「Core Tips」
Whether it is a folding screen mobile phone bag for athletes participating in the Winter Olympics, or a Huawei P50 Pocket that is "sold in seconds" and "difficult to find a machine", consumers and mobile phone manufacturers seem to be showing a trend of "two-way rushing" in the matter of folding screen mobile phones. Why are mobile phone manufacturers "folding"? Will folding screen mobile phones become mainstream in the future?
Author | Qin Haiqing
Edited by | Liu Yang
After the release of Huawei folding screen mobile phone P50 Pocket, Wu Yue has been nagging to have, especially the gilded version with a benchmark price of 10988 yuan, but it is difficult to find a machine, so her husband set an alarm clock when he went to work, and once he started selling it, he snapped it up, and after five or six times of operation, Wu Yue finally achieved his wish on Valentine's Day.
For athletes competing in the Beijing Winter Olympics, it is easy to have a folding screen mobile phone. Samsung prepared a big gift package for the participating athletes, including a customized version of the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 Winter Olympics, and many foreign athletes "showed off" on social media.
On the stage of this year's Spring Festival Gala, folding screen mobile phones were also frequently exposed. In multiple language programs, at least three actors used the Huawei P50 Pocket as a prop, and three other actors chose the Huawei Mate X2. In addition, careful netizens found that some on-site viewers also held Huawei P50 Pockets.
Is the folding screen mobile phone already handy? Obviously not, but it is certain that the competition in the folding screen mobile phone track is becoming more intense than ever.
In the month around 2022, in addition to Huawei's release of the P50 Pocket, OPPO and Honor have launched their first folding screen mobile phones OPPO Find N and Honor Magic V. According to media reports, VIVO's folding screen mobile phone is ready. That is to say, among the world's mainstream mobile phone brands, only Apple seems to be "indifferent".
In short, consumers and mobile phone manufacturers in the choice of folding screen, it seems to be showing a "two-way rush" trend.
1. Who is buying a folding screen mobile phone?
Xu Yan used to be a loyal "fruit fan", and he had every generation of iPhones. In February 2019, Samsung released the first generation of folding screen phone Galaxy Z Fold. "At that time, folding mobile phones were just emerging, I thought it was cool and scarce, so I tried it", and he has never bought an iPhone since.
After the release of the Galaxy Z Fold, the domestic has not yet been sold, Xu Yan bought or the Korean version, and later he tried Huawei's Mate X in the middle, and felt that the experience was not as good as Samsung, "The folding smoothness is not as good as Samsung, a bit astringent, and Huawei's screen is not as good as Samsung's display effect, and the feel is not as good as Samsung." He felt that Huawei's first generation of folding screen mobile phones was still a bit rough. ”
Xu Yan's current main machine is the Galaxy Z Fold 2 sent by others, "It is very convenient to watch materials and edit materials and play games and watch videos." There was a little crease, but it was basically negligible for me. Others have Huawei as a backup machine. ”
The P50 Pocket that was donated is now also the main machine of Wu Yue, and she believes that this phone is not only good-looking, but also has a feel, screen quality, etc., which is better than other brands of folding screen mobile phones.
Although she has a heart for the P50 Pocket, if it is not her husband to send Wu Yue, she will not consider starting by herself, after all, the price is still high, and it is even more impossible to increase the price.
Before the official release, Li Fang did not know much about the folding screen mobile phone, and was also impressed by the "appearance" of the P50 Pocket, but she felt good-looking, the experience was very good, the functional requirements were not high, and she did not care much about the crease, but she was worried that the battery was not big enough. After the sale, she even mobilized everyone in the office to help her buy it, but it was unsuccessful.
In the Huawei physical store, the clerk told Li Fang that the black and white versions were priced by 2,000 yuan, and the gilded version was 5,000 yuan, and you can try it years later (snapping up the cheap version). Li Fang also asked the largest Huawei dealer in Beijing, "That buddy told me that there is no gold in stock, and there are only two in the physical store, and then told me that I want to buy at an affordable price, don't think about it years ago." ”
After the end of the year, Li Fang set the alarm clock and grabbed it at the point. "After I grabbed it, I shared the good news in a small group among friends," Ms. Li said.
On February 23, Leopard Change contacted the Huawei dealer mentioned by Li Fang on the grounds of buying a mobile phone, and he told Leopard Change that although the P50 Pocket in the store is not complete in color, it can be bought in stock, and there is no markup.
"Leopard Change" landed on Huawei's official store at different times for many consecutive days and found that the most popular P50 Pocket gilded version was "spot fast release" in beijing. The above-mentioned Huawei dealers said that it was really difficult to buy some time ago.
