Apple, lock the high-end entrance

In the past two years, impacting the high-end market has become a common strategy for domestic mobile phone manufacturers.

Prior to this, Huawei and Apple formed the fundamentals of China's high-end mobile phone market. However, due to well-known reasons, Huawei's sales in the fourth quarter of 2020 plummeted by 42.4% year-on-year, and since then its market share has declined continuously, and after a year, the volume has become smaller and smaller.

The market gap left by Huawei has attracted the coveted attention of many players, and Rongmi OV has opened high-end. However, whether it is high-end or not is not left to the discretion of manufacturers, looking back at the year when domestic players are in a hurry, the process does not seem to be smooth.

The roadblock is undoubtedly Apple. Recently, the news that the iPhone SE3 will be listed in March seems to be a counterattack on the Android camp that landed on the beach, intending to drive it back underwater.

This protracted battle between domestic mobile phone manufacturers and Apple may enter the second round.

High-end sad "Apple off"

In the past two years, although there are many domestic brands that have impacted high-end, they have achieved few results.

At first, the high-end logic of the brands was very simple, that is, to pile up materials at the hardware level and enter the high-end market with the so-called flagship models.

The higher the configuration and the rising cost of the ship, the domestic high-end flagship price has gradually explored the main price of Apple.

However, as a consumer electronic product, mobile phones are deeply bound to the performance and product power. In the context of Apple's A-series processor riding the dust, the Android camp seems to bend as a background board and fall into a performance dilemma.

Lack of performance support, the long-term competitiveness of domestic high-end models is significantly weaker. In August last year, Zhou Zhuo first purchased the Xiaomi MIX4, and it is not known that during the Double Eleven period, the model was 1400 yuan cheaper in the case of platform promotion. This made him feel speechless as an 8-year "rice noodle", holding the noise-canceling headphones 3Pro that Xiaomi compensated for the first user, self-deprecating that this was "the first leek benefit".

Similar "backstabbing" behavior is not uncommon in the Android mobile phone market, which is more or less permeated with the helplessness of brands. In the face of the sudden opening of the gap, the hardware stacking is obviously the most convenient way for players with dinner plates to play, but each company's own technical background seems to be unable to get a "large piece of cake" for it.

According to CINNO Research data, in 2021, the high-end market above the domestic 5K price level, Apple's share increased significantly from 48% in 2020 to 75%.

Perhaps it confirms Yu Chengdong's sigh last spring: "Huawei's mobile phone high-end to Apple, low-end to OV Xiaomi." The cake left by Huawei was swallowed by Apple.

Obviously, all kinds of players are unwilling to let Apple "monopolize" the high-end market, after all, leaving aside the factors that divide the Huawei market, high-end is still its lifeline.

In the past, the IT industry evolved to follow Moore's Law, with various hardware devices doubling in performance every 18 months. However, the laws of physics limit the infinite shrinkage of wafers, and as the chip process continues to explore, the idealized model of Moore's Law will eventually face shackles.

Whether it is a PC or a mobile phone, hardware performance is difficult to stride forward as in the past, and the era of software and hardware cooperation with harvesting users no longer exists.

On the PC side, hardware manufacturers can still survive through technologies such as ray tracing and DLSS to tell new stories for the consumer market. However, at present, the performance of mobile phones is in a general overflow state, and it is difficult for mobile phone manufacturers to copy the way PC hardware manufacturers play. This naturally leads to a decline in the overall willingness of the consumer market to change machines and faces shrinkage.

According to data from research institute Canalys, domestic smartphone shipments in 2021 rose slightly by 1% year-on-year, shrinking by more than 10% compared with the heyday before the epidemic. According to the Data of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, in January 2022, the domestic market shipments of mobile phones were 33.022 million units, down 17.7% year-on-year.

In the context of slowing growth in the domestic market, channel providers and mobile phone manufacturers are like grasshoppers on a rope, and they tend to increase overall revenue and ASP (average selling price) with high-end models.

A mobile phone channel provider told Photon Planet: "The business in the low-priced segment is not easy to do, the same 17 points, selling 6000 mobile phones and 1500 mobile phones is a big gap." If the product is done at a high price, even if the rebate is unchanged, the profit will be much higher. ”

Seeing that the frontal battlefield is inferior to Apple, manufacturers seem to have begun to take a detour and seek misplaced competition.

The dislocation competition of the Android camp

Starting in the second half of 2021, manufacturers are gradually finding that the road to hardware stacking is not working. Whether it is the iPhone 12 series with reduced prices or the iPhone 13 series that "increases the amount without increasing the price", it dominates the domestic high-end market.

This situation makes players gradually calm down from the frenzy of competing for the market and think about the next stop on their high-end road. "Avoiding Apple's sharp edge" seems to have become another trend of domestic high-end.

In December last year, Xiaomi released the digital flagship Xiaomi 12 series, mainly focusing on 3K to 5K prices, of which the Xiaomi 12 price was reduced compared to the Xiaomi 11 released in the same period last year.

In addition to the price level, the dislocation pace in the field of technology is more obvious, from the full screen, to the fingerprint under the screen, to the folding screen, the cycle of technology from supply chain to commercialization is slowly shortening.

Behind this, it reflects the problem of manufacturers "how to sell products expensive". After all, the road to hard steel with Apple is difficult to go through, it is difficult to avoid competition at a low price and it is difficult to protect ASP, and taking the differentiated route seems to have become an outlet for breaking the game.

Among them, the folding screen is undoubtedly the most refreshing display. At the end of last year, OPPO and Huawei successively released new folding screen products, and this year, Honor, Xiaomi, and Vivo are also on the road.

