Image source @ Visual China
Text | The author | Lu Li
What is the first thing contemporary people do when they wake up every morning? What's the last thing to do at night before going to bed?
The answer is probably all "look at the phone."
As the most mature electronic hardware product industry today, smart phones are undoubtedly the category that is most closely related to the vast majority of consumers and the most concerned by consumers.
The performance of the maturity of the industry is that the domestic smart phone industry has been stable in recent years, and the top five lineups leading the industry firmly occupy more than 90% of the market share, and the competitive situation is long-lasting.
This year, the trend of the domestic smartphone market has been affected by the black swan event to the greatest extent, ushering in a wave of major changes.
The old kings fall, the market fragments, and the new stars rise.
01 Epidemic and sanctions, drastic changes in the industry
There are two main black swan events that have a huge impact on the development of the domestic smartphone industry this year, one is the epidemic and the other is sanctions.
First of all, looking at the epidemic, no one can imagine that the new crown epidemic that broke out at the beginning of last year is still raging around the world today, compared with the rapid control of the domestic epidemic, many overseas countries have not been able to take effective countermeasures.
In this context, the global demand for electronic products surges, enterprise employees, school students work from home, study, PC, tablet and other electronic devices, data center server sales soared, such as apple iPad and Mac sales last year, Nvidia data center revenue have hit a record.
The demand for chips that was already blowing up due to the critical period of 5G communication transformation was once again burning, and the chip manufacturer's region was affected by the epidemic problem that appeared from time to time, and it was necessary to stop work and production every three to five minutes, exacerbating the problem of short supply.
For example, on June 7, semiconductor packaging and testing giant Jingyuan Electronics issued an announcement that due to the impact of the epidemic, it is expected that production in June will drop by 30% to 35%.
Such an in and out has caused a huge obstacle to the global smartphone production capacity from the upstream supply chain level.
Therefore, since the second half of last year, both 4G and 5G chips have faced the problem of shortage of goods, which has directly slowed down the layout of 5G mobile phones by many mobile phone manufacturers.
Secondly, the so-called "sanctions" stem from the change in the US policy toward China, an important embodiment of the Sino-US trade friction, the United States on the domestic smartphone leader Huawei block sanctions.
As the core component of the smart phone chip technology and key patents in the hands of American companies, such as the core component filter market in the 5G RF chip, the United States Broadcom occupies 87% of the market share, another American semiconductor company Qorvo also occupies 8% of the market share.
This is very fatal in the context of the industry's shift to 5G upgrades, which is tantamount to choking the throat of Huawei mobile phones.
Therefore, Huawei was forced to publicly sell Glory at the end of last year, so that the latter spun off and operated completely independently, not affected by the sanctions imposed by the parent company.
Huawei's own brand mobile phone business is unsustainable, and shipments have fallen off a cliff this year.
From this, we can briefly summarize the two major changes in the domestic smartphone industry this year:
First, overall shipments fell sharply, and the performance fell short of expectations. According to the data report released by IDC, in the second quarter of this year, domestic smartphone shipments fell by 11% year-on-year, and in the third quarter, they fell by 4.7% year-on-year.
Among them, the total market share occupied by the top 5 brands in the leading camp has also changed from continuous growth in previous years to decline, which was 96.5% last year, and has fallen to 88.7% in the third quarter of this year.
Second, the members of the leading camp have changed, compared with Huawei, vivo, OPPO, Xiaomi and Apple in the top 5 in 2020 – Huawei even led with a 38.3% market share last year – this year Huawei has been completely out.
For Huawei, the bad news is that today's shipments are sliding towards the abyss of negligible calculation, and the good news is that from the second quarter, Honor has become a member of the leading camp.
The bottom of the home is not hard, and it is reflected at once.
Of course, even so, Huawei's fall out of the top 5 is still an industry event.
You know, from 2010 jobs Joe helped the owner in his last Apple conference, took out the epoch-making iPhone 4, the birth and development of the smartphone industry has only been 11 years, and since 2016, the domestic TOP 5 brands have always been these 5.
This also shows us from the side the power of the state apparatus.
02 The old king fell and the market was divided
As the biggest variable, Huawei is worth mentioning alone.
In the past few years, Huawei's mobile phone, which once topped the world's first, has encountered multiple rounds of sanctions from the United States from the core technology of smart phone software and hardware.
In May 2019, the United States imposed the first round of sanctions on Huawei, placing Huawei and its subsidiaries on the "entity list" of export controls. Huawei can no longer use the components of American companies, and can no longer use Google GMS services, so huawei can only shrink, with self-developed chips, the launch of Huawei HMS services and other measures to cope.
In May 2020, the United States imposed a second round of sanctions on Huawei, prohibiting chip foundries from using U.S. equipment to produce chips for Huawei, and also prohibiting Huawei from using U.S. software and technology to design chips, including upstream chip manufacturing giants such as TSMC and SMIC, which can no longer supply Huawei, and Huawei has self-developed technology and cannot be put into production.
In August last year, the United States imposed a third round of sanctions, restricting Huawei's purchase of chips made by foreign manufacturers using American technology, and MediaTek, Samsung, etc. could not cooperate with Huawei, and Huawei's smartphone business entered the situation of "using one chip, one less".
