Mainstream mobile phone manufacturers running into the folding screen industry chain outbreak is imminent

On December 15, 2021, OPPO released the first folding screen mobile phone; on December 23, 2021, Huawei released the first vertical folding screen mobile phone; on January 10, 2022, Honor's first folding screen mobile phone will be officially released... Recently, mainstream mobile phone manufacturers have appeared with new products, and the folding screen industry has arrived on the eve of the outbreak.

At the same time, the industrial chain is also busy, and the news about the expansion and production of core accessories production lines continues to come. The Shanghai Securities News reporter found during the investigation that with the gradual maturity of folding screen mobile phones in hardware supply, innovative interaction, application ecology, etc., all parties in the market are optimistic about the volume of folding screen mobile phones in 2022. CITIC Securities expects that the compound annual growth rate of folding screen mobile phone shipments will exceed 90% in 5 years, and it is expected to exceed 65 million units by 2025.

Mainstream brands open the "screen" together

Folding screen mobile phones, which have been available for several years, have not been able to enter ordinary people's homes on a large scale due to high prices and immature technology. By the end of 2021, the folding screen mobile phone track suddenly became lively.

The main players Samsung and Huawei continue to be new. First, Samsung and China Telecom released the "Heart of the World Samsung W22 5G" folding screen mobile phone, together with the Z FOLD series for high-end business people and the Z Flip series positioned as light luxury fashion, forming a situation where the three major product lines go hand in hand; Huawei released the P50 Pocket on December 23, 2021, which focuses on light luxury and the women's market and adopts the vertical inward folding solution, thus completing the Mate and P series folding flagship dual-line layout and officially entering the era of double folding flagship.

On December 15, 2021, OPPO released its first folding screen model, OPPO Find N, becoming the third domestic mobile phone manufacturer to enter the folding screen track. The second "player" is Xiaomi, which launched its first folding screen mobile phone as early as March 2021, using a horizontal in-folding scheme and positioning itself as a "cost-effective business flagship product".

Next Monday, Honor will release the first folding screen phone, the Magic V. Zhao Ming, CEO of Honor, said that the phone will bring revolutionary innovation breakthroughs in three dimensions: folding form, performance experience and application scenarios. The reporter also learned that vivo will soon launch its first folding screen mobile phone, and Apple is expected to release the first folding screen mobile phone in 2023.

Not only is the product side wonderful, as the starting price of the folding screen mobile phone drops to less than 10,000 yuan, the consumer side is also lively, and more and more people are beginning to accept and even pursue this product.

Recently, when the reporter visited Huawei's flagship store in Shenzhen Bonjour Center, he saw that even on weekdays, consumers who came to experience and consult folding screen mobile phones were still in an endless stream. The newly released Huawei P50 Pocket folding screen mobile phone starts at 8988 yuan, compared with the Starting Price of 16999 Yuan Huawei Mate series folding screen mobile phone, the threshold is greatly reduced.

Up to now, the folding screen mobile phones launched by Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO and other mobile phone manufacturers have dropped to less than 10,000 yuan, of which the starting price of the Samsung Z Flip series is 7599 yuan, the Xiaomi folding screen mobile phone is 6999 yuan, and the starting price of OPPO's folding screen mobile phone is 7699 yuan. For mass consumers, folding screen mobile phones are no longer out of reach.

The industrial chain is fully open

In the eyes of industry insiders, the key to influencing the direction of the competitive landscape and the penetration rate of folding screens may be the suppliers in the upstream of the industrial chain. It is understood that in order to cooperate with the stable supply of mobile phone manufacturers, the industrial chain has been fully opened.

The flexible AMOLED screen is a key component of folding screen mobile phones. On December 28 last year, BOE spent 46.5 billion yuan to build Chongqing's 6th-generation AMOLED (flexible) production line project, which held a mass production and customer delivery ceremony, and officially announced mass production. Liu Xiaodong, president of BOE, said at the mass production ceremony that the smooth realization of mass production delivery of the production line is of great significance for accelerating the growth of the new terminal application market.

