The end of the year is approaching, and the war in the mobile phone market is once again ignited. Judging from news reports, this year's mobile phone circle is more lively than in previous years. It is worth mentioning that unlike the previous manufacturers who have competed in processors, mobile images, screen quality, and fast charging endurance, this time the war of various manufacturers has begun to burn to the folding screen, and there is a growing trend.
Throughout the world, folding screen mobile phones are gradually becoming a major trend in the mobile phone market. Since entering December, OPPO, Huawei and Honor have brought out their own new products, before that, Xiaomi and Samsung have also launched their own new folding screen mobile phones. Not only that, other manufacturers that have not yet launched foldable devices have always been eyeing this blue ocean market and plan to complete the layout of the folding screen track within the year.
Prior to this, folding screen mobile phones were once called unattainable products by consumers. However, with the maturity of the relevant industrial chain, folding screen mobile phones are now entering a period of intensive release, and consumer choices have begun to become rich. Take this opportunity to review the major events that have occurred in the folding screen market in the past year, and look forward to the future trend of folding screen mobile phones.
Lively folding screen market
The first to start the folding screen market in 2021 is Huawei, which we are very familiar with. On February 22, Huawei held a new product launch conference and officially released a new generation of folding screen mobile phone Huawei Mate X2. The machine is equipped with a Kirin 9000 5G processor, equipped with Leica quad camera, the inner screen size is 8 inches, the outer screen size is 6.45 inches, equipped with a 4500mAh battery, using 55W Huawei super fast charge, the starting price reached a staggering 17999 yuan.
As Huawei's flagship folding screen product last year, Huawei Mate X2 adopts a completely different opening and closing method from the previous generation of products - inner folding, and the machine also adopts a unique asymmetrical body design and "double spin water drop hinge design", the former makes the whole machine present a smooth slope after unfolding, the user holds part of the hand feel good, will not produce an "imbalance" feeling; the latter allows the product to achieve completely seamless folding operation, so that the whole machine after the unfolding of the inner screen crease is shallower, the look and feel is better.
Although the price of this product is not cheap, the unique product form, coupled with the scarce Kirin 9000 5G processor, still makes it successfully sold out of stock. To this day, the 5G version of Huawei's Mate X2 still sells for more than 10,000 yuan in the second-hand market. According to iResearch consulting data, as of December 1 last year, Huawei's folding screen successfully occupied 70% of China's folding screen market, which shows the success of this product.
Next, let's see what another mobile phone giant did last year. On September 1, Samsung Electronics held a Galaxy new product China conference, launched the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3 5G and Samsung Galaxy Z Flip3 5G two folding screen smartphones, both products are equipped with the latest Samsung screen and Snapdragon flagship processor, the pricing is also maintained at a more reasonable level.
Unlike Huawei, Samsung did not choose to work the hinge, so the folding form of the two products is no different from the previous generation. The difference is that this time Samsung brought the S Pen and the new UDC camera technology into the folding screen mobile phone, users can not only use the S Pen to achieve large-screen writing, so that the experience after the unfolding is more complete, and the under-screen camera technology also makes the visual perception after the unfolding to be improved.
Most importantly, Samsung has solved the waterproof problem of folding screen phones, and both Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3 5G and Samsung Galaxy Z Flip3 5G products support IPX8 waterproof rating. In the past, folding screen mobile phones because of the fuselage structure design reasons, resulting in waterproof is almost an impossible task, and Samsung through the new packaging technology and the independent waterproof design of different parts, so that users do not have to worry about accidental water immersion events in daily use, which makes everyone's trust in foldable mobile phones have improved.
In addition to these two traditional manufacturers, there were many manufacturers that joined the folding screen market last year, and Xiaomi is one of the faster manufacturers. On March 30, Xiaomi officially released the first folding screen model - Xiaomi MIX Fold, which is equipped with a Snapdragon 888 processor and adopts an 8.01-inch AMOLED foldable flexible inner screen, starting at 9999 yuan, which is also the lowest starting price of horizontal folding screen mobile phones at that time.
In front of Huawei, Samsung, Xiaomi is undoubtedly a novice to folding screen mobile phones, compared with the new products of the two manufacturers, Xiaomi MIX FOLD does have many flaws, such as the outer screen design is too narrow and long, folded after inconvenient to use; for example, the inner screen does not have UTT glass, the hinge design is also very primitive, resulting in relatively obvious creases. However, Xiaomi is indeed the first manufacturer to bring a horizontal folding screen mobile phone to a price of less than 10,000 yuan, which has also successfully won a group of consumers who want to try it early.
