer in China. Meitu's most popular apps in China include:
*
MeituPic: Selected as one of iTunes top 10 apps of the year, Meitu has become one of the most popular photo editing apps of all time giving users access to an incredible suite of professional filters, frames, effects and other tools to turn their smartphone photos into works of art. Available on both Apple and Google Play stores for free.
** together editing- MeituPic launched a new feature in Aug 2022 which allows multiple users to edit the same picture simultaneously.
* Meipai: Launched in 2014,
Meipai has rapidly grown to become the #1 video-based social media platform in China with nearly 8 billion views per month. Meipai offers a suite of editing tools that allow users to design personalized videos and express themselves on the platform. After new terms and conditions for sponsored posts were implemented in 2017, the popularity of the platform declined, with many users moving to other short video apps. In 2018 the app received a redesign which made it more similar to its competitor
Douyin
TikTok, known in China as Douyin (), is a short-form video hosting service owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which can range in duration from 15 seconds to 10 minutes.
TikTok is an international version ...
. By 2019, Meitu had focused its attention on its original Meitu app, adding social features to it.
Mobile devices
![微信图片 20180314230810](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/%E5%BE%AE%E4%BF%A1%E5%9B%BE%E7%89%87_20180314230810.jpg)
In 2013, Meitu developed its first selfie smartphone called the Meitu Kiss. Since then, Meitu has developed several selfie phones with the two latest models, the T8 and M8, launched in February and May 2017, respectively.
Marketing strategy
Marketing strategy allows organizations to focus limited resources on best opportunities to increase sales and achieve a competitive advantage in the market.
Strategic marketing emerged in the 1970s/80s as a distinct field of study, further build ...
*
Target market
A target market, also known as serviceable obtainable market (SOM), is a group of customers within a business's serviceable available market at which a business aims its marketing efforts and resources. A target market is a subset of the total ma ...
/
Market segmentation
In marketing, market segmentation is the process of dividing a broad consumer or business market, normally consisting of existing and potential customers, into sub-groups of consumers (known as ''segments'') based on some type of shared characte ...
:
From the first Meitu phone named MeituKiss launched in May 2013 to Meitu V6 in November 2017, the target customers are female, especially female customers between the ages of 18–25. About 70% of Meitu's phone customers are from this age group.
Meitu phones are marketed for their cameras including photo advanced beautification,
Smart fill light automatically and optical image stabilization
were developed to meet target customers' needs, furthermore, the release of limited edition versions(like Meitu M8 cartoon editions
) also indulged customers' fancy. Meitu believes its understanding of its target customers drives its phone's functions development,
as the founder and CEO of Meitu, Xinhong Wu presented that Meitu phones designing more focus on user
selfie
A selfie () is a self-portrait photograph, typically taken with a digital camera or smartphone, which may be held in the hand or supported by a selfie stick. Selfies are often shared on social media, via social networking services such as F ...
experience
*Marketing Strategy -
Price
A price is the (usually not negative) quantity of payment or compensation given by one party to another in return for goods or services. In some situations, the price of production has a different name. If the product is a "good" in the c ...
:
Meitu adopt
premium pricing
Premium pricing (also called image pricing or prestige pricing) is the practice of keeping the price of one of the products or service artificially high in order to encourage favorable perceptions among buyers, based solely on the price. Premium re ...
in phones selling,
towards Meitu phones' high price, Meitu company said that the pricing was based on improving the
user experience, and the
CEO
A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...
Xinhong Wu said that Meitu phones' customers are insensitive to price when challenged as to why their new phone cost
RMB
The renminbi (; symbol: ¥; ISO code: CNY; abbreviation: RMB) is the official currency of the People's Republic of China and one of the world's most traded currencies, ranking as the fifth most traded currency in the world as of April 2022. ...
5,099 (around
USD
The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
805) in 2017.
