Folding screen mobile phone on the new, domestic manufacturers will gather on the track! Price drop? Are you thinking about getting started?

Zhongxin Jingwei December 16 (Chang Tao) Folding screen mobile phone entry price further reduced, is it time to start?

On December 15, OPPO released the first folding screen mobile phone OPPO Find N, which entered the folding screen mobile phone market at a price of less than 8,000 yuan.

According to the reporter of Zhongxin Jingwei, the first folding screen mobile phone of Vivo and Glory will be released as soon as January 2022. Coupled with Huawei and Xiaomi, which have previously released folding screen mobile phones, several major domestic mobile phone manufacturers are expected to gather on the track. New products, how much has folding screen technology advanced? Can the price that users care about come down?

How much has folding screen technology advanced?

If you count from the february 20, 2019 Samsung release of the Galaxy Fold caused market attention, it has been nearly three years since the folding screen mobile phone "debuted". In fact, around the folding screen mobile phone, fragile, crease, etc. are high-frequency words. Nowadays, how much has the folding screen mobile phone technology matured? We may get some answers from the latest releases.

On the 15th, OPPO released its first folding screen mobile phone OPPO Find N. For the "crease" problem that users are particularly concerned about, Liu Zuohu, the newly appointed oppo chief product officer, said that OPPO Find N uses the industry's best teardrop type hinge - Seiko quasi-vertebral hinge, whose process difficulty is comparable to a precision mechanical watch, costing more than 600 yuan, which is 3 times that of other hinges, and can be seamlessly folded and multi-angle free hover.

In fact, the hinge process described similarly has been applied on other brands of folding screen phones. Zhongxin Jingwei reporter noted that in February 2021, at the Huawei Mate X2 conference, Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's consumer business, introduced that Huawei Mate X2 finally adopted the industry's unique double-spin water drop hinge at that time, forming a water drop-type screen space at the bend, which not only achieved seamless folding, but also ensured the flatness of the screen after unfolding.

To eliminate "creases", flexible screen materials are also key. According to Liu Zuohu, OPPO Find N uses the latest UTG ultra-thin flexible glass with a thickness of only 0.03mm, which makes the screen have excellent bending performance and anti-fall and puncture resistance, "Even in the extreme environment of -20 ° C, OPPO Find N can still pass 200,000 folding tests." ”

Folding screen mobile phone track is becoming more and more crowded

According to the statistics of The Reporter of Zhongxin Jingwei, since the release of FlexPai in November 2018, a total of 17 folding screen mobile phones have been launched on the market.

In November 2018, Royole launched the world's first foldable flexible screen mobile phone FlexPai. However, due to design, technology and other reasons, the performance of the FlexPai market is sluggish and has not attracted market attention. In addition, Royole also released a new generation of folding mobile phone products FlexPai 2 5G on September 22, 2020.

Data chart Samsung folding screen mobile phone in the new Jingwei Chang Tao photo

Up to now, Samsung has released eight folding screen phones, namely the Samsung Galaxy Fold released on February 20, 2019, the Heart of the World W20 released in November 2019, the Galaxy Z Flip released on February 12, 2020, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5G released on September 1, 2020, the Heart world W21 5G released in November 2020, and the Samsung Galaxy Z released in September 2021 Fold3 5G, Galaxy Z Flip3 5G, and the Heart of hearts W21 5G released in October 2021.

Motorola has released two folding screen phones, the first folding screen phone RAZR released in November 2019 and the second generation folding screen phone RAZR 5G released on September 10, 2020.

Huawei has released three folding screen phones, namely The Huawei Mate X released on February 24, 2019 and February 24, 2020, the Huawei Mate Xs, and the Huawei Mate X2 released on February 22, 2021. In addition, the latest news is that on December 23, Huawei will release a new folding screen mobile phone P50 Pocket, which will use a vertical folding design.

In addition, Xiaomi and OPPO have also released a folding screen phone, which is the Xiaomi MIX FOLD released in March 2021 and the latest OPPO Find N.

According to the reporter of Zhongxin Jingwei, the first folding screen mobile phone of Vivo and Glory will be released as soon as January 2022. This means that several major domestic mobile phone manufacturers are expected to gather in the folding screen mobile phone track within three months.

