Nine questions Honor CEO Zhao Ming Can the folding screen mobile phone become an opportunity for domestic mobile phones to enter the high-end market?

Cover news reporter Meng Mei

On the evening of January 10, Honor released the first folding flagship machine in 2022 - Honor MagicV. At the release site, Zhao Ming, CEO of Honor, said bluntly: "Folding screen mobile phones have entered the era of the main machine." Previously, Huawei, oppo and other mobile phone manufacturers have successively launched folding screen mobile phones, "stacking endlessly" has become the norm for domestic mobile phones? After the press conference, Zhao Ming made an in-depth interpretation of the topic of "whether folding screen mobile phones can become an opportunity for domestic mobile phones to enter the high-end market" in an exclusive interview with the media.

Reporter: You said at the press conference that the phone should look like a normal mobile phone when closed, in your opinion, what kind of product will be a normal folding product?

Zhao Ming: It is our analysis and research based on consumers, in fact, 50% of daily applications use external screens, which is relatively conservative in this data, because most of us are portable in this state, and the proportion of external screens may be relatively high.

We're actually asking ourselves, what about Glory for folding for the sake of folding? Or even if we consider its non-folding features, what would the size of a standard straight phone it look like alone? Based on such a logic and judgment, after the product and R&D team in turn tortured themselves, what remained was whether it was from a standard straight phone to use, or expanded, as a large-screen mobile phone to use, to best and optimally match the needs of consumers.

Honor is the first folding screen in 2022, and Glory is based on the folding screen into the main machine era, this year can certainly lead. The concept of 1+1 greater than 2 advocated by Honor will also be adopted in the design of various folding screen mobile phones in the future in 2022.

Reporter: From the perspective of the entire track, how does Glory see the prospect of the folding screen track?

Zhao Ming: Folding screen as a new form, the original everyone still feels that it is an innovation, may be a lot of display identity or what kind of a product. What I want to tell the entire industry and consumers is that the folding screen is no longer a product that tests the waters, it is a flagship mobile phone that can be used as the main force, and the future will be more and more widely used in the straight phone and the folding screen mobile phone will be long-term or coexist and parallel development. Folding screen I think from magic V onwards, its development speed will exceed our imagination.

Reporter: Will this year be the first year of the scale of folding screens? In the past few years, it seems that the amount has not risen.

Zhao Ming: Yes, I think honor Magic V we were the first to shout out the era of letting the folding screen enter the main machine, then 2022 will be the year of the massive rapid enlargement of the entire market of the folding screen.

Reporter: Can you sort out what hot spots or predictions may be in the market this year?

Zhao Ming: The logic of doing products and companies is still based on what kind of strategic control points and core capabilities should be built for the long-term development of an industry, which is also the origin and basis for us to think about and manage the problems of this company and enterprise. Future-oriented development and strategic control points, there is no doubt that software and hardware we believe are equally important. The ecological environment facing Glory today is that there is an Android system, Windows, and these software systems of various IoT. This is the complex ecology that Glory is facing today, but this ecology must integrate the entire system and give consumers a time that can be comparable to the iOS or Mac OS experience, and must go from the grassroots level or comb from the bottom. Then when it comes to the situation of the entire industry, the glory of 2021 and the problems faced in 2022 are very different, and the challenges are very large, but this time it is necessary to build the development capabilities for 2022, 2023, and the future, such as building a Magic live engine, rather than being short-sighted and just patching up the problems before solving

2022 is also a year of big waves, only in the face of the challenges of 2022, only to really do a good job of flagship mobile phone products. It is that there is no shortage of products in this market, and what is lacking is that the products that make consumers really willing to be moved and willing to pay are really lacking today. This is also the way we have to sit back and sit on the cold mentality of ten years to build our software system and hardware system, and in the future Glory will be the best in the industry in the release and volume of chip performance. The second is in the communication experience, including in computing, photography and many other fields, will build the core capabilities of glory from the bottom and future-oriented development, which is that the software and hardware must be strong.

Reporter: Will there be new breakthroughs in other hardware and software?

