Figure: Figure worm
Source: 21tech
Author: Luo Yiqi
Editor: Zhang Weixian
There have been many changes in the mobile phone market in 2021. Because of the temporary absence of some head manufacturers, the head players in the domestic market are eyeing the high-end market, but in the end they were taken the lead by Apple; at the same time, considering the market vacancies in other price segments that may be generated, the positive order behavior of the manufacturers in the first half of the year has also been adjusted in the follow-up; with the strong entry of new glory, OPPO's integration of the one-plus brand is completed - this will bring turbulence to the overall domestic market pattern.
It is also under the unfavorable status quo of the high-end market breakthrough that self-developed chips have become the hottest topic. During the year, the head manufacturers all completed the release of self-developed chips, and in addition to self-developed images, began to expand to areas such as self-developed fast-charging chips, and the battle for the lower technical dimensions is being implemented.
And even the relatively young-looking brands realme and vivo sub-brands iQOO, because the back end has supply chain support from large manufacturers, under the rapid development of the past three years, it has also begun to sprint to the high-end price segment of 5,000+ yuan.
"In my opinion, the competition in 2022 will be even more fierce." Xu Qi, vice president of realme, said in an interview with 21st Century Business Herald and other reporters recently that in the Chinese market, the overall mobile phone market consumption volume is declining, and it is expected that the sales volume of the large market will drop to about 280-290 million units. At the same time, the core players in the domestic market have profound strength and accumulation.
This is not only due to the rapid change in market share caused by the return of some brands, but also the deployment of major brands in various channel markets will be more sound. "It is estimated that this year (2022) is a key year for everyone to see brands compete with their housekeeping skills. For us, the pressure is also very large, we have made more preparations in research and development, products, channels and so on. He continued.
Indeed, the lack of cores in 2022 is still continuing, and the high-end battle has not yet borne new fruits, but a number of "new" players, including new glory and coolpad, are also constantly bringing changes. The Chinese mobile phone market, which has already entered the Red Sea, will still have many variables.
Shares adjust sharply
As soon as the newly returned glory entered the market, it quickly came to the Top5 position, which seemed to be full of staying power.
According to the statistics of the research agency Counterpoint, in the third quarter of this year, the domestic mobile phone market was reshuffled due to the comeback of glory. During the period, vivo and OPPO ranked in the top two with a share of 23% and 20%, respectively, and Honor quickly jumped to third place with a share of 15%, even surpassing Xiaomi, which made Honor the fastest growing brand in the quarter, with sales up 96% month-on-month.
Considering that Huawei once occupied half of the domestic market, this phenomenon once made the industry have a kind of expectation that Glory is expected to rush to the previous ranking.
In this regard, Counterpoint senior analyst Lin Keyu analyzed to the 21st Century Business Herald reporter that many of the new glory team do have deep roots with Huawei, but because the company's shareholders are mainly from previous supply chain and channel partners, which makes its current development method different from Huawei. In contrast, Huawei has accumulated deep accumulation in the previous years to have its current status.
"If after Honor officially becomes an independent brand, how much 'pollen' (Huawei fan nickname) can be undertaken from Huawei, I am still conservative at present." Because after all, Huawei still has many active user groups, and Huawei is constantly trying to maintain its own customer base by launching refurbished machines, software system upgrades, and launching related consumer electronics. He continued that the main growth of Honor at present comes from existing consumer groups and undertakes some users from Huawei. But the overall situation has not changed much in the short term. "This process of undertaking requires a long period of accumulation of R&D investment and other aspects to achieve, and it is difficult to predict whether it can be undertaken to the extent that Huawei's peak period exceeds more than half of the domestic share." Lin Keyu said.
According to CINNO Research, the latest data shows that the rapid growth momentum of Honor has been suspended. The agency pointed out that although the sales volume of Honor smartphones in November fell slightly by 2.4% month-on-month, it increased by 32.1% year-on-year, the largest year-on-year increase among Top5 brands. On the one hand, due to the limited number of Honor chips in the same period last year, the sales volume in the same period was low; on the other hand, it benefited from the listing of honor X30 series and honor 60 series.
It is also worth noting that the situation of OV between the OV has changed slightly, and even vivo once came to the front of OPPO.
Even vivo sub-brand iQOO, which started with a mid-range price segment of 3,000 yuan in the early days, has now reached a high-end price bracket. After the newly released iQOO 9 series, equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 mobile platform and two 50 million pixel main cameras, the price of the top version jumped to 5999 yuan.
The S series launched later, also because of the positioning of selfie capabilities, and did a certain price sinking, quickly became the main force supporting vivo sales. Its recently released S12 series has also gradually deepened the price segment from 2000+ yuan to 3000+ yuan, which is regarded as a synergy and supplement to vivo's flagship X series in the high-end price segment.