As the world's second largest and the largest supplier of flexible AMOLED screens in China, BOE shipped about 40 million flexible AMOLED screens in the first three quarters of 2021, a substantial increase year-on-year. BoE expected in an institutional survey that with the increase in customer demand and the smooth climbing of the company's flexible AMOLED production line production capacity in the future, the company's flexible AMOLED product shipments are expected to continue to grow rapidly.

Shentianma A revealed in the survey that the company's mass production projects and projects under development have achieved full coverage of domestic brand customers. The company's Xiamen TM18 production line has completed the capping of the main plant, and is currently stepping up the promotion of equipment relocation and other work to prepare for the first half of 2022. After the completion of the project, it will help the company's flexible AMOLED production capacity to rank among the top three in the world.

In addition, Visionox's sixth-generation all-flexible AMOLED production line has been mass-produced and delivered in August 2021, and is currently stepping up production with mobile phone manufacturers.

CITIC Securities said that it is optimistic about the domestic manufacturers' flexible OLED production capacity climbing and market share increase, and it is expected that China is expected to become the largest OLED production capacity country in 2022, of which flexible OLED production capacity will account for more than 40% of the world. According to OLED Industry statistics, there are 12 6 generation production lines built and under construction in China, and the total production capacity will exceed 500,000 pieces per month after full production.

Suppliers of flexible covers, hinges and other products are also sprinting to increase production capacity. Among them, the flexible cover material is the core flexible material of the folding screen mobile phone, and the UTG flexible glass with good wear resistance is the mainstream material of the folding screen cover. At present, the first phase of Kaisheng Technology's ultra-thin flexible glass UTG project is being produced according to orders. In order to seize the opportunity, the company has spent more than 1 billion yuan to build the second phase of the ultra-thin flexible glass (UTG) project, which is expected to form a production capacity of 15 million pieces per year after it is completed and put into operation in December 2022.

The application ecosystem still needs to keep up

"Folding screen mobile phones have gone through the 'concept gimmick' era, and what follows is a real functional competition." Honor China CMO Jiang Hairong thinks.

Competing with functions and user experience, in addition to hardware to keep up, the software adaptation and ecological construction of the folding screen are also the key to determining whether the folding screen can be continuously increased for a long time. "The problem of adaptation is indeed a very challenging thing, and the workload is 4 to 6 times the workload of the average flagship." Liu Zuohu, chief product officer of OPPO, said, "The application adaptation of the head should be discussed one by one, and the application of its own system should also be designed separately, and some innovative user experience needs to be redeveloped... The workload is very large and the challenge is greater than the hardware. ”

Industry insiders said that there are already 3.5 million Apps in the Chinese market, but there are not many special adaptations for folding screen mobile phones, which is related to the small size of folding screen mobile phones and the lack of sufficient motivation for App manufacturers to adapt software.

A folding screen user told reporters that she often appears to use the folding screen often the application can not be smoothly switched between different screens, some applications are designed for straight-screen mobile phones, switch to the square of the large screen after the proportion will be out of balance, some even the interaction button is not in the screen, very affect the use of experience.

The reporter found that at present, the head mobile phone manufacturers generally regard the adaptation and development of the application as an important part of the research and development of the folding screen. According to Liu Zuohu, after investing a lot of energy and resources, OPPO's first folding screen mobile phone currently has a split-screen adaptation rate of 90% and a large-screen adaptation rate of 80%.

As early as 2019, Huawei, which released the official adaptation scheme of the folding screen for developers, has also done a lot of work on the software adaptation and development of the folding screen, and after three generations of folding screen product update iterations, its software adaptation work has been at the forefront of the industry.

"Mobile phones need hardware and App to cooperate in order to have a good experience." It is believed that as more and more head manufacturers invest resources to promote software adaptation, the ecosystem supporting folding screen mobile phones will gradually be established, forming a virtuous circle with sales. Some insiders said.