Every domestic mobile phone brand has had the dream of entering the high-end market and competing with Apple.
As early as the era of China Cool Union, Coolpad took the lead as the vanguard, in 2014 launched the Coolpad Grand View 4 Dual Card Premium Edition, this phone is equipped with a Full HD 5.9-inch screen on the front, using Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 quad-core processor, the main frequency is 2.3GHz, RAM up to 3GB. At that time, this was an extremely rare configuration specification in the domestic 4G mobile phone lineup, which was obviously aimed at Apple and Samsung.
ZTE and Huawei are not far behind, and have said that they will do subtraction and develop to high-end mobile phones and high-end mobile phones. However, this challenge to Apple, before it hurt Apple, was disrupted by "its own people" such as Xiaomi and OV.
In 2020, domestic mobile phones once again launched a scramble war to explore the high-end market, at that time, Huawei was sanctioned to trigger the anger of the crowd, and the voice of Apple was not endless, which seemed to create an excellent opportunity for domestic mobile phones. However, Apple's one-trick price cut has once again hit the domestic mobile phone in the high-end market with almost no counterforce.
According to the latest report released by Counterpoint Research, in October, Apple surpassed vivo to become the largest smartphone manufacturer in China's market with a market share of 22%. In contrast, no domestic mobile phone has successfully made a name in the high-end market.
Domestic mobile phones have long been different from the past, we also have no expectations for apple mobile phones without new ideas, but Apple still relies on high-end machines to defeat all domestic mobile phones, this fact cruelly shattered the high-end dreams of many domestic brands?
The technological advantage is once again biased in favor of Apple
Countering technology with technology is the main way to play in the high-end machine market. Before Huawei was sanctioned, according to IDC's market share of smartphones above $600 in China in the first half of 2020, Huawei's market share was 44.1%, and the sum of Apple's share accounted for 88.1%. This is the first time that domestic mobile phones have the opportunity to restrict Apple in the high-end market, in addition to the advantages of geography, the core nature is Huawei's self-developed chip capabilities have been recognized by consumers.
Huawei's self-developed Kirin chip has maintained a steady performance improvement from each generation since the Kirin 960, and by the time of the Kirin 990 in 2019, it is reported that it has been at the same level as Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855/865 chip performance in the same period.
But Huawei's high-end road has stopped, and this year, other domestic mobile phone brands have also collectively lost in the high-end market.
The reasons for this can also be explained simply and clearly from a technical point of view. On the one hand, when consumers realize that the hardware configuration upgrade of domestic mobile phones is only a pile of components, and there is no independent technology, it is difficult to arouse their replacement needs; on the other hand, domestic mobile phones are pit by Qualcomm. Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 chip frequently causes mobile phones to be hot, and the battery is not durable, so that the use experience of domestic high-end mobile phones has been criticized by users.
This indirectly illustrates a problem, the key to breaking Apple's technical barriers has never been in the hands of domestic mobile phone manufacturers themselves, but relies on Qualcomm, MediaTek, TSMC and other upstream giants in the supply chain. Especially Qualcomm, domestic mobile phone brands compete for the first time of Qualcomm chips, which is hoping that high-performance chips can drive their flagship machines or high-end machines.
But now a bad news is that the chip gap between Qualcomm and Apple may be further widened.
Recently, it has been reported that Apple has signed a contract with TSMC to produce customized 5G modems for its 2023 iPhone series, and with the deepening of cooperation between the two sides, Apple is expected to obtain "priority" in TSMC's 3nm process. For TSMC, the impact of losing Huawei's big customer is being filled by Apple, so TSMC's current 5nm, 7nm and next year's 3nm production capacity are priority to ensure that Apple, and chips from other manufacturers must be queued.
As the second largest customer, Qualcomm, once it delays the product progress on the 3nm node, it is likely to be unable to keep up with the iteration speed of Apple's chips. Extending downstream, the technological gap between domestic mobile phone brands and Apple can not only not be reduced, but may be widened.
Especially in the current chip shortage environment, Apple's counter-trend growth in the downstream market can allow Apple to obtain better resources in the upstream supply chain, while domestic mobile phones such as millet and OV have to bear the negative impact of insufficient production capacity. On November 23, Xiaomi released its third-quarter financial report showing that smartphone shipments were 43.9 million units, down 5.8% from 46.6 million units in the same period last year.
As early as 2014, some media people proposed that domestic mobile phone manufacturers want to enter the high-end market, the first thing to do is to change the concept of blindly pursuing hardware configuration parameters, to do products that really have a good user experience. After many years, the status quo has never changed.
The failure of the high-end market is essentially the failure of Internet marketing
Carefully observing the mobile phone market in the past two or three years, it is obvious that there is less lively sound and more silence. Especially this year, the major mobile phone manufacturers are desperate to hit the new machine into the high-end market, but there is neither a flood of brainwashing advertisements and dazzling celebrity endorsements, nor a spit war of words between friends and businessmen. And after the "Yu Big Mouth" stopped, even the harsh words to the apple were slightly boring.
Has the "marketing era" of domestic mobile phones really passed?
In the long battle of domestic mobile phones chasing Apple, in fact, the value of marketing is very important. The smartphone market transitioned from cottage machines to domestic machines, Xiaomi contributed indispensably, and the rise of Xiaomi was due to the innovation of Internet marketing. Even in the process of Huawei relying on self-developed chips to break into the high-end market, it is undeniable that its marketing has played a positive role in competing for Apple mobile phone users.
