2021 is about to pass, this year, there have been many major events in the mobile phone circle, there are many new technology applications, and there are enough events to change the entire industry. In 2021, what are the big events happening in the mobile phone circle? The article takes you through a review.
I. 【Products】
5G mobile phones are fully rolled out
According to the analysis report released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, from January to November 2021, domestic mobile phone shipments totaled 317 million units, of which 5G mobile phone shipments reached 239 million units, an increase of 65.3% year-on-year. Domestic 5G mobile phone shipments continue to grow, and have fully covered all price segments, 5G mobile phones have become the basic disk of new products in the market.
Image source: China Academy of Information and Communications Technology
Probably more people pay attention to what important changes are made in the mobile phone product part, so let's first look at the big events in the mobile phone product part.
Self-developed chips are important keywords
To say that the most important keyword of the mobile phone industry in 2021, I think the self-developed chip can be counted as one. This year, vivo and OPPO, which had never been involved in the field of self-developed chips before, officially entered the market, and launched self-developed chip products, Xiaomi also updated its own surging self-developed chips, and the field of self-developed chips became more lively.
The Xiaomi MIX FOLD folding screen mobile phone launched at the beginning of this year is equipped with a surging C1 professional image chip, and the surging C1 is equipped with a self-developed algorithm to improve the AAA performance of the mobile phone image part. There is also the recently released Xiaomi 12 Pro, using Xiaomi's third self-developed chip - the surging P1, which is used for charging, breaking through the charging technology barrier and achieving a more efficient 120W single-cell charging solution.
Vivo is equipped with the first self-developed professional image chip V1 on the vivo X70 Pro+, which can serve the needs of taking pictures and shooting videos at the same time, and meet more complex processing needs by superimposing with the main chip ISP, achieving better image effects with lower power consumption, and giving full play to the potential of the imaging system.
In December, OPPO released the Mariana X chip, OPPO's first self-developed chip, a dedicated NPU chip specifically for imaging. Through this chip, it is easier to meet the computing power and energy efficiency requirements of AI computing images, and achieve OPPO's more cutting-edge imaging goals. The next-generation Find X flagship will be powered by the OPPO Mariana X chip, which will be released in the first quarter of 2022.
Mobile phone manufacturers have entered the market of self-developed chips, which is enough to see the importance of chips. Through self-developed chips, it can not only help mobile phone manufacturers to make major breakthroughs in different product directions, but also create their own core technologies and enhance the hard power and brand charm of high-end products. Maybe in five or ten years, this will be an important turning point in the mobile phone industry.
Newcomers entered the game, and the folding screen ushered in a boom
In 2021, Xiaomi, OPPO, and Honor have officially joined the team of folding screens, bringing more vitality to the folding screen market.
In March this year, Xiaomi launched the first MIX FOLD folding screen mobile phone, using an in-fold design, with an 8.01-inch 2K+ true full screen after unfolding, and also equipped with a 6.52-inch external screen, starting from 9999 yuan.
In December, OPPO launched the OPPO Find N folding screen mobile phone, which is also an internal folding design, but adopts a new folding screen size, the inner screen is expanded to 7.1 inches, equipped with a 5.49-inch external screen, it is easier to take into account the large screen and the grip, starting at 7699 yuan.
In December, Honor announced that it would launch Honor's first folding screen flagship, the Honor Magic V.
In addition to the new mobile phone manufacturers with folding screens, Huawei released a new generation of Mate X2 folding screen mobile phones this year, and also released a new P50 Pocket with top-down folding in December. This year, Samsung also released the third generation of folding screen phones Galaxy Z Fold3 and Galaxy Z Flip3.
Folding screen mobile phone market has more choices, folding screen mobile phone is becoming more and more perfect, bringing better experience at the same time, the price is also gradually declining, reducing the threshold of experience folding screen mobile phone.
Off-screen camera: Advancing in exploration
In terms of screens, the camera technology under the screen that has attracted much attention has not been applied on a large scale this year as expected, and only a few products have used the technology.
