Text/Guo Xiaofeng
The 2021 Vivo Developer Conference recently came to an end, at which Vivo proposed the development direction of "from 1 to positive infinity", starting from the original and creating a diversified future with infinite possibilities.
Among them, "1" is a platform built on behalf of every user, developer and vivo, while "positive infinity" is the digital world formed by the connection of these "1s". In the words of Shi Yujian, senior vice president of vivo, these "1s" are limited, but the interconnection of each other has unlimited possibilities. It is understood that at this conference, Vivo showed the latest achievements and future development from multiple levels such as products, technologies, platforms and services.
Add core innovation
As we all know, with the advent of the era of big data, the memory of the mobile phone system and software is getting bigger and bigger, coupled with the continuous extension of the replacement cycle, the requirements for the overall core performance of the mobile phone are naturally getting higher and higher, and how to keep the mobile phone running smoother, safer and more comfortable experience has become the track of the mobile phone brands.
Vivo has always been relatively low-key, and a lot of manpower and material resources have been placed on the improvement of the user's ultimate experience, especially on the system kernel. Vivo vice president and president of vivo AI Global Research Institute said in an interview with the media that at the kernel layer, how to solve consumer pain points is the focus of vivo's strategic layout. In terms of improving the technical capabilities of the system core, vivo believes that the most powerful technical points related to consumer pain points include storage, computing, display and full-scene fluency.
The key thing in storage is running memory, which is the most decisive factor for the length of time a mobile phone is used. In the past few years, our running memory has been increasing, so this is also an important reason for the lengthening of the replacement cycle, effectively improving the running memory to some extent, users will spend more time on the network, and intentionally establish a mobile phone brand reputation.
According to the surrounding reveals, vivo specification 8G mobile phones, "can accommodate 28 applications running in the background at the same time, about 20 in 2020, 14 in 2019." Vivo's 8G memory, optimized for storage, is approximately equal to 12G of unoptimized memory. Vivo can increase the storage optimization rate by about 40% per year. ”
In this, vivo built a virtual cache unit, using a leading algorithm to distinguish the importance of data in memory, through compression, exchange of multi-level accurate processing, part of the ROM storage space scheduled to RAM use, so that some background applications do not occupy the real system storage, 8G storage of mobile phones, can actually expand into 12G storage effect.
In terms of computing, in order to ensure that the system is fast, smooth, and the switching is not stuttering, vivo breaks through the hardware limits, builds a high-performance computing unit, and designs and implements a high-real-time computing mode in the system.
High computing performance has long become the foundation for the future development of thousands of industries, and it is a core competitive factor in the smartphone market. In recent years, vivo has been building its own computing platform, in terms of computing, in order to ensure that the system multi-tasking operation is fast, smooth, switching is not caton, vivo breaks through the hardware limit, builds a high-performance computing unit, designs and carries a high-real-time computing mode, a smart scheduling computing mode, and a high-speed catch-up mode in the system, so that the performance and power consumption of mobile phones can maintain the best balance when multi-tasking.
For example, the high real-time computing engine: vivo has designed a highly concurrent computing mode in the system to achieve high-performance concurrent processing. Test with 20 applications started at the same time, the time to start one round is increased by 20%, the startup time of two consecutive rounds is increased by 30%, and the high concurrent calculation mode ensures that the system is fast and smooth when multitasking runs, and the switching is not stuttered.
Its essence is to make all the algorithms and the relevant capabilities of computing resource allocation at the kernel level into independent operator units. During the implementation of the algorithm, the computing acceleration platform is responsible for distributing the operators that match the application functions to different functional modules.
In terms of display effect, in recent years, the head mobile phone manufacturers have been working the algorithm. How to achieve a reasonable energy efficiency ratio in high-quality picture display and low power consumption is the key. To this end, Vivo is developing adaptive refresh technology. Through the improvement of LTPO (adaptive refresh rate), to achieve frame rate adaptation, it is expected to save about 1% of the power consumption of the whole machine. On the software, frame rate adaptation is done for video content. "This innovation is industry-leading and is currently being tried, which may take more than half a year." Representation around.