By the end of 2021, we have ushered in three new folding screen mobile phones in three weeks, and the entire folding screen mobile phone market has suddenly become hot. In addition to Huawei's vertical folding screen mobile phone P50 Pocket and Glory released the Magic V the following year, the most concerned nature this month is OPPO's first folding screen mobile phone Find N, which not only uses OPPO's self-developed Seiko quasi-vertebral hinge technology, but also boldly breaks the screen ratio of conventional folding screen mobile phones, and the starting price is as low as 7699 yuan.
As shown in the figure, we can see that the product design concept of OPPO Find N is slightly different from the traditional folding screen mobile phone, the machine pays more attention to the one-handed operation experience when combined, the inner screen size after the whole machine is 8.4:9, closer to the square, the weight of the whole machine 275g makes this product closer to the conventional flagship mobile phone, so that users can easily put it into the pocket or bag, as a daily machine to use.
With the special size of closing the small screen and opening the large screen, the exquisite texture, the excellent crease control and the low price far beyond expectations, OPPO Find N instantly attracted a lot of attention. Recently, OPPO officially announced that the number of appointments for OPPO Find N folding screen has exceeded 1 million, and the model has been in short supply since its listing, only the Jingdong platform sold 22,000 units in December, ranking first in the folding screen category sales list, it can be said that OPPO's first attempt to enter the folding screen market was successful.
Overall, after the development of smart phones encountered product bottlenecks, folding screen mobile phones with a new concept finally ushered in heating up. Industry insiders pointed out that under the leadership of Huawei, Samsung and other mobile phone brands, folding screen mobile phones have gradually completed consumer cultivation, with the continuous maturity of product technology, we can see more and more manufacturers complete the deployment of folding screen products, hoping to explore emerging markets, complete product upgrades and brand upgrades.
According to a survey report from the panel supply chain research and adjustment agency DSCC, in the third quarter of 2021, the shipment of folding screen mobile phones reached 2.6 million units, an increase of 215% month-on-month and 480% year-on-year. Prior to this, the shipment of folding screen mobile phones in 2020 was also 2.8 million units. The accelerating growth rate of folding screen mobile phone shipments confirms that the folding screen mobile phone market is indeed ushering in a rapid growth stage.
The future direction of folding screens
Although the development of folding screen mobile phones is in full swing, it is undeniable that there are still many problems in folding screen mobile phones until today. Whether it is a more fragile screen quality, a more fragile mechanical structure, almost no waterproof performance or high maintenance costs, any one of these shortcomings can dissuade many consumers, which also makes the popularity of folding screen mobile phones face many obstacles.
Whether from the perspective of the manufacturer's actions or from the perspective of the orientation of the entire market, I personally believe that under the updated iteration of technology, there is still a lot of room for development of folding screen mobile phones. Now, the first folding screen mobile phone of 2022, honor Magic V, has been launched. I pay attention to the work to peek at the big, through the configuration information of this product, can we see the development trend of some folding screen mobile phones? In 2022, what changes will occur in folding screen mobile phones? Let's tell the story.
1, domestic flexible screen to start
The production of folding screen mobile phones is very difficult, which is a recognized fact. Although on the surface, the difference between folding screen mobile phones and straight mobile phones is only a straight screen bent nearly 90 degrees, but this bending increases the difficulty of mobile phone design and manufacturing by an order of magnitude.
In the past, folding screen mobile phones were generally affected by the production capacity of flexible OLED screens, not only with small shipments and low yields. After entering 2021, Huaxing Optoelectronics, Shentianma, Visionox and other domestic screen manufacturers are accelerating their investment in the construction of flexible OLED screen factories, and the recently released Glory Magic V uses BOE's high-brush flexible OLED screen, and Xiaomi MIX Fold has also used the flexible OLED screen produced by Huaxing Optoelectronics.
Although there are still certain technical defects in the flexible OLED screens produced by domestic manufacturers, such as insufficient screen hardness and no high refresh rate. It is foreseeable that the accelerated production of domestic screen manufacturers can solve the production capacity problem of folding screens to a certain extent. With the continuous improvement of domestic manufacturers' technology, the future folding screen mobile phone will also use more domestic flexible OLED screens.
We can believe that domestic manufacturers should reduce the mass production cost of flexible screens to a relatively "normal" level, although the cost is still relatively high compared to ordinary screens, but at least reached a level that is acceptable to more consumers. Not only that, according to industry analysts, the domestic manufacturers' flexible OLED production capacity climbing and market share is rapidly increasing, it is expected that in 2022 China will become the largest OLED production capacity country, the total production capacity will exceed 500,000 pieces / month after full production, effectively solving the capacity problem of flexible OLED screens.