In 2021, the Xiaomi MIX series returns, and the Xiaomi MIX4 launched adopts a new generation of CUP full-screen technology, and the camera is hidden under the screen, bringing a true full-screen effect without special-shaped openings. After many generations of updates, the actual hidden effect of the camera has been relatively good.
Launched this year, the ZTE AXON 30 5G uses the second generation of off-screen camera technology, which can also bring a complete full-screen experience.
The inner screen of the new generation of Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3 5G also uses off-screen camera technology to improve the integration of the screen, but in order to take into account the selfie, the under-screen area will be more obvious on a light background.
After iterative upgrading, the off-screen camera has been able to achieve good results. However, problems such as the display of the camera area under the screen and the selfie effect are still the core points of the popularization of the camera technology under the screen. Although the under-screen camera technology has become more and more mature, most mobile phones this year still use a punched screen design, and next year will not necessarily be fully applied.
Screen: 2K high brush screen is more common, and LTPO technology is added
Although high-refresh rate screens have been fully popularized last year, there are not many screens that support 2K resolution at the same time. This year, 2K high-brush screen has been popularized in flagship mobile phones, Xiaomi 11 series, Found X3 series released at the beginning of the year, OnePlus 9 Pro and other mobile phones support 120Hz high refresh rate + 2K resolution, to achieve further improvement in clarity and fluency.
At the same time, there are more screens that support LTPO technology. LTPO technology can enable the screen to achieve hardware-level intelligent dynamic refresh rate, taking into account the fluency and endurance, has been used in the Find X3 series, iQOO8 Pro and other flagship machines, I believe that there will be more flagship mobile phones with iterative upgrade LTPO 2K + high brush screen.
It is worth mentioning that the iPhone 13 Pro series released this year for the first time uses a screen that supports the 120Hz ProMotion adaptive refresh rate. Although flagship machines have further popularized 2K+ high-brush screens, low-end mobile phones are still rare.
Charging battery life
This year, there is no particularly large breakthrough in mobile phone charging power and battery capacity, and 100W+ is still an important watershed. Among them, Xiaomi MIX4 supports 120W wired second charge and 50W wireless second charge. The iQOO 8 Pro supports 120W ultra-fast flash charging and 50W wireless flash charging.
Many flagship mobile phone charging power has not exceeded 100 watts, which is relatively more conservative. For example, Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra supports wired and wireless dual 67W charging, OPPO Find X3 series supports 65W wired fast charging and 30W wireless AirVOOC, honor Magic3 To the best edition supports 66W wired super fast charging and 50W wireless fast charging.
Imagery section
In 2021, imaging capabilities are still the core functional points that mobile phones pay attention to. There is no particularly shocking upgrade point in terms of hardware, and one of the huge breakthroughs is the addition of self-developed chips. In terms of software, computational photography has become a new breakthrough point, in which the self-developed chip in imaging is to better serve computational photography.
Huawei P50 series has a new XD Optics computing optical blessing, Honor Magic3 series brings multi-main camera fusion computing photography technology, OPPO and vivo have also greatly optimized the image algorithm, which are all software-level improvements to mobile phone image performance.
This year, high pixels are also not the main development direction of flagship mobile phones, and high-quality outsole dual main camera configurations are more common in flagship mobile phones. Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra adopts a 1/1.12-inch oversized primer, vivo X70 Pro+ is equipped with a 1/1.3-inch outsole GN1 main camera, this new product also uses ultra-high-permeable glass lenses, professional image chip V1 chip, to create a more prominent image flagship.
The new vivo X series still has the blessing of ZEISS, and the OnePlus 9 series released this year has cooperated with Hasselblad to bring better image performance.
II. 【Industry】
In 2021, the mobile phone market share has changed dramatically. According to data released by IDC, in the third quarter of 2021, global shipments of smartphones reached 331.2 million units, down 6.7% year-on-year.
IDC: Q3 2021 Global Shipments
In the third quarter, Samsung topped the list with 69 million units shipped and a 20.8% market share. Apple regained second place with 50.4 million units shipped, with a market share of 15.2%. The third is Xiaomi, with shipments of 44.3 million units, accounting for a share of 13.4%. OPPO and vivo shipped 33.3 million units and 33.2 million units, respectively, with market shares of 10.1% and 10.0%, respectively, ranking fourth.
