Author| Yu Huiru Editor| Luo Lijuan
"2021, for Xiaomi, is a very painful year. During the year, there has been a lot of progress, but more twists and turns. At the Xiaomi press conference a few days ago, Lei Jun sighed.
In fact, this is not only the survival status of Xiaomi in 2021, but also the survival of domestic mobile phone manufacturers this year.
The epidemic in 2020 has suppressed the high-end demand for smart phones, and the market demand for high-end smartphones will gradually be released in 2021. From the first three quarters, smartphone shipments of more than RMB3,000 (about US$450) increased by 49%, 19% and 14% year-on-year, respectively, which were higher than the overall growth level of the industry.
However, according to the research report of SPDB International, the recovery of high-end demand is more obtained by Apple, while domestic brands such as OPPO, vivo and millet have limited gains.
In less than 4 years, Apple's market capitalization has tripled. The latest news is that on January 4, 2022, Apple's market value once exceeded $3 trillion, becoming the first company to achieve this achievement, and the iPhone is still the company's biggest sales driver.
On the other hand, in the mobile phone market where the demographic dividend has peaked and innovation is converging, mobile phone manufacturers are trying to open up new battlefields.
In 2021, Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo began to build the most core underlying hardware technology, and they all went down to develop their own chips.
This year, after the folding screen was hyped in 2019, it finally ushered in the entry of a number of head mobile phone manufacturers, and ushered in a number of new machines: Xiaomi MIX FOLD, Galaxy Z Fold3 5G, OPPO Find N, Huawei P50 Pocket, etc.
"Smartphone shipments in 2022 are expected to return to the level of the pre-pandemic sub-low in 2018. Demand for 5G replacement in mature overseas markets and natural growth in emerging markets are the main drivers. SPDB International said that the fundamentals of the smartphone market in 2022 are the trend of low and high.
So, can folding screens and self-developed chips open a new round of spring for the smartphone industry?
Collectively attack the high-end
In the smartphone market, high-end is no longer a new term.
In 2021, whether it is the xiaomi that boasts of benchmarking Apple, the recall of sub-brands and the combing of the product line, the steady development of vivo, or the glory of re-emerging mobile phones in a new identity, all of them have set their sights on the "treasure land" of the high-end market. Brand image upgrades, product series upgrades and other initiatives emerge in an endless stream.
From the perspective of product strategy, Xiaomi, OPPO, and Vivo have all chosen the route of cutting into the mid-range and high-end markets and then extending to the flagship.
After experiencing the "combination punch" of the high-end market such as digital, Note, and MIX, Xiaomi finally chose to use the "digital + MIX" two series to compete for the high-end market.
In the past year, Xiaomi has released high-end smartphone products such as Xiaomi Mi 11 Pro, Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra, Xiaomi Mix, Xiaomi Mi 12, Xiaomi Mi 12 Pro, Xiaomi Mi 12X and so on. According to public data, Xiaomi's mid-to-high-end mobile phones have shipped nearly 18 million units worldwide, which is expected to double this year compared with 10 million units in 2020.
Before the official announcement of the strategic goal of impacting the high-end market, OPPO reorganized the product line, cut off the Ace series, and resumed the update of the high-end flagship Find series. And formed a Reno series + Find X series of high-end market combination.
At the beginning of 2021, OPPO put forward the strategic goal of impacting the high-end market, and carried out a series of layouts and preparations for this purpose. The Find X3 released in the first quarter was regarded by OPPO as a "pioneering work" and "ten-year ideal" for the brand's strong breakthrough.
"High-end marathon, OPPO is confident to get the top three, we have been prepared in technology, organization, OS, ecology, more confident than ever to run the full range, we firmly believe that oppo in the future will definitely have one of the three points in the high-end market." In a media interview in September, Liu Bo, vice president of OPPO and president of China, was full of confidence.
Compared with other manufacturers, vivo is relatively stable in terms of product strategy and technical planning, and has the flagship strategy of X series + NEX series.
Ideally, the high-end series is a powerful weapon to help build a brand image, improve product gross margins, and absorb users. But not every phone manufacturer can get what they want.
According to a white paper on the insight of the mobile phone industry provided by Judian Arithmetic, Apple became the brand with the highest net increase in high-end machine holding users in the first half of 2021, followed by Huawei. For other brands, the number of high-end machine users has increased to varying degrees, but compared with Apple and Huawei, the net increase is quite different.
Xiaomi is the brand with the largest net increase in users in the first half of the year, but it mainly relies on the brand's mid-range machine, and the high-end machine field is still not the "main force". In addition, when high-end machine users have the willingness to change machines, Apple is still the first choice, absorbing 85% of the original high-end machine users, Huawei accounted for 12%, and users who chose other brands accounted for only 3%.