Zhao Ming: This time when considering the operating system and the future development of the bar machine, in fact, the best straight board machine in the industry is the Apple iPhone 13 series, and we see that whether it is from the sales results or the recent consumer use, it is the direction we learn. But under China's Internet use and ecological environment, we can certainly do better than Apple, because after all, Apple's design team and R & D team are still based on the American culture and ecological environment, and the direction of our Magic live intelligent engine is also a development path that has been firmly established after a long period of internal discussion. That is to say, as long as we return to the basic ability level and start to build the comparison of our competitiveness with Apple in a down-to-earth manner, Honor still has a very big opportunity. It can't be said that the bar machine has no chance, because after all, Apple still sells very well.

There is no doubt that the folding screen of the phone is to give glory in a corner overtaking or a completely new field to prove that it can do better than Apple's straight board, or better than Apple's mobile phone. In this regard, we start from the ecology of Internet applications, that is, the ecology of mobile phone dual-screen combined applications, in fact, I think it is a new field that integrates the operating system of the tablet operating system and the operating system of the straight mobile phone. From this dimension, the bar machine we still have a lot of room to improve, from the new form there is no doubt that this is the glory of the leading place, these two directions may have to be strengthened.

As for the new form in the future, I think what we will always insist on is to deeply understand the real needs of consumers.

Reporter: Combined with the folding screen to talk about the problem of China's entire high-end mobile phone market, because the recent topic of the largest technology industry is that Apple has reached a market value of 3 trillion US dollars, this thing happened in 2021, China's mobile phone manufacturers all shouted out to enter the high-end, but 1 year has passed, we see that now the domestic mobile phone manufacturers have achieved little in the high-end, but Apple's share in the high-end market is getting more and more desperate, so what do you think is the core problem in the middle?

Zhao Ming: First, high-end is not a slogan, high-end is not just a decision can be solved, high-end is a kind of strength and ability, and is a systematic ability. From the perspective of the strategy of honoring the entire company, high-end flagship mobile phones can match and surpass iPhones, and software systems can match and surpass ios, which is our company's goal and strategy. But to deal with this strategy, the execution under this strategy is to return to the fact that we have to decompose this strategy into executable, landable, quantifiable steps and actions, we are to decompose it from the capabilities of hardware to the capabilities of operating system software, and after decomposing each field and system to win the competition or be recognized by consumers, what is your sub-strategy.

Glory has its own short-term, medium-term and long-term planning in each ability module, what to do in the next five years, what to do in communication, what are the prerequisites for it to do so, there may be some things to cut into some self-developed areas more deeply, which is actually part of our transcendence strategy.

Reporter: So you predict that the folding screen will not become the best opportunity for Chinese mobile phone manufacturers to enter the high-end in 2022?

Zhao Ming: From the perspective of 2022, the folding screen is definitely a good opportunity, but it is still that sentence, what is the core technology and capability of the folding screen, and what is the folding screen that consumers need. By 2022, I believe that there should be no need to fold the screen for the sake of folding screens, but folding screen products that can really meet the closed and unfolded needs of consumers in an all-round way, (such products) will definitely lead the market.

Reporter: You mentioned that the next folding screen will enter an era of main machine applications, from the current amount, look at the agency's prediction in 2022 is probably more than ten million orders of magnitude, then from the perspective of this industry, how much magnitude is a safety line or can we really say that we have entered the era of main machine?

Zhao Ming: If you say that it is tens of millions, it must be, I think as long as you enter the rapid growth, 2021 (the Chinese market) may still be in the million level, if 2022 to ten million this level, it will certainly be no problem, it still depends on the satisfaction of the entire supply chain, as well as the products made by each family, the acceptance of consumers, the experience is still the most important. Entering the era of the main machine, business and normal use should be able to meet.

Reporter: Some institutions predict that this price can drop below 5,000 yuan in 2022, do you think the speed of price reduction is so fast?

Zhao Ming: I think cost is an important factor, but more importantly I think it is the experience, Apple's bar machines sell more than 5,000, how much does it sell in the Chinese market in a year? In fact, it is more important that consumers think that the experience you bring is not worth the price, rather than that you first set a price and then consider how far its experience can be.