The fluency of the whole scene involves a wide range of content coverage, and the current situation is mainly aimed at how to ensure the smooth switching of the signal under different scenarios of the user. On the one hand, vivo continuously optimizes the antenna intelligent switching algorithm to solve the problem of occlusion of antenna signal by handheld posture. On the other hand, strengthen the ability of scene algorithms. For example, in 2021, Vivo pioneered WiFi multi-channel transmission in the industry, and in 2020, it did the industry's first dual WiFi function. Through these two breakthroughs, the WiFi link barriers in the above various scenarios are solved and the user experience is improved.
In 2021, the surrounding team will download the data transmission of the game King Glory through dual data channels, which greatly reduces the game lag and improves the user experience. "In the past, it was a single channel, a network card, a data single transmission, last year we did two downloads, the same data packet cut into two copies, a network card to download a copy, two network cards after the download is completed and then spliced." It won't be twice as fast, but the speed is obvious. "Around indications.
It is not difficult to see that based on the capabilities of computing, storage, display, etc., vivo has also truly achieved full scene fluency in daily high-frequency use scenarios such as application startup, content loading, visual fluency, touch perception, multi-task concurrency and network operation. This also hooks up a stronger competitiveness for vivo to impact the high-end market in the future.
Take a solid step in the high-end market
For all mobile phone brand manufacturers, the Chinese smartphone market in 2021 is a challenging market. Due to the slow growth rate of market size, how to build core competitiveness and bring higher profitability in hardware homogenization has become the key, and entering the high-end market is the only way.
There are countless Chinese mobile phone brands that claim to enter the high-end market, and only Huawei is more successful at present, but unfortunately, under the pressure of US sanctions, Huawei's high-end share is being lost, so the industry has begun a new round of competition.
But the high-end market is not as simple as probing for things. According to CINNO Research, Apple's mobile phone sales jumped to the first place in China in October this year. It is reported that the last time Apple won the monthly sales championship of the Chinese mobile phone market was in December 2015. And in the high-end market, apple is still the biggest winner in the price segment above $600 or even higher.
However, in addition to Apple, vivo can also be said to be another beneficiary after the decline in Sales of Huawei's mobile phones.
According to Data Point Research, vivo has made significant progress in China's mid-to-high-end field in the past year. Its market share in the $500 to $599 price range has risen from 10% in September 2020 to 20% in September 2021. In July this year, in the $600-$799 price range, Vivo and Huawei were tied for second.
Analysts believe that this is driven by the strong performance of the X70 Pro launched by Vivo in September. Vivo continues to drive up its value chain through relentless efforts in research and innovation in camera technology, including a strategic partnership with THE OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LEADER ZEISS. In this regard, Shi Yujian, senior vice president of Vivo, said that in the third quarter of this year, Vivo's shipment share in China's smartphone market was 22.1%. Among them, in the high-end mobile phone market of more than 4,000 yuan, Vivo's market share ranks in the top three.
Behind this is naturally the continuous polishing of product quality, but also the result of hardware innovation constantly touching the ceiling and strengthening kernel repair. Although these are far less than the intuitive impact brought by hardware innovation, in vivo's view, let users from choice to love, from satisfaction to active recommendation, through great products to establish the brand that users love.
Shi Yujian said that 2021 is the first year of vivo qualitative change, flywheel 1.0 support vivo has gone through 26 years, and flywheel 2.0 will allow vivo from making high-quality products to creating great products through design-driven and technological innovation, so that consumers from choice to love, from satisfaction to active recommendation, through great products to establish a brand that consumers love.
Overall, Vivo has made steady progress in the high-end market and taken the first step. However, the market is ever-changing, according to the results predicted by many institutions, the Chinese mobile phone market in 2022 will remain stable, and the existing users are still the target of everyone's competition, which is a huge challenge for vivo and also intensifies the competition between head manufacturers.