The years are not living, the seasons are like a stream, and in the blink of an eye, 2021 has ended.
For this hurried year, everyone has a different experience, but for the smartphone industry, it is certainly a bland and surprising year. Plainly, this is the fourth consecutive year that China's smartphone sales have declined; surprisingly, domestic brands have embarked on a breakthrough path with the transformation of "high-end".
At the beginning of the new year of 2022, by combing through some representative events and manufacturers, we will briefly review the year of the smartphone industry. I hope to get some experience and prediction of the future market trend from the market development process in the past year.
Industry development: high-end mobile phones
Despite the large-scale wave of 5G replacements, the Chinese smartphone market in 2021 is just bustling, but not booming. According to the latest data released by counterpoint, a third-party market research agency, China's annual smartphone sales have shown a downward trend for four consecutive years, with a year-on-year decline of 2% in 2021.
As for the reasons for the weak sales of smart phones, it is still inseparable from these points: the wave of chip shortages, the prolonged replacement cycle, the continuous impact of the epidemic, and the macroeconomic impact.
Although the overall sales of domestic smartphones have declined slightly, the development of smartphones at different price points is very different. According to GfK's global mobile phone retail monitoring data, the sales volume and sales proportion of thousands of yuan models are in a downward trend, while the sales of high-end products above 6,000 yuan have increased significantly year-on-year.
The reasons for the continuous growth of the high-priced mobile phone market are mainly due to two points:
From the user side, with the growth of consumption level, the trend of user replacement and upgrading is very obvious. According to the "White Paper on China's Smartphones in the First Half of 2021" released by Judasu, the proportion of users who plan to buy higher-priced mobile phones when changing machines is relatively large, of which 53.3% of users with a holding price of less than 2,000 yuan plan to buy models with higher prices.
At the same time, as a highly mature electronic consumer goods, young users are not "cold" to homogeneous products, and the simple price war has gradually failed. For young users, mobile phones are terminal hardware that is used frequently in various scenarios, so they pay more attention to product quality, interaction, and differentiated models that suit their own needs.
From the supply side, consumer demand for high-priced mobile phones has also forced mobile phone manufacturers to focus more energy and resources on the high-end market, and stimulate the purchase desire of the high-end mobile phone market by creating a leading industry and a highly differentiated use experience.
Taking the domestic mobile phone manufacturer vivo as an example, in the past year, vivo has used its strength on the blade, launched a number of flagship products such as iQOO 8 Pro, vivo X70 Pro+, etc. With ultrasonic 3D wide-area fingerprints, self-developed professional image chip V1, the first micro-PTZ image stabilization, and the unique ZEISS optical system, these flagship mobile phones have become hot items in the double eleven high-end market.
Innovative technology: Imaging is the key to breaking through
There is no doubt that the high-end market has become a tough battle that Chinese mobile phone manufacturers must face. In 2021, in order to achieve a breakthrough in the high-end market, manufacturers have adopted a more aggressive means of stacking, in addition to the top chips, high-end lenses, first-class screen configurations, but also brought a variety of unique skills.
In this war called "advanced and breakthrough", as the first image function that users need, it must be a main battlefield that cannot be avoided. Mobile phone manufacturers have gone from constantly upgrading their sensitivity capabilities, to taking computational photography to new heights, to holding hands with top camera brands... Strive to move mobile phone images to the professional level.
Liu Zuohu, founder of OnePlus, called 2021 the "year of imagery" of OnePlus, and he invested heavily in upgrading images. After Huawei found Leica and ZEISS to hold hands with vivo, OnePlus also reached a strategic cooperative relationship with The Swedish professional camera brand Hasselblad, and launched the first mobile phone equipped with the "OnePlus 丨 Hasselblad Mobile Phone Imaging System" - one plus 9 series.
In August last year, OPPO showcased a number of cutting-edge technological breakthroughs in the field of mobile phone imaging at the Future Imaging Technology Conference. Through the underlying innovation in the three dimensions of sensors, modules and algorithms, it has brought RGBW light capture sensors, continuous optical zoom and five-axis motion image stabilization and other imaging technologies, of which OPPO and Sony after several years of investment and joint research and development brought "RGBW light capture sensors" preemptive mass production commercial, the first time installed on the OPPO Reno7 series, so that users get better night scenes and portrait shooting effects.
However, in the past year, huawei and vivo have raised the domestic mobile phone image experience to the ceiling level.
Due to long-term large-scale R&D investment, Huawei mobile phones have always had high-quality output in terms of images. After nearly 500 days of external sanctions, Huawei's P series finally ushered in an update at a low end in July last year. The newly polished Huawei P50 series image flagship is innovatively equipped with two black technologies of "computational optics" and "primary color engine", which makes the machine obtain the top color and detail performance in the imaging field.
Whether from the perspective of hardware innovation or software tuning, vivo has supported the new brand of domestic mobile phone images. In 2021, vivo will work together in the four directions of optics, photosensitive elements, algorithms and platforms, upgrade the original micro-PTZ stabilization technology, self-developed image chips, and jointly develop components and imaging systems with ZEISS, and embark on a new subversion of global smartphone imaging.
