Jiwei network news, driven by the Android mobile phone camp, toF, which was once "hotly speculated" by the market, seems to be facing an embarrassing situation.
According to South Korean sources, Samsung is planning to redesign the use of related sensor lenses on high-end smartphones and consider abandoning TOF sensors. In other words, the Samsung Galaxy S22 series may be cancelled with TOF lenses.
In response to the current market situation of TOF, a senior industry insider revealed to the author, "In the mobile phone market, in 2022, only one apple player is equipped with TOF, and other companies are not equipped with TOF products." ”
The person believes that TOF will fight a protracted war in the mobile phone market, and at present, major mobile phone brand manufacturers are working folding screens, and TOF will wait for the AR market to better reflect its value. Deeply rooted in the reason, the person admitted that the current TOF market still lacks applications, but fundamentally speaking, it is still due to the thin profits of mobile phone manufacturers.
An industry insider introduced to the author that Apple mobile phones have 60% profits, Xiaomi mobile phones have about 6% profits, and TOF costs are equal to the profits of a single domestic machine.
It can be seen that after the Android mobile phone loads TOF, not only lacks application scenarios, but also profits are not guaranteed, more importantly, today's TOF seems to be abandoned by mobile phone brand manufacturers.
THE AWKWARD SITUATION FOR TOF: Consumers are less willing to pay
TOF is going from "sought after" to "out of favor".
3D sensing technology has become famous for Apple's introduction of the face recognition application of the iPhone X, Apple uses structured light, and then Android manufacturers have tested on TOF.
In 2018, OPPO released the first smartphone equipped with a TOF camera, OPPO R17 Pro, in December of the same year, vivo released its first smartphone with a TOF camera vivo NEX dual-screen version; Huawei released its first smartphone equipped with a TOF camera Honor V20.
Entering 2019, Android manufacturers have joined the TOF camera camp.
According to the data, in February 2019, Samsung released the Galaxy S10 5G, equipped with a TOF lens in front and behind; LG released the LG G8 ThinQ, equipped with a rear TOF lens Lenovo released the Z6 Pro 5G mobile phone, equipped with a rear TOF lens. Huawei also featured a rear TOF lens on the mid-range model nova 5 Pro in June.
In other words, since the birth of TOF technology, it has quickly been favored by a large number of mobile phone brand manufacturers, and because of this, the industry once believed that TOF has become the standard of flagship models and will continue to penetrate into the low-end market.
However, in fact, the development curve of TOF on the mobile phone side is completely different from the expected.
In 2021, there were Korean media reports that the Samsung Galaxy S22 series or will cancel the toF lens, when Samsung's explanation is from the data given by the manufacturer of the TOF sensor lens and the comprehensive brand development trend, Samsung believes that consumers do not seem to be interested in this lens! At the same time, it believes that TOF lenses do not seem to help high-end smartphones much, and so far, Samsung has remained skeptical about how reliable it is on mobile phones, although it can play a role in augmented AR reality and virtual reality VR.
A person who is deeply involved in the mobile phone industry chain and the author frankly said that high-end mobile phone products with TOF are not easy to sell, and because of this, some mobile phone brand manufacturers have cut orders several times, and finally left a pile of inventory.
The person helplessly said that the last loss is still the supplier, and in 2022 TOF on the mobile phone side, only Apple has a player, and other mobile phone brand manufacturers have not brought NEW machines with TOF.
In its view, TOF still needs to fight a protracted war due to the lack of applications in the mobile phone market.
AR into a "lifesaver" straw?
It is worth noting that not only is TOF snubbed by mobile phone manufacturers, but even structured light is difficult to escape this fate.
A senior industry insider admitted when communicating with the author that the model with TOF is not much use, and the sales are not good, so the major mobile phone brand manufacturers do not have a model with TOF in 2022, not only that, there are very few models with structured light.
"The 3D market in 2022 is really not ideal." Another person who continues to be deeply involved in the 3D camera industry revealed to the author.
In other words, the 3D camera market has encountered a bottleneck in development.
However, even so, some people in the industry are still optimistic about this market. A person who is deeply involved in the 3D camera industry chain and the author frankly said that the application of TOF has not yet risen, it may take 2-3 years to accumulate, and if the AR market is mature, then the role of TOF can be reflected.
So what about the current application of TOF? According to the author's understanding, mobile phones are the largest terminal field of TOF usage, in the non-mobile phone field, TOF is basically a K-level amount, and the final magnitude of the sweeper depends on the application effect and cost of TOF in the sweeper market.
In other words, in addition to mobile phones, the application scenarios of TOF are very limited.
Another practitioner who has left the 3D market said that TOF needs long-term investment and preparation, before many practitioners had speculative thinking about this market, and because of the existence of this way of thinking, which directly led to a lack of thinking about application problems,
The person continued to add that in fact, there should be a different way of thinking, because not all products can have the amount of mobile phones, in fact, to the door lock as an example, some European and American companies configure 3D products for access control, the unit price is very high, and the amount is not small. In its view, more opportunities for TOF in the future are fragmented end markets.
Due to the continuous optimism about the 3D market, the person is still determined to return to the 3D camera market.
In fact, returning to the essence of the development of things, the reason why a product can be successful, there must be a lot of accumulation in the early stage, whether it is a mobile phone, or a non-mobile phone, and now TOF is "temporarily" abandoned by the mobile phone terminal, in fact, it has sounded a wake-up call for the entire mobile phone upstream and downstream industry. (Proofreading | new)