Some time ago, the Chinese Academy of Information and Communications Technology released the 2021 domestic mobile phone market operation analysis report, the report shows that in 2021, the overall shipment of domestic mobile phones reached 351 million units, an increase of 13.9% year-on-year, and the shipment of Chinese brand mobile phones totaled 304 million units, an increase of 12.6% year-on-year, accounting for 86.6% of mobile phone shipments in the same period, and more and more users chose domestic mobile phones. In addition, it is worth noting that the annual shipment of 5G mobile phones reached 266 million units, an increase of 63.5% year-on-year, accounting for 75.9% of mobile phone shipments in the same period.
In general, in 2021, the domestic mobile phone market has warmed up slightly, more and more users have chosen domestic mobile phones, and under the impetus of major manufacturers, most consumers will choose 5G mobile phones. Now, has entered 2022, in the next few months will usher in a large number of new machines, the domestic mobile phone market will go where?
The demand for replacement machines was further released, and sales continued to pick up slightly
After eight years of continuous growth, the domestic mobile phone market is close to saturation, with its first decline in 2017, followed by several consecutive years of continuous decline, entering the stock era. On June 6, 2019, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued 5G commercial licenses to China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom and China Radio and Television, which marked that China officially entered the 5G commercial stage, that year is also known as the first year of 5G, 2020 will become the popularity year of 5G mobile phones, 5G will become a major reason for users to change machines, whether mobile phone manufacturers or operators are gearing up, ready to show their fists in 2020.
But the advent of the new crown epidemic disrupted everything, chips and other components appeared in short supply, the global economic downturn led to a decline in consumers' desire to change machines, although major manufacturers strive to compete for sales through low prices, but it is still difficult to curb the decline, under the influence of multiple factors, mobile phone shipments in 2020 are only 308 million units, down 20.8%, which is also the biggest decline since 2017. With the gradual control of the domestic epidemic, the problem of chip shortage has gradually been alleviated, the economy has gradually recovered, and the demand for consumer replacement has also begun to recover, which is well evidenced by last year's shipments of 351 million.
In 2022, this demand will be further released, the domestic mobile phone market continues to pick up, but the amplitude is limited, although 5G is still the power of user replacement, but at present for most consumers, its actual application scenarios are limited, there is no "killer" application blessing, can not have a significant role in promoting the mobile phone market.
The road to high-end has a long way to go, and self-developed chips have become a key point
"High-end" can be said to be the key word that the mobile phone market cannot get rid of in recent years, especially in 2021, Huawei has been sanctioned by the United States, resulting in the supply of chips and other components, the development of mobile phone business has stagnated, and it has turned into a defensive trend in an all-round way, so that the domestic mobile phone market, especially the high-end market of more than 5,000 yuan, has a big vacancy, which can be said to be a big "cake". As a traditional manufacturer, Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo and the reborn glory all worked hard to seize the high-end market last year. But judging from the results, it is not optimistic.
In the third-party data agency CINNO Research continued to release the "China Mobile Communications Industry Data Observation Report" every month, it was pointed out that in the high-end market above 5K, Apple's share increased significantly from 48% in 2020 to 75%, and in the case of Huawei's limited and other brands without the launch of models to compete with, Apple's share in this range continued to grow, eating most of the dividends, and with the increase in price reduction, iPhone 13 has become the best-selling product in China for 6 consecutive weeks.
In 2022, domestic manufacturers still have a long way to go in impacting the high-end, it is not easy to replicate Huawei's success, and the impact on the high-end market is bound to be a long-term accumulation process, which is not only based on the brand value brought by the brand image, so that consumers are willing to believe in premium ability, more importantly, to ensure that the product has a good experience, which requires long-term optimization and run-in. Huawei has achieved better software and hardware integration through self-developed chips, created a more complete ecosystem, and gained a firm foothold in the high-end market, while other manufacturers want to succeed, and self-developed chips seem to have become a gap that must be crossed.
It can be seen that domestic manufacturers other than Huawei have made some achievements in self-developed chips, following the surging S1, Xiaomi brought the self-developed image chip surging C1 and the self-developed charging chip - surging P1 last year; Vivo took out the first self-developed image chip - V1; OPPO also released the first self-developed chip - Mariana MariSilicon X, which is the world's first 6nm imaging dedicated NPU chip. Although there is still a distance compared with mobile phone chips, this is destined to be a process that requires continuous accumulation of research and development capabilities, and the results show that the investment is not in vain.