*Marketing Strategy -
Distribution(or Place):
Online selling mainly without official physical stores, but Meitu phone has its offline experience Shops, and cooperating with Chinese famous online retailers such as
Taobao
Taobao () is a Chinese online shopping platform. It is headquartered in Hangzhou and is owned by Alibaba. According to Alexa rank, it is the eighth most-visited website globally in 2021. Taobao.com was registered on April 21, 2003 by Alibaba Cl ...
and
Suning Suning may refer to:
* Suning.com, a Chinese retailer, originally corner Jiangsu Road and Ninghai Road, co-founded by Zhang Jindong, was known as Suning Appliance Co., Ltd. and Suning Commerce Group Co., Ltd.
* Suning Holdings Group, the fourth lar ...
.
*Marketing Strategy -
Digital marketing
Digital marketing is the component of marketing that uses the Internet and online based digital technologies such as desktop computers, mobile phones and other digital media and platforms to promote products and services. Its development duri ...
and
Promotion
Promotion may refer to:
Marketing
* Promotion (marketing), one of the four marketing mix elements, comprising any type of marketing communication used to inform or persuade target audiences of the relative merits of a product, service, brand or i ...
:
#
Sales promotion
Sales promotion is one of the elements of the promotional mix. The primary elements in the promotional mix are advertising, personal selling, direct marketing and publicity/public relations. Sales promotion uses both media and non-media marketing ...
:Meitu phones' online selling platforms only run sales promotion in some festivals, activities including discounts, online coupons and freebies, all Meitu phones released with limited amount, such as only 20,000 M8 cartoon
limited-edition
The terms special edition, limited edition, and variants such as deluxe edition, or collector's edition, are used as a marketing incentive for various kinds of products, originally published products related to the arts, such as books, prints, r ...
be sold in May 2017,
so the promotion intensity on online selling platforms is always weak, the company mainly use
hunger marketing
Hunger marketing is a marketing strategy that targets the emotions of human beings. It relies on psychological tactics to create a sense of desire among consumers, making them crave products that others want as well. By manipulating emotions, it e ...
to inspire customers' purchasing desire.
#
Digital marketing
Digital marketing is the component of marketing that uses the Internet and online based digital technologies such as desktop computers, mobile phones and other digital media and platforms to promote products and services. Its development duri ...
:Meitu company used digital marketing as the method for products promotion, approaches they adopted including
search engine optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of Web traffic, website traffic to a website or a web page from web search engine, search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic (known as "natural" or "Organ ...
(SEO),
search engine marketing
Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) primarily through paid advertising. SEM may incorporate search engine opti ...
(SEM), through mobile phone
apps and
social media marketing
Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service. Although the terms e-marketing and digital marketing are still dominant in academia, social media marketing is becoming more popular for ...
.
Meitu company cooperates mainly with
Baidu
Baidu, Inc. ( ; , meaning "hundred times") is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products and artificial intelligence (AI), headquartered in Beijing's Haidian District. It is one of the la ...
search engine
A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...
, which targets market in
Mainland China
"Mainland China" is a geopolitical term defined as the territory governed by the People's Republic of China (including islands like Hainan or Chongming), excluding dependent territories of the PRC, and other territories within Greater China. ...
, and started the formal cooperation with
Google
Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
DoubleClick for Publishers
Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords) is an online advertising platform developed by Google, where advertisers bid to display brief advertisements, service offerings, product listings, or videos to web users. It can place ads both in the result ...
from September 2017 and the cooperation targets potential customers in
Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...
,
furthermore, with regard to marketing through mobile phone apps, Meitu company made use of their own brand apps to promote their phones like
MeituPic, BeautyPlus and Meipai, and advertising formats including banners ads, pop-up ads and short video ads, but these apps as advertising platrofms not promote their own products only, but also undertake other brands' advertisements like
Snickers
Snickers is a chocolate bar made by the American company Mars, Incorporated, consisting of nougat topped with caramel and peanuts that is encased in milk chocolate. The annual global sales of Snickers was over $3 billion .