2, water drop hinges should be popularized
In addition to the flexible OLED screen, the hinge should be regarded as the second most important component on the folding screen mobile phone. How to achieve precision manufacturing and control in the "land and gold" products of mobile phones, and how to make the screen look as flat as possible after unfolding, has become a problem that all manufacturers are thinking about.
As a pioneer of folding screen mobile phones, Samsung has adopted a U-shaped hinge design in three generations of products. This hinge design is characterized by a relatively mature design, there will be a relatively deep screen crease, and the whole machine can not be fully folded. From the actual product point of view, despite three generations of product evolution, but on the latest Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3, creases and screen flatness are still difficult to say meet the requirements of good use.
In order to solve the problem of screen closure, Motorola launched the teardrop hinge design two years ago, officially unveiling another development path of hinges. Absorbing the design scheme of the previous generation, Huawei launched the Huawei Mate X2 at the beginning of last year, a unique dual-track waterdrop hinge mechanism, which indirectly solves the physical crease brought to the screen by the screen bend radius is too small, so that the reliability and stability of the folding screen mobile phone have been greatly improved.
Entering the second half of the year, we can see that the new machines including OPPO, Huawei and Honor all adopt the teardrop hinge design, of which OPPO Find N has achieved UTT glass and water drop hinge design at a price of 7699 yuan. The seamless folding, traceless unfolding screen makes the folding screen mobile phone look more like a mature product, which provides conditions for the folding screen mobile phone to enter the main market.
From the perspective of OPPO Find N, the water droplet hinge design is an excellent design with reasonable cost and wide application. It is expected that after entering 2022, more manufacturers will adopt this hinge design, including xiaomi, blue factory, Motorola and other manufacturers who are about to launch new products, even the rumored Apple folding screen iPhone is said to use this design, but whether Samsung will give up its own optimization of the U-shaped hinge design for many years is still unknown.
3. Product prices continue to decline
A closer look back at the previous folding screen products, the Samsung Galaxy Fold is priced at 15999 yuan, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip is priced at 11999 yuan, the Huawei Mate X is priced at 16999 yuan, and even the cheapest Royole FlexPai 2 is from 9988 yuan. I have to say that the excessively high price of folding screen mobile phones is definitely the main factor hindering the development of folding screens.
However, since entering 2021, due to the increase in the production capacity of the flexible OLED screen mentioned above, the improvement of the yield of parts in the folding screen supply chain, and the reduction of related material costs, we can see that the cost of folding screen mobile phones is declining, and this reduced cost is also reflected in the product price, Xiaomi, OPPO and Glory's newly released folding screen mobile phones, the price of folding screen mobile phones has dropped to less than 10,000 yuan.
In particular, OPPO Find N, the starting price as low as 7699 not only ushered in the cheers of the whole audience when it was announced, but also broke the market status quo of the average price of folding screen mobile phones of 10,000 yuan, and pulled the folding screen this high-end plaything directly to the level of the general public, so that some users who were not optimistic about the folding screen in the past took the initiative to try folding screen mobile phones. With OPPO Find N pearls in front, the future folding screen mobile phone will also think twice about pricing, which is undoubtedly a good thing for consumers.
After three years of development, the grand situation of the folding screen market is now promoting the technological upgrading of the upper and midstream supply chains. Through market-oriented iteration, we will gradually promote the updating of materials and other fields, thereby reducing the cost of core devices, and then feeding back the downstream market and promoting market outbreaks.
According to industry analysts, in recent years, domestic investment in ultra-thin glass is also increasing, with the landing of new local factories and mass production, the cost of folding screens will quickly decline. With the gradual maturity of the industrial chain and the promotion of terminal manufacturers, the Android folding screen mobile phone market is opening, and it is expected that the price of folding screen mobile phones will likely break the 5,000 yuan mark by 2022, and will continue to decline.
It is worth noting that although various Android manufacturers have lowered the price of folding screen mobile phones, there is still a huge gap compared with the pricing of mainstream Android flagship mobile phones. For example, Honor's latest folding screen mobile phone Honor Magic V starting price reached 9999 yuan, while the previous hot flagship phone Honor Magic 3 series starting price is 4299 yuan, the difference is more than double. Because of the difference in product materials, folding screen mobile phones are likely to never reach the "people-friendly" price range.