For example, X70 Pro+, not only adopts the ultra-low dispersion high-lens lens only available in the SLR lens, but also carries vivo's first professional image chip V1, as well as ZEISS T* coating, ZEISS portrait lens package, ZEISS natural color and other unique skills, which can meet the user's expectations for "high-quality film" in the full focus section, full time and full scene, and achieve a highly differentiated, professional and humanized shooting experience.
Any trend is long-term. It is not difficult to predict that mobile phone photography will still be the focus of technological innovation of manufacturers in 2022, and it is hoped that mobile phone manufacturers will come up with more housekeeping skills and bring more simple and easy-to-use imaging technologies and innovative products to consumers.
Manufacturer performance: Vivo topped the Chinese market
In 2021, the Chinese smartphone market has undergone many changes.
Under U.S. sanctions, Huawei's mobile phone business has been blocked. Under the influence of chip supply cuts, Huawei's position in the global mobile phone market has dropped sharply, and the domestic market share has shown a cliff-like straight decline, and the former "Huami OV" domestic top four pattern has collapsed. Huawei's forced market share has become the object of competition between domestic manufacturers such as Xiaomi, OPPO, and Vivo and Apple. This is also the process of reshuffling the domestic smartphone market.
Overall, most of the high-end mobile phone share left by Huawei has entered Apple's "belly". In September last year, Apple launched the iPhone 13 series of new machines, increasing the amount and reducing the price of the strategy, so that the series of mobile phones has become the "thirteen spices" that countless users are competing to buy. According to data released by Counterpoint, the iPhone 13 series has topped the list in sales in the Chinese market for six consecutive weeks, and helped Apple successfully sit on the top spot in the Chinese smartphone market in the fourth quarter.
Of course, with innovative products and technologies, Vivo has also made great progress in the high-end market. In July last year, at the internationally recognized high-end market price of $600-800, Vivo won 14% of the market share, second only to Apple. In September last year, in the important domestic high-end segment of $500-599, the proportion of vivo market doubled, from 10% in September 2020 to 20% in September 2021. It can be seen that consumers have never lost the right to choose, although the domestic high-end machine started late, but in front of the high-quality mobile phone, their eyes are also bright.
In addition, from the performance of the overall domestic mobile phone market in 2021, vivo ran the most fiercely.
Counterpoint released the 2021 China smartphone market share report, vivo with a market share of 22% topped the domestic smartphone market, compared with 17% market share last year, a substantial increase of 21% year-on-year. It was followed by OPPO and Apple, with 21% and 16% market shares respectively; Xiaomi and Glory ranked fourth and fifth with a market share of 15% and 10%; Huawei fell out of the TOP5, with a market share of 68% year-on-year.
However, vivo does not care too much about the "gains and losses of one city and one pool", after winning the first place in the domestic market in the first few quarters, Hu Baishan, executive vice president of Vivo, has publicly stated, "For domestic mobile phones, the short-term share of who is a little more and who is less is not the key to the problem." The key lies in who can show the ability to compete with the top players in the future for a period of time, which is the goal that all Chinese mobile phone brands want to pursue in the future. ”
Whether it is an enterprise or an industry, the biggest driving force of "from big to strong" is technological innovation. Last year, vivo completed a major breakthrough in the domestic high-end mobile phone market, which is based on the in-depth insight into the long-term needs of users and industry changes, as well as the long-term investment and technological innovation of the four long tracks of imaging, design, performance and system.
In addition, Zhou Dan, an analyst at GFK China Science and Technology Division, believes that "technology is precipitated, and there is a lag effect between its input and output, and the more iterates on the network system, the more it depends on the industry and its own technical reserves." "To put it simply, domestic manufacturers need to have solid technology accumulation and long-term goals to launch an impact on the two major international giants of Samsung and Apple."
To this end, Vivo has not only built a global research and development network, but also set up a "vivo Central Research Institute" to increase the exploration and investment in cutting-edge technologies and basic capabilities; OPPO bravely stepped into the research and development of "deep water areas" to build the most core underlying hardware technology, such as self-developed chips; Xiaomi also said that in the next five years, research and development investment will increase to more than 100 billion yuan for hardcore technology. It can be said that in order to accelerate the penetration of the high-end market and achieve a real rise, domestic manufacturers have launched a long-term layout in scientific and technological innovation.
brief summary:
Looking back on the past year, major mobile phone manufacturers continue to stage a stimulus war, and the image has opened up a new focus of competition, and the new high-end increase has also made the competition between giants more intense. Entering 2022, with the epidemic and the supply of upstream raw materials slowly improving, and driven by both high-end and technological factors, China's smartphone market is expected to show a steady and rising momentum of development.
However, 2022 is also the most challenging year for the smartphone industry, and the high-end breakthrough battle continues, and it is expected that domestic manufacturers will have better performance in product research and development, technical attacks and other aspects.