Under the stars and the moon, the folding screen technology based on flexible OLED is mature and hasty mass production, which is the embodiment of manufacturers eagerly seeking differentiation. After all, as of now, apple has not yet touched the place, is the opportunity for domestic upgrading.

However, the folding screen that went out of the supply chain too early seems to have a technical deficiency, and under the obstruction of creases and hinges, the folding screen mobile phone did not achieve the success expected by the market research agency.

Strategy Analytics had optimistically predicted that global folding screen mobile phone shipments would reach 8 million in 2020, but according to market research institute IDC data, the figure was ultimately less than 2 million. Zhang Xiaorong, an expert at the Chinese Intelligent Society, also told the media frankly: "Folding screen mobile phones are in short supply is a marketing illusion, according to our survey, the current orders of various e-commerce platforms, the probability is only some artificially manufactured figures, rather than the real order situation." ”

An industry insider said: "There is a real demand in the consumer market, in order to promote the supply chain to continue to invest in research and development testing, reduce the product defect rate." Only when the non-performing rate is reduced, mobile phone manufacturers can improve their stockpiling and force the development of the supply chain. Therefore, if you want to rely on the folding screen that is "ripe" to occupy the high-end open space, it seems that it still needs time to precipitate.

Will the market reserve the time for players to settle? It seems not. With more and more players hoping to break the game with folding screens, the differentiation once pursued will also become a new homogenization; and as the pace of high-end increases, the 3K to 5K price point will become more and more crowded, and manufacturers seem to have been involved in the high-end Red Sea.

In addition to the inner volume, the "number one enemy" is also coming. Recently, according to Ross Young, CEO of the screen industry analysis agency DSCC, Apple seems to be considering joining the competition of folding screen mobile phones.

If the above news is still a castle in the air, then the arrival of the iPhone SE3 is Apple's indeed sniper.

Will the iPhone SE3 be a catfish of the high-end Red Sea?

According to the news from the supply chain, the pricing of the upcoming iPhone SE3 national bank will remain at around the 3K price, pointing to the dense shipment range of the main models in Android's high-end.

In this battle, Apple is obviously well prepared, and even against the pressure of global inflation, the iPhone SE3 is pressed down, so as to better snipe down on the high-end Android models.

It is reported that the iPhone SE3 will be another 5G model after Apple's iPhone 12 and iPhone 13 series, and the former has already harvested the domestic high-end market. In contrast, the iPhone 11 series, which does not support 5G, has significantly weakened its lethality at the same price point.

In fact, there has always been a voice in the industry: if Apple launches a cheap version of the 5G version of the iPhone model, it will be easy to harvest the market. JPMorgan chase analyst Samik Chatterjee also said that the affordable version of the iPhone SE will be one of the keys to Apple's growth in 2022.

Outside of 5G, the second biggest advantage of the iPhone SE3 is its powerful performance. According to reports, the iPhone SE3 will be equipped with the A15 Bionic chip applied to the iPhone 13. Based on this, the iPhone SE3 may have an absolute advantage in terms of performance that is enough to crush Android upwards. In addition, the iOS system and the ecology behind it have become the third card for the iPhone SE3 to enter the market.

Objectively speaking, the impact of Apple's iPhone SE3 on the Android basic disk may be limited. Although the high performance of A series chips can make up for the shortcomings of the rest of the hardware to a certain extent, in this era of smartphone performance overflow, it is obvious that the performance advantage alone cannot take the market.

On the other hand, although apple ecology has always maintained a high user stickiness, for Android users who have never been in contact with Apple, the difference between system and ecology will bring great challenges to user migration. Therefore, the system ecological advantage is mainly aimed at "nail households", and it is difficult to oppose the loyal fans of the Android camp.

Based on this, the key to whether the iPhone SE3 can pry the Android mid-to-high-end market lies in whether the rest of the hardware combination is convincing and whether the design combination is fresh.

It is reported that the iPhone SE3 will still adopt the design that has lasted for several years, retaining the Home button and the 1200W pixel single camera. And the same price of Android mobile phones, whether it is images, or battery life and screen, are ahead of Apple. Therefore, the iPhone SE3 is bound to be lacking in freshness, and the combination of "high performance + low configuration" will become the bottom card for its success in "stealing home".

Looking back at the domestic manufacturers, looking at their strategic actions in the past year, although the attack on the high-end has not been successful, the intensity has been significantly improved compared with the "assembly plant".

In 2021, Xiaomi released the ISP chip surging C1, the charging chip surging P1; vivo released the ISP chip vivo V1; OPPO took out the NPU chip MariSilicon X, and the mi OV three were all down to make cores, so as to get rid of the stage of being completely subject to people.

In addition to hardware, the system is also a major element that manufacturers focus on polishing. The always complicated MIUI has changed the past "additive inertia" and focused on optimization; the OPPO R&D team has also accelerated the optimization of ColorOS, and "fluency" has replaced "diversity" as the next key to system change.

Although the manufacturing difficulty of the manufacturers' self-developed chips and A-series processors is not the same magnitude, and the domestic system is still far from Apple's ecological coupling, domestic players have begun to jump out of the trap of stacking materials and increase investment in research and development, which still makes people see the hope of coming out.

At present, the iPhone SE3 is about to be listed, whether Apple continues to harvest the market, snipe Android, or incarnate catfish, stimulate the manufacturers to "hold back the internal strength", the answer is about to be revealed.

But no matter what the outcome, Apple's ambition to enter the hinterland of Android has been revealed, and "defense" may replace "offense" and become a new proposition for domestic manufacturers in the next stage.