4, more folding forms appear
From the current situation, Samsung does not seem to be satisfied with a simple folding device. At CES 2022, Samsung showcased a variety of concept devices, among which the Samsung Flex Note is a large folding screen device, which is equivalent to a 17-inch oversized tablet when unfolded and a 13-inch laptop when folded.
As early as CES 2020, Lenovo had released the world's first 2K OLED folding screen laptop ThinkPad X1 Fold, but unfortunately this product was ultimately not highly evaluated because of poor performance. Today, with the arrival of the twelfth generation of Core low-voltage processors, the performance of thin and light Windows devices has been improved by leaps and bounds, and a usable folding screen notebook seems to be not far from our daily lives.
Looking at other products, the Samsung Flex S/G is two folding devices that use a tri-fold panel, which can be fully expanded to get more display space. According to foreign media reports, Samsung is planning to launch a folding tablet Samsung Galaxy Z Fold Tab, the main selling point of the machine is the folded portability and the visual effect after the expansion, we are expected to see this product this year.
Finally, Samsung also showed off a side-sliding scroll screen device, Flex Slidable, which is very similar to the scroll screen device previously shown by OPPO at future conferences.
Scroll screen can be said to be another attempt by manufacturers for screen expansion after the folding screen, both technologies can be implemented on a device to achieve two or more screen size display, to meet the experience needs of mobile phones in different uses, but the screen of the scroll screen has no creases, and the screen size changes without interrupting the state being used, it is more comfortable and natural to use.
Purely from the perspective of product concept, the design of the scroll screen is almost impeccable. Now it seems that the biggest problem blocking the mass production of such designs is likely to be the problem of part yield and cost. In the new year, we may still not see the emergence of the scroll screen mass production machine, but Samsung's concept display does allow us to see more possibilities for expanding the display space, and also makes us full of expectations for the future.
How to go from "early adopter" to "common use"?
Q, is the folding screen market getting better?
Judging from the surveys of various municipal investigation agencies, the folding screen market is obviously better. According to the latest research data from DSCC, the shipment of folding screen mobile phones increased from 2.6 million units to 3.8 million units in the fourth quarter of this year, and shipments are expected to be close to 20 million units next year. From the above data, it is not difficult to find that folding screen mobile phones will become a new growth point for smart phones in the future, which is an important driving force for consumers to change machines, and thus attract more manufacturers to enter the game.
However, despite the emergence of new products, in the current mobile phone market, folding screen mobile phones are still a very niche choice. From the price point of view, whether it is Samsung's Fold series/Flip series, or Xiaomi's MIX Fold, Microsoft's Surface Duo series, the price has a considerable dive after listing. In terms of sales, the Jingdong sales data of the Xiaomi MIX Fold in December was 4600 units, while the sales volume of the Redmi K40 in the same period was more than 20 times that of this product.
Why is this happening? Xiao Lei specially asked a few friends who were interested in digital, and their conclusions were surprisingly consistent.
"Except for the folding screen, I don't understand what is the difference between a folding screen phone and an ordinary mobile phone?"
From the manufacturer's point of view, the existence of folding screen mobile phones is very obvious, that is, by expanding the screen to make up for the lack of mobile phone screens, so that mobile phones can replace some functions of tablets and computers. In this way, users no longer need to carry a variety of products, in the most ideal case, as long as a folding screen mobile phone is enough for people's daily use, entertainment, office needs.
However, from the user's point of view, the essence of the folding screen mobile phone is still a "mobile phone". Of course, it can be expanded into a tablet, but this is the application ecology of the Android tablet, and few application developers have made independent adaptations to the Android tablets, let alone the independent adaptation of folding screen mobile phones. Because the screen is larger, the reading experience has indeed improved, but because of the screen ratio problem, the experience of games and audio-visual entertainment will be discounted.
Although Huawei, Samsung, Honor and OPPO have all said that they have made some efforts in the adaptation of their content ecology, and various split-screen, folding, and hover operations are indeed very stunning at first glance, the actual experience of folding screen mobile phones is still difficult to get rid of the shadow of traditional mobile phones. Personally, I think that the construction of the application ecology is related to whether the folding screen mobile phone can truly go from the niche to the public in the future.
As far as the current products and user needs are concerned, the current folding screen products are still missing in terms of mobile phone weight, battery life, etc., but the painstaking efforts of various manufacturers in hardware design, software adaptation and interactive experience are worthy of recognition, and today's folding screen mobile phones have made great progress in usability, ease of use, and practicality. I believe that in 2022, folding screen mobile phones will be able to go to a higher level, truly from "early adopter" to "common use".