This is also related to the difference between the two stages of OV and OV.
"OPPO has more reflected in the past as a marketing-driven company, in fact, after 2020, especially in 2021, each head brand began to compete in technical thickness, and the industry entered a new competitive momentum." Lin Keyu analyzed to reporters that in 2021, OPPO is also experiencing adjustment actions through its own internal and one-plus sub-brand. "In fact, last year OPPO was doing integration actions, including personnel adjustment, product line rearrangement, etc., it can be said that 2021 is a year for OPPO to re-rest and start again." With the release of Mariana's self-developed chip and folding screen mobile phone, it means that OPPO will start a new sprint in 2022. ”
He believes that in contrast, vivo has not experienced many internal adjustments, and it is mainly deploying in accordance with the previous clear product planning during the year. In fact, its growth in the country remained in the single digits. But it is true that "in the past, the X series would take into account both the middle and high-end sides, and the price segment was very long." With the S series, the X series can focus on the high-end market, and the S series is the middle part of the market of the complement X and the low-end Y series, the demand in this band price segment is very large, so the penetration of the S offline and offline low-end markets is also a great help for vivo's ASP (customer unit price) increase. Lin Keyu said so.
Unleash chip capabilities
In 2021, for all head mobile phone manufacturers, the most critical thing is to enter the stage of commercial development of self-developed chips. Not only that, but also through the joint launch of vertical function chips (such as independent display functions, etc.) jointly launched with partners, such as the iQOO younger Neo5S series, but also put forward the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 and the unique chip Pro "dual core 2.0" concept.
"Chips" seem to be becoming a key for manufacturers to compete for the high-end market.
But it's still a process that takes time to cultivate slowly. Therefore, to a certain extent, although shouting to sprint to the high end, but at present, after Huawei, the performance of other domestic head brands is still relatively weak.
"At present, the pressure of each company to impact the high-end will indeed be relatively large, because after the sudden high-end market share is given up, each company also needs a certain amount of time and opportunity to precipitate, and consolidate its image at the high end, and then seize the user." Xu Qi so to the 21st Century Business Herald reporter analysis, which is why the industry currently believes that high-end machines belong to a relatively high-quality blue ocean market, but the mainstream brand's current performance has not yet reached expectations.
Vivo has launched a self-developed image chip V1 that represents its own capabilities and released it in the commercial flagship product X70 series. But its effects may not yet be apparent.
Lin Keyu pointed out to reporters that in the short term, we have not seen the obvious pull brought by the self-developed image chip V1 launched by vivo to product sales. "I think this is more related to how manufacturers can adjust the product strategy of ASP, and at the same time bring about the migration of technical capabilities to the brand image."
Specifically, mobile phone consumers have gradually become rational from looking more at brands to paying more attention to product experience. Therefore, more attention is paid to specific technical characteristics, which is also a trend generally seen by OVM, and then continue to work chip capabilities and release relevant information.
"Personal optimism and welcome the head manufacturers to continue to introduce new technologies, which will bring positive effects to the entire mobile phone industry." Lin Keyu said that of course, this is not one or two chips can bring obvious changes, during the period also need to continue to launch chips, gradually accumulated, in order to bring more positive factors to the industry competition, and the gap with the back-end brand further widened.
"In fact, in the early days, MediaTek's strong ability lies in video and audio." Lin Keyu said that whether the self-developed chips of terminal factories will bring gains to the traditional capabilities of SOC manufacturers is still difficult to evaluate. "How much benefit a self-developed single chip brings really depends on the final use experience conversion of the market." But the information that Apple has a market value of more than 3 trillion yuan means that this is the market's recognition of the company that the innovation represents. How to transform the brand stickiness and differentiation, and how to bind users through research and development and experience, is an important issue facing all manufacturers at present. ”
"It should be emphasized that the self-developed chip proposed by the OVM is technically different from Huawei's self-developed SOC." Counterpoint analyst Zhang Qi told reporters that the current OVM is mainly focused on the improvement of segmentation capabilities, but overall, if you want to look at Huawei, this is still a process that requires continuous accumulation of research and development capabilities.
"The investment in self-developed image chips is a silhouette of the intensification of domestic high-end market competition." Wu Yiwen, senior analyst at Strategy Analytic, told reporters that from the perspective of long-term competitive advantage, manufacturers' investment in self-developed components is very important, and domestic manufacturers are still in their infancy. "As a long-term track, this requires continuous investment from manufacturers, and it is difficult to distinguish between victory and defeat at present. At the same time, it is believed that the manufacturer's self-developed components will gradually sink to increase the scale. She continued.
Start a new fight
![The new machine three do not touch! Avoiding these pitfalls, it's easy to use the product for two more years[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)