How often do you change your phone?
A survey report on the smartphone market in 2020 shows that the replacement cycle of Chinese mobile phone users has been further extended, reaching an average of 25.3 months, an increase of one month over 2019. To some extent, the longer replacement cycle represents a slowdown in user demand, coupled with the shortage of core components and the delay in logistics, according to the report data of iResearch Consulting, the global smartphone market has shown a downward trend in the past 5 years, and shipments have continued to shrink.
After more than ten years of development, the competition in the smart phone market has become white-hot, and major mobile phone manufacturers have "rolled in" each other, comparing screen performance, photo fighting experience, and bucket charging speed. However, smartphone innovation based on the direct screen is becoming more and more lackluster, and the contradiction between screen size and ease of operation has always been a pain point in front of the industry. Users desperately need a product that stimulates imagination and has a sense of technology.
At this time, the folding screen mobile phone appeared.
Above the "gold line" of the industry
For users, folding screen mobile phones are a fresh attempt to break the conventional hardware, and for manufacturers, it is the next outlet with no reason to miss, because it can stimulate social consumption psychology and produce a "wall-breaking effect".
Since the release of the world's first foldable smartphone in 2018, the seemingly unpopular folding screen mobile phone has increasingly found a sense of public presence and become the object of competition among a number of head manufacturers. In the past three years, various manufacturers have successively released a variety of folding screen mobile phones, including inversion, valgus, horizontal, vertical and other different forms, but because the product form has undergone great changes, the product also has a more precise structure and a more dense technical stack, which also leads to the price of the folding screen far exceeding the price of the current mainstream flagship of manufacturers.
Although relatively niche, the folding screen has become a must for major manufacturers and a strategic must for each brand, because the comprehensive capabilities of brand, research and development, supply chain, marketing and so on embodied behind it are the best stage for manufacturers to show their strength, and it is also the ultimate battlefield for high-end battles.
As a representative of high-end flagship products, the technical density and industrial value represented by the folding screen depict a "golden line" of industry development. Manufacturers above the "golden line" of this industry are likely to become the real "advanced players" in the mobile phone industry.
Game for the brave
From the perspective of manufacturing process, the integrated design of the folding screen is a great consideration for the system switching logic and hardware manufacturing process. How to break through the technical bottlenecks of screens, hinges, structures, and software systems not only tests the new technology research and development and optimization capabilities of mobile phone manufacturers, but also concerns the integration level of their supply chain resources.
If you want to achieve mass production of the folding screen, you must first ensure the yield rate and shipment of the panel. For a long time, CPI, UTG and other raw materials have almost relied on imports, and the shipment volume of folding screens is still at a low level, and it is impossible to share the cost through a large number of shipments, which is an important reason for the high cost of folding screens.
At present, with the improvement of material technology and the accumulation of design experience, the mainstream stacking panel scheme has basically met the protection needs of the inner OLED panel. Panel companies such as BOE and TCL Huaxing Optoelectronics have laid out foldable mobile phone panels. The large-area supply of domestic panel companies is the basic guarantee for the next stage of folding screen mass production.
At the hardware level, in addition to the visible panel, the hinge is also an important condition for achieving bending. Each bend of the hinge has a certain amount of wear, and the mechanical properties will decrease over time. In the initial stage of folding screen mobile phones, this is the difficulty of most brand manufacturers' technical research. In recent years, thanks to the joint promotion of hinge design schemes by mobile phone manufacturers and supply chain manufacturers, hinge design has rapidly matured.
The double-spindle water drop hinge used by Huawei Mate X2 released at the beginning of this year is a technical research that has been carried out by hinge design experts and engineers for up to five years, and through special chute and hinge design, it reduces the bending angle of the screen while keeping the folding screen seamlessly closed, so as to reduce the bending marks and increase the durability of the folding screen.
After solving the most core hardware problems, the lack of innovation at the software system level has become another focus of attention in the industry. From the user's point of view, the best use effect of the folding screen is to integrate the operation experience of mobile phones, tablets and computers to achieve seamless docking of content, but in reality, the lack of supporting software ecology of folding screen mobile phones greatly restricts this experience.
The most direct situation is that when the folding screen is turned over, the user always has a sense of unpreparedness: in addition to the discomfort caused by the need to adapt to the increase of the panel and the increase in weight, the folding screen seems to be no different from the straight mobile phone at the software operation level. In other words, if there is a lack of supporting software ecology, although the App can still be used normally, it lacks the novelty and "ritual sense" exclusive to folding mobile phones, and eventually flows into "folding for the sake of folding".