However, this year, the failure of marketing may also be an important reason for the failure of domestic mobile phones to attack the high-end market, which means that in the future, domestic mobile phones will have less of a key advantage when competing with Apple, and it will be more difficult to explore the high-end market.
The failure of domestic mobile phone marketing stems from two points, one, in the past two years, with the smart phone market touching the ceiling, the innovation of Internet marketing has gradually become mediocre and cannot attract consumers; second, after Huawei was sanctioned, the change in national sentiment under the desire of a technology power makes consumers seem unwilling to pay for software and hardware upgrades other than independent technology, at least in the short term, it is difficult to stimulate their replacement demand.
According to the "2020 Second 5G Terminal Consumption Trend Report" released by China Mobile Terminal Laboratory, the average replacement cycle of consumers has been further extended compared with previous years, and the average replacement cycle has reached 25.3 months. Li Kaixin, former vice president of Huawei, also said that the replacement cycle of consumers is much longer than the original, basically twice the original.
Why don't consumers want to switch machines? An Apple mobile phone user said, "Now the concept of domestic (new models) are well packaged, but the hand is enough, wait and see", while another Android mobile phone user said that the more domestic mobile phones emphasize configuration parameters, the more they give themselves the feeling of building hardware, especially now they are still competing for the first release of Qualcomm chips, no matter which first, are not Qualcomm chips used?
These two statements represent the psychology of many consumers, excessive performance leads to users who hold the concept of "as long as it is not bad", use mobile phones for a longer time, and the lack of selling points of new machines exposes the state of domestic mobile phone manufacturers eating old, and let users "hate iron is not steel", this sentiment is particularly soaring after Huawei was sanctioned.
Reflected in the high-end market, consumers will not pay for the main high-configuration domestic mobile phones, which also leads to the failure of marketing publicity around high configuration.
In the high-end market, users pay for the high premium of the product, and need to let users perceive the unique selling point of the product, for domestic mobile phones, this selling point will not be a hardware configuration in the short term, unless the hardware realizes technical autonomy.
Domestic mobile phones "missed" the folding screen
In the high-end market, although Apple is dominant, Samsung has always had a place, even after the complete loss of the domestic market.
According to a report by Strategy Analytics, 25% of revenue in the global market in the first quarter of this year came from ultra-high-end smartphones with wholesale prices of more than $900, and Apple and Samsung dominate these lucrative segments. Data from another agency, Counterpoint, also shows that in the second quarter of this year, Apple and Samsung's share of the global mobile phone market of more than $400 reached 74%, 57% and 17% respectively.
And in the third quarter, Apple released a new machine, which led to a surge in sales, at which time, although Samsung's market share in the global market fell by 1.9% year-on-year, Samsung's high-end smartphones still achieved growth.
This is thanks to the folding screen. When Royole Technology, a "unicorn company" that does domestic folding screen technology, is boiling over because of large-scale wage arrears, Samsung folding screens have already begun to sweep the global high-end market.
ZDNET, a well-known overseas technology digital media, has released a "2021 Best Mobile Phone TOP10 List", of which the top five models are iPhone 13 Pro Max, Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3 5G, iPhone 13, Samsung Galaxy S20 FE, Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G. Judging from the ranking, the product strength of Samsung folding screen mobile phones is even higher than other models.
In the high-end machine, Samsung has taken a differentiated route with the help of folding screens, which is actually exactly what domestic mobile phones lack in high-end machines.
Vivo X60, OPPO FindX3, OnePlus 9, Xiaomi 11Ultra released by mobile phone manufacturers this year, three of which are flagship machines equipped with Snapdragon 888, the performance selling points are similar, the appearance, feel is not much different, more than 60w fast charging, PTZ anti-shake has also become the standard. Apart from the difference in image performance, there are almost no other obvious differences.
When the folding screen turned out, domestic mobile phones were once on the same starting line as Apple and Samsung, but obviously they did not seize this opportunity. This year, xiaomi, OPPO and other domestic mobile phones have re-bet on the folding screen, but they are somewhat hindsighted.
On the one hand, Samsung has now "monopolized" the folding screen mobile phone market; the global display field authoritative consulting agency DSCC survey data shows that the total shipment of folding screen mobile phones in the Q3 quarter of 2021 reached 2.6 million, an increase of 215% from the previous quarter and a year-on-year increase of 480%. Among them, Samsung accounted for 93% of foldable smartphone shipments.
On the other hand, Samsung's folding screen technology is relatively leading, building a certain technical barrier. Such as the screen, the industry's early inner screen protective film is basically plastic material, low hardness, easy to leave creases and scratches. When Samsung launched its second-generation folding screen product, it developed an ultra-thin flexible glass (UTG) material, which improved the hardness, scratch resistance, and texture by a large margin.
Samsung, which originally has a technical advantage on the screen, once the future folding screen becomes a major trend in the development of the smart phone market, it will inevitably become the biggest beneficiary, which also means that the high-end road of domestic mobile phones will be more difficult to go.
Will domestic mobile phones eventually stop at the high end? In the current technical constraints and market environment, the answer may be pessimistic.
The Tao is always reasonable, and has used the name Crooked Dao, the Internet and the new media in the science and technology circle. The WeChat public account of the same name: Dao always has a reason (daotmt). This article is an original article, and any form of reproduction without retaining the author's relevant information is not retained.