In 2021, there was an unprecedented event in the mobile phone industry, Apple actually reduced the price, the reason behind it should start from 2020 Huawei was hit by US sanctions, from that time on Huawei has been greatly affected, it can be said that in the field of mobile phones plummeted. And Apple is also looking at this point, so it has reduced the price promotion and further squeezed the high-end market space of Chinese smartphone manufacturers.
It can be intuitively seen from the numbers that in October 2021, Apple's share in the price range of "5,000-8,000 yuan" and "8,000 yuan higher" has reached 83.6% and 94.1%. You should know that at the same time in 2020, Apple's share is only 42.5% and 13.7%. The high gross profit in the high-end market made Apple earn a lot of money, earning a net profit of $94.68 billion, and the net profit margin was as high as 24.6%.
For Chinese mobile phone manufacturers, we must understand that only the industry they hold is their own, and what Apple wants is only its own success, not the success of China's smartphone industry, or the success of specific supply chain companies. Because of Apple's huge size and the early distribution of many production tasks to Chinese mobile phone industry manufacturers, Foxconn, Luxshare Precision, Desai Battery and other supply chain enterprises that are very competitive in the world were born.
But this is not to say that these supply chain companies are successful, in some cases Apple will decisively abandon suppliers, and of-film at the beginning of this year is the most obvious example. It seems that it is because OFILM's technology and product capabilities cannot keep up with Apple's requirements, but in fact, taking the performance of OFILM after joining apple supply chain in 2017, although revenue has increased, profits have not advanced and retreated, which has seriously affected the company's research and development investment. OFILM is just the beginning, not the end, and Apple has already trial-produced the iPhone 13 at Foxconn's factory in India. In addition, there will be Southeast Asian manufacturing for China's smartphone assembly and non-core components to replace, which will affect the domestic mobile phone supply chain manufacturers.
In order to prevent this possibility, the best way is for mobile phone manufacturers to turn the supply chain into their own, for the support of the industry, Xiaomi is undoubtedly the best in domestic smartphone manufacturers. From the financial report of Q1 of 2021, there are more than 320 enterprises directly invested by Xiaomi, and the total number of various industrial funds under Xiaomi has exceeded 400. At present, Xiaomi's investment in the semiconductor industry has involved twelve fields such as artificial intelligence, integrated circuits, and wireless communications. Unlike Apple, this kind of partnership is not a subordinate relationship, because Xiaomi firmly believes in the industrial chain, and the success of ecological partners is the premise of Xiaomi's future success.
At this stage of China's mobile phone industry, entering the high-end market is inevitable, Xiaomi has knocked on the door of high-end since Xiaomi 10, and Xiaomi 12 can be said to have really gained a foothold. At the Xiaomi 12 conference just now, Xiaomi founder Lei Jun said that he would raise the previous five-year R&D investment of 50 billion yuan to 100 billion yuan in the next five years. From the release of the three mobile phones can also be seen, the double size high-end is to Samsung Apple is on par with Samsung Apple, the ambition for high-end is undoubted, and behind the three flagship products is the cooperation between Xiaomi and more than 60 domestic supply chain manufacturers.
The development route of self-research + independent ecology is an important support for Xiaomi's future high-end route, Xiaomi's goal has always been "three years to impact the first", although the current Apple advantage is larger, but from the second quarter Xiaomi surpassed Apple to become the world's second possibility of success is still very large.