In fact, the organic integration of software and hardware will have a better experience. There are 3.5 million apps in China, but few adapt folding phones, which has become the core pain point that folding screen mobile phone manufacturers have begun to solve.
At the Huawei Mate X2 conference, Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's consumer business, said that Huawei and the Software Green Alliance established the first folding screen application ecosystem alliance, and the current domestic TOP200 application has fully realized the large-screen adaptation, reshaping the folding screen mobile phone experience through innovative interaction.
From hardware upgrades, software collocation to application ecological layout, folding screen mobile phones are not a day's work in front of consumers. Competing on this track is still a game for the brave.
Reinvent user perceptions
"I thought the hottest topic at the exhibition was 5G, but I didn't expect it to become a folding screen mobile phone." In 2019, an industry insider attending the Mobile World Congress made such an impression. Now, two years later, the first-movers continue to cultivate in this field, using the experience of hardware, design and patent innovation to guide the development of the market, and constantly shaping the user's mental model.
According to iResearch consulting report data, more than half of the mobile phone users first think of Huawei when mentioning folding screen mobile phones, and in the overall recognition of folding screen mobile phone brands, 88.2% of mobile phone users understand the folding screen mobile phone series launched by Huawei.
From the perspective of brand attention, among the people considering buying folding screen mobile phones, 87.0% of consumers continue to pay attention to Huawei-brand folding screen mobile phones, and from the perspective of brand attractiveness, 94.6% of potential folding screen buyers consider including Huawei folding screen mobile phones into alternatives, and user stickiness is obvious.
From the perspective of consumer psychology, users buy products mostly based on trust. Therefore, finding a source of trust between the product and the user is equivalent to finding a strong gravitational force between the product and the user.
For a long time, Huawei's product strength created by relying on cutting-edge technology and the brand power of user care have been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. This is huawei's continuous adherence to technological innovation and user-oriented strategy and user recognition, and it is also a manifestation of the overall competitiveness of Huawei's brand. From Mate X, Mate Xs, and Mate X2 all the way, Huawei's layout in the trinity of hardware, software and ecology is not only a comprehensive breakthrough of the brand itself, but also a microcosm of the development of the entire folding screen mobile phone industry.
According to iResearch data, Huawei accounted for 64% of the folding screen mobile phone sales in the Chinese market in 2021, establishing an industrial pattern above the "golden line" of the mobile phone market with a share of nearly 70%.
Why pay?
From concept to reality, the folding screen mobile phone market is developing rapidly, and user cognition has changed along with the industry pattern. With the product's super high sense of science and technology and novel experience, folding screen mobile phones continue to "absorb powder", has accumulated a group of "enthusiasts", in this segment of the field and differentiated into different consumer trends.
According to iResearch's statistics, men account for more people who buy horizontal folding screen mobile phones, reaching 55%. The age of purchase is concentrated in young people aged 18 to 29 who love to try early, and those in their 40s and older who have certain requirements for status symbols. Such groups generally have a higher enthusiasm for trendy technology products, and value the hardware configuration and brand reputation of the product.
Relatively speaking, the proportion of vertical folding screen product users is higher, mainly concentrated in the 18 to 29 years old and 30 to 39 years old two categories of people, generally pay more attention to the fashion sense of the product. It is worth mentioning that manufacturers are also actively paying attention to this consumer demand.
Huawei's new folding screen mobile phone P50 Pocket, which huawei recently officially announced, adopts a vertical folding design, and the new product will be officially released on December 23, and new product reservations have been opened online and offline. This product is more suitable for the fashion needs of specific users. Imagine a young woman holding a folding screen mobile phone shaped like a powder box, seemingly making up makeup, and the sense of fashion is instantly full.
In addition to the new folding method and its portability that is more technologically friendly, users are also paying attention to the innovation of multi-App interaction in software, such as multi-task operation, seamless sharing, free adjustment and scaling, which also provides a direction for the development of folding screen mobile phones to fit their own system ecological logic.
It is foreseeable that the folding screen mobile phone market still has a large room for growth in the future, and mobile phone manufacturers want to stand out in the visible market expectations, they must continue to accumulate strength in the "inner volume" and turn other people's stock into their own increments. Above the "golden line", the real "advanced players" in the mobile phone market will be born.