At present, folding screen mobile phones are not the mainstream mobile phone consumer market. According to the panel supply chain research company DSCC estimates, the annual shipment of folding screen mobile phones in 2021 will be less than 10 million. According to Canalys, the global smartphone market will ship 1.4 billion units in 2021.

Why are so many players scrambling to get into the game? Ma Jihua, a telecom and Internet analyst, told the reporter that the industry generally believes that the folding screen is the best smart terminal solution that takes into account the large screen and convenience, which may be the most popular mobile phone style of the next generation, and is also in line with the future development trend of the Internet of Everything application. Although consumer habits have not yet taken shape, and 5G large-screen applications are not mature, everyone is afraid of losing the outlet. In addition, the experience of the folding screen also represents the highest ability of the company's design and manufacturing, and is a high-end benchmark product that can be mass-produced.

Sun Yanbiao, president of the First Mobile Phone Industry Research Institute, told the reporter of Zhongxin Jingwei, "At present, the homogenization of mobile phone design is serious, whether it is OPPO, vivo, millet or glory, Apple is regarded as a competitor." In the case of impacting the high-end market unfavorably, to achieve catch-up, it must be achieved in the product field that Apple does not have. ”

Sun Yanbiao believes that the more players on the track, the more conducive it is to the maturity of the upstream industry chain and the consumer market. "In terms of folding screens, only when there is demand in the market, upstream manufacturers will invest in research and development and testing, reduce the product defect rate, reduce the defective rate, and have the confidence to improve the stockpile, and force the upstream industrial chain to further develop."

Fu Liang, an independent TMT analyst, believes that with the gradual maturity of flexible screens and related mechanical technologies, and the cost is gradually lower, more and more mobile phone manufacturers will launch folding screen mobile phones. Folding screen mobile phones help to increase the awareness of mobile phone brands, which in turn drives sales of low-end products.

At present, market research institutions are generally optimistic about the market prospects of folding screen mobile phones. DSCC estimates that the shipment of folding screen mobile phones is expected to approach 20 million units in 2022. Market research firm Strategy Analytics expects foldable screen phone shipments to reach 100 million units by 2025.

Is it time to get started?

Folding screen mobile phones can be accepted and popularized by the public, in addition to the improvement of the user experience brought by technology, price is one of the most important influencing factors. At present, folding screen mobile phones are absolutely high-end models in various brand product lines. High-end also means a lot of price.

The inquiry of the reporter found that the current mainstream folding screen mobile phone sales price has fallen below the issue price. For example, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold2 5G released on September 1, 2020, the issue price is 14999 yuan, the current promotion price of Samsung's official website is 12999 yuan, and the Jingdong self-operated only sells 10499 yuan. On the second-hand trading platform, the price of some folding screen mobile phones has further declined.

Judging from the current price of folding screen mobile phones released by domestic manufacturers, except for Huawei, the starting price has dropped to less than 10,000 yuan. The Xiaomi Mi MIX FOLD released in March 2021 is priced at 9999 yuan. The lowest price of the OPPO Find N series released on December 15 was 7699 yuan. However, this price is still much higher than the same configuration of single-screen mobile phones.

In Fu Liang's view, from the perspective of consumer demand, the current folding screen mobile phone is about 30% higher than the price of the single-screen mobile phone with the same configuration, which is not cost-effective for ordinary consumers at this stage, and may not form a broader consumer group in the future.

Sun Yanbiao said, "After-sales is one of the problems in the development of the folding screen mobile phone market. At present, the after-sales cost brought by the folding screen mobile phone hinge and folding screen is very high, whether this cost is directly superimposed on the product price, or let consumers pay in the after-sales link, the blow to the brand is very large. ”

Sun Yanbiao expects that the price of folding screen mobile phones will remain at a high level in the short term. "This is related to the product strategy of domestic mobile phone manufacturers, at present, Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo, and glory can not completely seize the high-end market left by Huawei, and the folding screen mobile phone is regarded by them as a weapon to break through this market, from this point of view, the price of folding screen mobile phones cannot fall in the short term, and it is expected to maintain the price range of 8,000 yuan and 9,000 yuan." (Zhongxin Jingwei APP)

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