The first-line experience of a mobile phone channel provider also coincides with the above situation: "Whether it is Xiaomi, Glory, or Ov, users will not buy high-priced products, and products of about 2,000 yuan are acceptable to them." ”
On December 28, 2021, Xiaomi released the digital series flagship Xiaomi 12 series, priced at 3699 yuan, 300 yuan lower than the Xiaomi 11 released a year ago.
"This also shows that the domestic high-end is really selling, taking the Xiaomi MIX4 as an example, only 4 months after the release of the already more than 2,000 yuan of decline." A mobile phone industry analyst told all-weather technology that the sales status of domestic high-end mobile phones can be seen from the pricing of Xiaomi 12.
Huawei's Mate series has established its high-end flagship status in 6 years. Nowadays, after Huawei is under pressure due to external reasons, its "concession" out of the market has become a must for mobile phone manufacturers, but it is not easy to stand at the high end.
All the self-developed chips
At THE INNO DAY in early December, OPPO announced that it had personally developed its own chips and released its first self-developed 6nm image-specific NPU (neural network processor) chip - Mariana MariSilicon X.
Mariana MariSilicon X adopts TSMC's 6nm advanced process technology, integrates OPPO's self-developed MariNeuro AI computing unit, provides the maximum effective computing power of 18TOPs, and the industry-leading energy efficiency performance of 11.6TOPs/w, and realizes efficient computing acceleration and power consumption optimization for OPPO's self-developed AI algorithm.
Chen Mingyong, founder and CEO of OPPO, said on the same day that this is the first step for OPPO to enter the research and development of deep water areas. In the future, OPPO will continue to invest resources and use a team of thousands of people to make self-developed chips in a down-to-earth manner.
Because of its consistent expertise in imaging, OPPO cores cut from images. It is also because the general-purpose chip and ISP cannot meet the needs of computing images in computing power and energy efficiency, and need to be solved by self-developed special NPUs.
Mobile phone manufacturers "core" has become a force that cannot be ignored, and domestic head mobile phone companies such as "Huami Ov" have personally gone down.
4 years ago, Xiaomi officially announced its entry into the chip field, the first batch of chips using an octa-core architecture, named the surging S1, has been successfully mass-produced and equipped in the new Xiaomi flagship camera phone Xiaomi 5C released at the same time. However, the surging S1 market performance was flat, S2 was difficult to produce, and Xiaomi did not have more news on the chip since then.
At the end of March, Lei Jun brought Xiaomi's self-developed chip - the surging C1. As an ISP (Image Signal Processor) chip independent of the motherboard, the surging C1 focuses on image processing of mobile phones. In his view, the surging C1 is a milestone in Xiaomi's shadow phase, carrying Xiaomi's bigger dream.
At the last press conference in 2021, the Xiaomi Mi 12 Pro debuted the self-developed Xiaomi Surging P1 charging management chip. This is Xiaomi's third self-developed chip, the release of the surging P1, making Xiaomi the first mobile phone manufacturer with a self-developed 100-watt fast charging chip.
From the ISP surging C1 at the beginning of the year to the surging P1 charging management chip at the end of the year, within one year, Xiaomi has released two self-developed mobile phone chips. Up to now, Xiaomi's released chips include S1, C1, and P13 models, which are built in different fields such as SoC, imaging and charging.
Similar to Xiaomi and OPPO, Vivo's first self-developed chip also revolves around the image function. In September, Vivo's first self-developed professional imaging chip V1 was launched with the flagship new X70 series.
In the overall imaging system design, this self-developed chip V1 can be matched with different main chips and displays, which plays a role in expanding the isP high-speed imaging computing power of the ISP and releasing the ISP load of the main chip. Under the established service, V1 can process complex operations at high speed like a CPU, or it can complete the parallel processing of data like GPUs and DSPs.
Whether it is Xiaomi's surging C1, OPPO's MariSilicon X, or vivo's V1, the common point of these self-developed chips is that they start from the image function.
Compared with the design of the entire SoC chip, the threshold and cost of the self-developed image chip are lower, and it is also suitable for rapid iteration, and at the same time has a certain fault tolerance rate and is more operable.
To achieve self-developed chips from dedicated to universal, domestic mobile phone manufacturers still need to go a long way. However, they have also shown the intention of entering the self-developed SoC.
After the release of the surging C1, Xiaomi said that it would take this as a starting point to return to the design and manufacture of the soC chip of the mobile phone's heart device.
Since the establishment of the research institute in 2018, OPPO has intended to deepen the field of basic research, and the ultimate goal is to start from the chip and create a full set of self-research capabilities.
Folding screen ushered in the first year?
In 2021, the folding screen mobile phone track has become congested again.
OPPO and Huawei have released folding screen mobile phones within a month, once again refreshing people's cognition of folding screen mobile phones.
