Why this innovative tech company is looking to young people

With a strategy built on artificial intelligence and the Internet of things, realme’s platform is poised to be a technology ecosystem for a new generation.

In the ultra-competitive field of smartphones and personal technology, global corporate giants have long dominated the marketplace. Faced with the competition’s seemingly unlimited resources, new companies have found it nearly impossible to keep up. But Realme, a young and determined disruptor, is up for the challenge.

Today, realme is the seventh-biggest smartphone brand in the world. It has a presence in 61 markets on five continents and more than 85 million users and customers. It has already sold 50 million smartphones faster than any other company. That is growth at warp speed—but it didn’t start out that way.

In 2018, when tech entrepreneur Sky Li founded realme, there were more than 200 brands of mobile phones, and the top six held 74% of the market. The pathway for new players was extremely narrow. But Li relished the role of underdog, and his unshakeable belief in his strategy for success has produced undeniable results.

That strategy is built on listening to the young—those who love technology, embrace the latest trends, and strive to stand out from the pack. Through a variety of virtual channels, face-to-face interactions, and sustained dialogue, realme has intimate knowledge of the demands and desires of this generation, which it uses to fulfil their need not just for smartphones, but also for a smart life.

And so realme is equipping its smartphones with AIOT: artificial intelligence and the Internet of things. Together, these capabilities form the foundation of TechLife, the company’s trendsetting AIOT ecosystem for smart homes and digital lifestyles.

Realme’s AIOT strategy is known as “1+5+T”: “1” stands for the smartphone; “5,” for true wireless stereo, wearables, televisions, smart speakers, and laptops; and “T,” for TechLife. With this strategy, Realme is dedicated to taking the lead in meeting consumer demands for smart solutions to health, entertainment, and intelligent connection. For instance, realme smartphones provide coordinated operation of intelligent household devices using multiple systems, which could be the key to transforming the lifestyles and work patterns of young users.

To accomplish this, TechLife puts the user in charge, and to give people a taste of the full experience, realme is creating AIOT boutiques where anyone can try it out. These boutiques also serve as a vehicle for two-way communications with realme users, as their feedback, ideas, and suggestions are integral to developing and fine-tuning TechLife.

Realme recognizes that young people will guide the company’s strategy as it populates its AIOT landscape, and the company intends to work with leading home appliance brands that have the ability to assimilate into the TechLife platform to deliver on all their customers’ needs. To fuel these partnerships, the will be searching for and selecting innovative and dynamic startups to support. For those partners, realme will share its sales channels and supply chains, and in turn, the startups will help enrich the AIOT ecosystem. It’s a win-win business strategy, says Li, but the real winner is the consumer, who will be able to enjoy a more complete AIOT experience.

If that sounds ambitious, consider how far realme has come in just three years. Li and the rapidly growing team at realme thrive on challenge. They see no limits to what they can create. “The harder I push, the more I find within myself,’’ Li is fond of saying. And you need look no further than the company’s history of innovation for proof. Its phones were the first in the world with a 64-megapixel camera, one of the first to introduce the 125W UltraDart charging technology, and among the first equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 chip.

Earlier this month realme also had its first global rollout of a new product: the realme GT. As its 2021 flagship model, the GT is designed to shake up the entire smartphone industry—offering the most feature-rich, high-performance smartphone in the global market at roughly half the price of competing models.

More and more, a new generation of tech users is finding that realme is a brand that sees them, hears them, and designs products not just for them, but for the lives they want to live.

“Our goal is to build a complete AIOT experience for young people around the world,” says Li. And with an eye toward the future, the company is well on its way to accomplishing just that.

Note: This article was created and published by realme. To learn more, visit www.realme.com/global.