In the United Ki ...
's advertisement in Meipai.
Meitu phones' advertising mainly through
social media
Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...
platforms like
Baidu Paste Bar
Baidu Tieba () is a Chinese online forum hosted by the Chinese web services company Baidu. Baidu Tieba was established on December 3, 2003 as an online community that heavily integrates Baidu's search engine. Users may search for a topic of int ...
and
Sina Weibo
Sina Weibo (新浪微博) is a Chinese microblogging ( weibo) website. Launched by Sina Corporation on 14 August 2009, it is one of the biggest social media platforms in China, with over 582 million monthly active users (252 million daily acti ...
in mainland China, the company invited
Angelababy, a famous Chinese actress as the
brand ambassador
A brand ambassador (sometimes also called a corporate ambassador) is a person engaged by an organization or company to represent its brand in a positive light, helping to increase brand awareness and sales. The brand ambassador is meant to embod ...
,
moreover, Meitu phones with thousands of celebrity customers (most of them are famous stars and bloggers),
the popularity of Meitu phones within these celebrity customer group improved the product's awareness, and made the product be more topical within social media platforms.
Celebrity customers have been making contribution in Meitu phone promotion within
Sina Weibo
Sina Weibo (新浪微博) is a Chinese microblogging ( weibo) website. Launched by Sina Corporation on 14 August 2009, it is one of the biggest social media platforms in China, with over 582 million monthly active users (252 million daily acti ...
, all of them with millions even tens of millions of followers, like the brand ambassador
Angelababy, she has more than 8500 million followers in Weibo, while the phones' types could be shown when users post information in Weibo, so when these celebrity customers post Meitu phones' advertisements or use Meitu phones to post other messages, their followers could capture Meitu relevant information,
and during the process, the Meitu phone has been promoted, and these famous people's participating also create positive celebrity effect, which could help the Meitu phone grab press attention and improve product's awareness.
Popularity of Meitu apps
Meitu's photo-editing and sharing software for smartphones are hugely popular throughout Asia, particularly in China, Thailand, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam with each country being home to more than 10 million users.
India has the second highest number of users for the app outside of China and is considered Meitu's biggest overseas market. It has also been downloaded by more than 10 million people in Brazil and the US and globally has more than 500 million users.
Offices
Meitu is based in Xiamen, China. Outside of China, Meitu has set up offices in Brazil, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Indonesia, Singapore and the United States.
Controversy
On January 20, 2017,
CNN
CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...
reported Meitu apps are collecting information about users for advertising purposes, and sends that data back to servers in China. But Meitu denied CNN's report that the app is leaking users' privacy. The company said collecting users' data is to "optimize app performance, its effects and features, and to better understand our consumer engagement with in-app advertisements" in an official statement. The permissions include certain geolocation and app-checking code to comply with advertising network requirements in China, where jailbroken devices can be used to defraud advertisers, and advertisers may demand that their messages be geofenced to appear only in certain regions. Apple confirmed that the app was and remains in compliance.
Meitu's makers are quoted as saying: “Our mission is to make the world a more beautiful place”.
Beauty standards in China have become linked to the Meitu definitions of beauty. It has become common practice in China for people, largely women, to take their Meitu edited pictures to plastic surgeons as examples for what they want to look like.
In June 2020, the
Government of India
The Government of India (ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, c ...
banned Meitu app with 58 other Chinese origin apps citing data and privacy issues. The
border tensions in 2020 between India and China might have also played a role in the ban.
References
{{Electronics industry in China
Software companies established in 2008
Chinese companies established in 2008
Manufacturing companies based in Xiamen
Electronics companies of China
Mobile phone companies of China
Mobile phone manufacturers
Chinese brands
Companies listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange
Digital marketing
2016 initial public offerings
Internet censorship in India