Since Royole released the world's first folding screen mobile phone in 2018, folding screen mobile phones have been accompanied by controversy, such as insufficient practicality, small power, and high prices.
However, in 2021, more and more mainstream mobile phone manufacturers have entered the track, and the price of folding screen mobile phones has dropped significantly compared with before. More importantly, the practicality of this form of mobile phone has gradually been confirmed.
Interestingly, just a year ago, Liu Zuohu, founder of OnePlus Mobile Phone, believed that "the advantages brought by the current folding screen mobile phone cannot offset its shortcomings or disadvantages." However, in the 6 months after the official announcement of the return to OPPO, Liu Zuohu released OPPO's first folding screen mobile phone, Find N, on INNO DAY, and promoted on Weibo that the phone was "four years of grinding a sword".
OPPO FIND N follows the basic logic of "from small to large, turning outward", and the expanded form is horizontal. In the closed state, the OPPO FIND N is an 18:9 small screen phone with the same size as the iPhone mini.
It is worth noting that the hinge used by this folding screen phone supports the hovering of the phone at any opening and closing angle, which gives the mobile phone the possibility of discovering more usage scenarios. OPPO Find N played the slogan of "from early adopter to common use", and refreshed the lower price limit of folding screen mobile phones at a starting price of 7699 yuan. Minsheng Securities believes that OPPO released a new machine with a folding screen, which has far-reaching significance in the program, and the prologue of "close to the people" may be opened.
In the same month that OPPO launched the folding screen mobile phone, Huawei released the new folding screen P50 Pocket at the winter new product conference, which is Huawei's first vertical folding screen mobile phone, priced at 8988 yuan, and it is also the first time that Huawei has lowered the price of its folding screen mobile phone to less than 10,000 yuan.
Earlier in March, the Xiaomi MIX series returned to the jianghu with the official "I'm coming back" of Xiaomi. Lei Jun identified the MIX FOLD as "the most powerful folding screen mobile phone at present", positioning itself in the ultra-high-end market.
Mix FOLD priced at 9999 yuan with a large 8.01-inch in-fold 2K+ resolution flexible screen, the outer screen is 6.52 inches, equipped with the self-developed surging C1 professional image processor, the world's first mobile phone liquid lens, equipped with a four-speaker 3D panoramic sound system, with a 5020mAh folding screen mobile phone maximum battery, support 67W wired fast charging.
At the same time as the layout of domestic mobile phone manufacturers, Samsung, the "bellwether" of folding screen mobile phones, has also accelerated the pace of launching new products. In September, Samsung officially released the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3 5G in China, which is Samsung's third-generation folding screen phone. In addition to this, Samsung also released a product that folds up and down: the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5G.
A month ago, Samsung Mobile once again updated the 2022 mobile phone shipment guidelines, of which the guidance given for foldable screen mobile phones is about 13-15 million units per year, which is more than twice the 2021 shipment target.
In addition, Honor also recently announced that its first folding screen flagship Honor Magic V will soon be unveiled.
What keywords will continue in 2022?
More than one research institute is optimistic about the future of folding screen mobile phones.
Market research firm Counterpoint Research expects global foldable smartphone shipments to reach 18.3 million by the end of 2022.
CITIC Securities predicted in the research report that the mainstream price band of the folding screen industry is expected to drop to 5,000-8,000 yuan in the future. "Although the industry is still facing difficulties such as structural design, flexible modules, hinges, and product ecology, we believe that the follow-up iterative upgrade will accelerate, and we are optimistic about the overall industry growth." It is expected to exceed 65 million units in 2025. ”
A mobile phone industry analyst also agreed with this prediction, "As Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo, Glory and other mobile phone manufacturers plan to join the folding screen mobile phone market, we believe that the scale of the folding screen mobile phone market will expand rapidly." ”
He mentioned that the future changes in the market pattern need to pay attention to when Apple joins the folding screen market, and Apple's future addition will be an important turning point in the process of folding screen becoming a mainstream product in the market.
In 2021, "lack of core" is a popular keyword in the smartphone industry. This situation may be alleviated in 2022. IDC predicts that in 2022, more than 50% of mainstream mobile phone manufacturers' 5G mobile phone products will span three or more chip platforms to reduce risks and ensure stable supply.
SPDB International technology analysts believe that smartphone demand is still in the recovery period, but from the perspective of fundamental patterns, it is high and low around 2021, and 2022 is before and after high.
Shipments in 2022 are expected to return to 2018 levels. The demand for 5G replacement in mature overseas markets and the natural growth in emerging markets are the main drivers.
"The high year-on-year base in the first quarter of next year will lead to a year-on-year decline in mobile phone shipments of about 4%. However, we expect smartphone demand to improve from the second quarter of next year, with shipments up to 6%, 8% and 5% year-over-year in the last three quarters of next year, and mobile phone shipments up 4% year-on-year. The analyst said.