Everyone knows the rest of the story.
In November, Huawei sold the Honor mobile phone, not only to help the first-hand incubated subsidiary business to completely avoid external risks, but also to survive with a broken arm.
Since the beginning of this year, a series of Huawei 5G models have been declared out of stock, as the first domestic 5G mobile phone network license, but in 2021 thousand yuan machines have popularized 5G communication technology today, has become the one left behind.
The fall of Huawei's mobile phones has also had a huge impact on the industry pattern.
On the one hand, Huawei fell, and Apple was full.
Apple, which lacks strong competitors, has almost completed dominating the domestic high-end mobile phone market with a price of more than 6,000 yuan.
According to the latest data from Counterpoint Research, in October this year, Apple's mobile phone sales surpassed Vivo to become the largest smartphone manufacturer in the domestic market.
This is also the second time that Apple has topped the Chinese market in six years since December 2015.
After the launch of the iPhone 13 in October, Apple became the only brand to achieve month-on-month growth in the domestic market, an increase of 78% month-on-month and a sharp increase of 155% year-on-year.
Today, in December, the iPhone 12 and 13 series products still maintain the list of high-end models in major online channels.
On the other hand, other brands in the leading camp are quickly cutting the cake share that Huawei has given up in the low-end market, while accelerating their attempts to attack the high-end market of about 6,000 yuan.
For example, OPPO launched FIND X3, vivo has vivo X70 series, Xiaomi has Xiaomi 11 Ultra, etc., and entering the high-end market has become the unanimous ambition of domestic mobile phone brands this year.
But no one can really shake Apple's dominance in the high-end machine market, in the market segment of more than 6,000 yuan, Apple has a strong monopoly, even Huawei, which has a sharp decline in shipments, will be far behind other brands.
More importantly, the overall market share of each brand is almost the same, the three parties are very glued, and the northwest of Jin has become a pot of porridge.
This is also a stable market pattern, and the head players can hardly help the performance of players in the same camp.
Specifically, the development strategy of each company has not changed much compared with last year, the sub-brand has made efforts to ensure shipments and market share in the low-end market, and the main brand has pushed the flagship model to compete for the high-end market.
For example, vivo has topped the market in the 2nd and 3rd quarters, not only has the advantage of mainstream product configuration after a series of new products are not left behind, but also has the sub-brand iQOO to sell hot on the S series and Y series, stabilizing the brand market share;
For example, Xiaomi is still a solid basic disk of the redmi series that is mainly cost-effective, and with the launch of flagship models such as 11 Pro and 11 Ultra, it has sounded an offensive horn for the high-end market.
It is worth mentioning that the glory of taking over huawei's mantle has also performed well and is becoming a strong competitor in the high-end machine market. During the double 11 period, Honor won the first place in the sales of Android machines above 5,000 yuan on the Tmall Jingdong dual platform.
This largely depends on the feelings of Huawei users - although in order to avoid potential risks, Honor's requirement after splitting from Huawei cannot be "disconnected" with Huawei at any level - but in the eyes of many consumers, changing from Huawei to Glory is support for Huawei.
03 The new star soars, and the flow of water is only endless
In this year's domestic smartphone industry, there are still some "new players" worth paying attention to.
The reason why it is necessary to add quotation marks to the three words of new players is also because the domestic smartphone market has long been mature enough and the pattern is stable, and there is no real new brand that can tear a hole.
So the so-called "new players" refer to brands that have already entered the game, but only this year have shown that they may be able to shake the industry pattern.
This is also a footnote to this year's major changes in the industry - the market vacuum caused by external factors rather than the survival of the fittest achieved by brand product competition - which is very rare for the smartphone industry.
Therefore, many brands that may have been able to do "green leaves" have seized this fleeting window period and become rising stars in the industry.
Of course, the fate of an enterprise depends on its own struggle, but it must also consider the course of history.
For example, after independence, Glory, which has been an affiliate of the Huawei brand before this year, has been operating independently, and has entered the market for the first time in the second quarter of this year, and has risen to the third place in the market in the third quarter.
Of course, some people believe that the rapid growth of Honor in the third quarter benefited from the dividends of Huawei's mobile phone replacement cycle, which belongs to the family inheritance that does not have sustainability.
For example, realme, which returned to China from overseas in 2019, has launched the name of the technology tide brand by identifying the preferences of young consumers, and the market performance is quite good, and the growth exceeds expectations.
After gaining a firm foothold in the low-end market in the first two years, realme is also actively exerting efforts in the domestic high-end market this year, becoming a new spoiler, and the true self GT and true me GT Neo2 released this year have a good reputation among consumer groups.
As of the first half of the year, realme's domestic market share has reached 4%, as a latecomer in the absolute sense, this achievement can be described as a good achievement.
Overall, in 2021, the smartphone industry, limited by the failure of product technology to break through the bottleneck stage, still has no commendable subversive and breakthrough innovation, but the external black swan event has brought unexpected variables to the market.
Nothing in this world is immortal, some people leave, some people compete.
For corporate brands in the whirlpool of great change, it is important and not important to compete.
Flowing water does not compete, but it is endless, which is probably one of the biggest charms of commercial society.