Under the blessing of self-developed chips, in addition to allowing products to achieve some unique functions, or significantly improve the experience of a certain function, but also allow consumers to see the brand's ability in technological innovation, enhance brand influence and reputation, so as to enhance the premium ability of products, high-end market fight is also R & D and innovation capabilities, who is stronger, who can win the market.
So in this year, we should see the shadow of self-developed chips on a variety of high-end domestic mobile phones, and at the same time, compared with last year, the competition in the high-end market this year will be more intense, in addition to the rice OV, Glory gradually completed the layout of the product line after independence last year, and this year is bound to launch a more violent impact on the market. In addition, realme, as the fastest to achieve 100 million sales, also made it clear at the press conference at the beginning of the year that it will launch an impact on the high-end market.
More manufacturers entered the folding screen, and sales increased significantly
In the past 2021, many major events have occurred in the folding screen mobile phone market, Huawei not only updated the horizontal folding Mate X2, but also brought the up and down folding P50 Pocket at the end of the year, becoming the second manufacturer with two folding screen product lines. Samsung, on the other hand, has updated the Fold and Flip product lines in the Galaxy Z series. In addition to them, Xiaomi and OPPO launched their own folding screen mobile phones Mix Fold and Find N last year, and the folding screen mobile phone market is only Samsung and Huawei, two major manufacturers.
By 2022, there will be more manufacturers to fold the folding screen, Honor took the lead in january to officially launch the folding screen flagship Magic V, and according to some previous news, vivo, realme products are also on the road; In addition, TCL, which holds Huaxing Optoelectronics, has also exhibited a folding screen mobile phone with a very high degree of completion at CES this year, and it is also a potential "player" this year; In addition, ZTE, which has reached a strategic cooperation with Royole in 2020, has said that it will jointly explore the new category of flexible folding screen mobile phones, and this year is also expected to release a new folding screen machine, compared with only a very small number of brands and products on the market in previous years, the folding screen market in 2022 will give consumers more choice, different brands, different folding methods and different functions. For more detailed information, you can move to an article I wrote before, "From a few to "one super and many strong" folding screen mobile phones will go from here."
The layout of many manufacturers will make the folding screen market usher in a period of rapid rise, according to the research agency Counterpoint Research data, in 2019 folding screen mobile phone sales of 500,000 units, 2020 for 2.8 million units, 2021 is expected to reach 7.5 million units, each year is a multiple growth, and it is expected that by the end of 2022, sales will reach 18.3 million units, folding screen will have a larger market space. Folding screen is still a new consumer market, folding screen high-end competition has just begun, for the latecomers also have more competitive opportunities, so this is also more and more domestic manufacturers into the market reasons. And high price, high technology content and high pressure so that the folding screen is born with high-end attributes, so for many domestic manufacturers that impact the high-end market, no one will miss this opportunity, it can be said that the folding screen also carries the high-end dream of domestic manufacturers.
For the majority of consumers, the folding screen mobile phone in 2022 is no longer so high and unattainable. Taking last year as an example, Samsung's Z Fold3 pricing compared to the previous two generations dropped by 2K, Z Flip3 is 4K+ lower than the first generation, while Xiaomi, OPPO and Glory's horizontal folding screen mobile phone pricing has come to less than 10,000 yuan, OPPO's even below 8K, this year is expected to continue to explore, 7-10K will become the mainstream pricing of folding screen products in 2022, a domestic manufacturer and Samsung's folding screen price war will start.
Folding screen products gradually go mainstream, will also further promote the adaptation of software, developers in the development of software will directly consider such products, without the need for manufacturers to spend a lot of time to adapt one by one. In addition to the conventional software adaptation, for the incoming manufacturers, but also to think hard about how to create a unique interaction, so that the folding screen mobile phone to get rid of in addition to the screen size, what can be different from the traditional mobile phone experience, in addition to better use of the split screen and hover, what else can be done? Folding form rather than purpose, no matter what form the mobile phone becomes, it must ultimately be implemented in the use experience, in the hardware configuration + software interaction of the dual force, it is more likely to become the winner of this year's folding screen market.
Tianji 9000 entered the market strongly, becoming a new choice for manufacturers' flagships
In the third quarter of 2020, MediaTek surpassed Qualcomm for the first time to become the world's largest smartphone chipset supplier, with a market share of 31%, and maintained the first position in the global mobile phone processor share for five consecutive quarters. MediaTek can achieve such results, which is inseparable from the help of 5G. After the official commercial use of 5G, major manufacturers have made efforts in the 5G mobile phone market, according to the report released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, the overall shipment volume of the domestic mobile phone market in 2020 will be 308 million units, and the cumulative shipment of 5G mobile phones will be 163 million units, accounting for 52.9% of the mobile phone shipments in the same period; In 2021, the proportion of 5G mobile phones in the same period of shipments reached 75.9%, 5G mobile phones became the main force of shipments, and the demand for 5G chips gradually increased, and MediaTek seized this opportunity well.