In the past three quarters of 2021, the major share of global shipments has been occupied by the five major mobile phone manufacturers of Samsung, Apple, Xiaomi, OPPO and vivo. Compared to last year, it is obvious that Huawei has been classified as Others, which is also affected by the continuous impact of sanctions.
In Q2 2021, Xiaomi shipments ranked second in the world for the first time. After independence, Honor also handed over a good report card, honor entered the top five of China's smartphone market shipments for the first time in Q2.
IDC: Domestic shipments in the second quarter of 2021
While domestic mobile phones take over Huawei's vacated domestic market share, Apple has almost no opponents in the high-end market and has gained a large part of the high-end market.
Huawei
Despite the impact of sanctions on the mobile phone business, Huawei still released a new generation of Mate X2 folding screen mobile phones, Huawei P50, P50 Pocket and other products this year. Huawei's business in other fields has developed rapidly, and this year has made great progress in new energy vehicles, smart devices and other fields, and Huawei is building a larger ecosystem based on Hongmeng.
At the same time, Huawei has fully adapted the Hongmeng system to Huawei's mobile phones this year, and has basically completed the adaptation of the Hongmeng system of the planned model. At present, the number of Huawei equipment equipped with HarmonyOS has reached 220 million+, and the shipment of ecological equipment will reach 100 million+ in 2021.
glory
After Honor officially became independent, the product rhythm gradually returned to normal, and the product line was adjusted. Honor brought the Magic series back to our sight this year, launched the Honor Magic 3 series of new products, positioning high-end flagship products. At the same time, new products such as the Honor 60 digital series and the thousand-dollar Honor X series were also released.
As mentioned above, Honor entered the top five of China's smartphone market shipments for the first time in the second quarter of this year, which means that Honor has returned to an important role in the mobile phone industry.
millet
Xiaomi has fully attacked the high-end mobile phone market this year, launching xiaomi 11 ultra and xiaomi mix folding screen mobile phone high-end products at the beginning of the year, and the cost-effective redmi has stabilized the basic disk of the middle and low end.
In 2021, Xiaomi's most important event should be the announcement of car manufacturing. Xiaomi's smart electric vehicle project was officially approved, and will invest 10 billion US dollars in the next ten years, and the first phase of investment of 10 billion yuan to officially enter the intelligent electric vehicle industry.
OPPO
OPPO re-integrated the mobile phone product line this year, and one plus mobile phone returned to OPPO. This year, domestic mobile phones are rushing to the high end, and OPPO is no exception. OPPO released the Find X3 series at the beginning of the year, hitting the high-end market, and the Reno series has been updated for two generations this year.
In addition to mobile phones, oppo this year also continues to explore a diversified intelligent ecology, exert efforts in the Field of IoT, and actively lay out intelligent hardware products. OPPO attaches great importance to technological innovation and research and development, and has demonstrated many achievements, such as the recently announced Mariana X chip and OPPO Air Glass smart glasses.
vivo
In the high-end market, vivo launched the X70 series, the main professional image flagship, still has the blessing of ZEISS, and through the self-developed independent chip to make a deeper breakthrough in imaging, more competitive in the high-end market. At the same time, vivo S series, iQOO series and other products have achieved good results, and the overall sales performance is outstanding. Vivo is also breaking through itself and laying out more comprehensive IoT ecological products to cope with changes in the market.
summary
Rushing high-end should be one of the keywords of domestic mobile phone manufacturers this year, but it may be that most of the high-end products of domestic manufacturers have not reached the expected response. Mobile phone manufacturers are also adjusting their strategies to enhance their competitiveness in the high-end market.
In terms of products, there is no particularly big disruptive innovation, but it is steadily upgraded on the basis of the previous year. However, mobile phone manufacturers pay more attention to technological innovation and research and development, and the self-developed chips mentioned above are a good embodiment. In addition to mobile phones, mobile phone manufacturers are laying out a larger intelligent ecological market, broadening their own fields and looking for more opportunities.