Since 2019, MediaTek has been actively laying out in the field of 5G chips, including Tianji 1000 series, Tianji 900 series, Tianji 800 series, Tianji 700 series, related terminal products with excellent cost performance by the majority of consumers favored, but due to chip positioning and specification parameters, its products have not been used by high-end flagship mobile phones. At the end of last year, MediaTek brought the Flagship Tianji 9000 5G processor, the first to use TSMC 4nm process, with a frequency of 3.05GHz Arm Cortex-X 2 super core, 3 frequencies up to 2.85GHz Arm Cortex-A710 large core and 4 Arm Cortex-A510 energy efficiency cores, GPU using 10 core Arm Mali-G710 graphics processor, support LPDDR5X memory The engineering prototype Antu Rabbit ran more than 1 million points, catching up with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 in terms of parameters and performance.
The strong attack of the Tianji 9000 also means that after a few years, MediaTek has once again launched an impact on the flagship mobile phone market. At last year's conference, OPPO said it would debut the Tianji 9000 on its flagship Find series, followed by Redmi and vivo. It is expected that in 2022, we will see more high-end and flagship products equipped with Tianji 9000 chips.
Its emergence is bound to cause a certain impact on Qualcomm, but it is difficult to shake its position in flagship products, after all, Qualcomm has been working in the flagship mobile phone market for several years, which is also a process that requires long-term accumulation, and mediatek as a challenger can achieve what kind of results, it is worth looking forward to.
The manufacturer's "inner volume" is still serious, and the others living environment is not optimistic
In the first two years, Huawei has been sitting on the throne of the first domestic mobile phone shipments, but after encountering US sanctions, shipments have fallen sharply from the fourth quarter of 2020, and by 2021, Huawei has given up the first throne of domestic mobile phone sales and slid into the "Others" of major research institutions. Huawei's vacated market share has been divided by OPPO, vivo, glory, millet and other manufacturers, and the competition in the domestic mobile phone market has become more and more fierce.
Although the domestic market picks up in 2021 and is expected to continue to achieve slight growth this year, this growth space is very limited, and the head manufacturers will strive for it with all their might, and before they can open a new round of incremental market, the problem of "inner volume" will be more serious. After these years of accumulation, head manufacturers have strong capital, investment in research and development and marketing are greater, so in the market competition, whether it is to fight technology, fight innovation, fight price, fight marketing, have a greater advantage, before fighting with head manufacturers, first have to be able to withstand a wave of fire coverage. Therefore, for the manufacturers who are folded in the "Others" in 2022, the living environment is still not optimistic, and even in addition to not only fighting with the head, but also for the brothers in the "Others", they cannot be soft, and it is easy to become small and beautiful.
In addition, in recent years, we have witnessed many mobile phone manufacturers leave the historical stage, and few new manufacturers have joined, but last year, the mobile phone market suddenly appeared a large wave of "newcomers", including Youchangxiang, NZONE, Thunderbird, Hi nova, Mai Mang, etc., they all have a common feature, that is, huawei's shadow can be seen in the product, and all belong to Huawei's smart choice. This can be said to be a kind of Huawei's "curve to save the country" way, through the authorization cooperation with operators or manufacturers to jointly create, Huawei side to provide design, and then by the third-party brand to purchase the original devices and production, called "newcomers", is actually "acquaintances". In addition to the "newcomers" joining last year, there were also "old people" returning, veteran manufacturers such as Coolpad and LeTV returned to the mobile phone market with new products, and Meizu restarted the Charm Blue mobile phone this year.
But whether it is the "new person" joining or the "old man" returning, it is no small challenge in the face of the fierce competition in the domestic mobile phone market in 2022.
Write at the end
To sum up, the domestic market is expected to continue to grow slightly in 2022; Head manufacturers continue to impact the high-end market, self-developed chips into a key point; More manufacturers enter the folding screen, and the overall sales will increase significantly; MediaTek Tianji 9000 entered the market strongly, becoming a new choice for manufacturers of high-end and flagship products; The manufacturer's "inner volume" is still serious, and the others living environment is not optimistic.