What is even more bizarre is that the price list provided by a seller specializing in various brands of high-end mobile phones to "Leopard Change" shows that the Huawei P50 Pocket is even hundreds of dollars cheaper than the official website price, and the Huawei Mate series and Samsung's folding mobile phone are also cheaper than the official website price, which is basically "buying and selling".
Imagine that Huawei's Mate series folding screen mobile phone soared to tens of thousands of yuan, which was once considered a "stable financial product". Sellers said that now more sought-after and price-added are selling Honor and OPPO folding screen phones, because they are relatively cheap.
"It's too hard to buy!" Yi Tong queued up on the official website for more than half a month before he grabbed an OPPO Find N at a price of 8999 yuan.
Combined with its own needs, Yi Tong believes that folding screen mobile phones have three benefits, the first is suitable for watching stock K-line charts, the second is that it can be used as a tablet to watch videos, and the third is that the battery life is relatively long.
Before snapping up OPPO Find N, Yi Tong had seen Huawei and Xiaomi's folding screen phones, Huawei's price was too high, and Xiaomi's had obvious creases and was not good-looking, "I didn't look at Samsung, because I wanted to support domestic mobile phones." I was a big fan of the iPhone for more than a decade, but now I think it's good to switch to a domestic phone. ”
2, mobile phone manufacturers, have "folded"
According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) report, the global shipment of folding screen mobile phones in 2021 will be about 7.1 million units, accounting for about 0.5% of the world's smartphones. Therefore, from the user level, folding screen mobile phones are still far from the mainstream market.
The folding screen mobile phone shipments in the Chinese market are about 1.5 million units, accounting for 0.5% of the domestic smartphone market, of which Huawei has won nearly half of the country, and Samsung occupies 28.8% of the market share.
Although folding mobile phones are more like a "fly leg", for mobile phone manufacturers, this "edge" market has become a must-fight place.
Since Apple launched the iPhone in 2007 to redefine the mobile phone, the product form of mainstream smartphones has basically changed little, and the appearance revolves around the full screen, which is nothing more than the bang screen, the water drop screen, the digging screen and the under-screen camera solution that is not yet popular.
The performance of the configuration is crazy stacking, such as chips, batteries, fast charging, wireless charging, the number of cameras and pixels, etc. With the acceleration of technology iteration, the current high-end flagship mobile phones have caused performance redundancy for most users.
The homogenization of smart phones is becoming more and more serious, the market size has been growing weakly in recent years, and mobile phone manufacturers are eager for a new generation of subversive products, and folding screens are one of the explorations.
In October 2018, Royole Technology, which is not familiar to the outside world, preemptively released a folding screen mobile phone that uses its own flexible screen, which attracted countless attention for a while, but various quality problems led to royole technology's folding screen products not forming a climate.
In February 2019, at the Mobile World Congress, Samsung and Huawei successively released the Galaxy Z Fold and Mate X, which officially announced the opening of the folding screen era of smartphones. Since then, Lenovo has also launched a folding screen mobile phone Moto Razr.
According to public data statistics, "Leopard Change" put aside the "PPT folding screen mobile phone" of some manufacturers, and a total of 19 folding screen mobile phones have been released since 2018. 2021 is the most lively, a total of 7 folding screen mobile phones into the market, of which Xiaomi and OPPO were released for the first time, and Honor also launched a folding screen mobile phone in early 2022.
If 2019 is the "first year" of folding screen mobile phones, then 2021 can be regarded as the first "grand year" of folding screen mobile phones.
For the recent wave of folding screen mobile phone scuffle set off by mobile phone manufacturers, Wang Haifeng, director of CIC's consulting, said to Leopard that this is a kind of show muscle performance, in order to attract users.
"It will create the illusion that many people can make such high-tech products, indicating that the company has strong technical strength and good products." At the same time, this is also a reflection and attempt on future technologies, seeking mobile phone solutions that can replace tablets and laptops. Wang Haifeng said.
IDC also presented a similar view to Wang Haifeng in the report, and also pointed out that "domestic brands strive to explore the high-end price market, but the process is full of challenges, so from the perspective of product form, we will take a different differentiation route from Apple." ”
3. When will apple phones "fold"?
With the increase of folding screen mobile phone brands and the decline in prices on the market, to a certain extent, the potential folding screen mobile phone users have been expanded, and the shipment volume has indeed increased significantly.
IDC data shows that in 2020, the global folding screen mobile phone shipments will be about 1.947 million units, accounting for only 0.15% of the overall shipments of smart phones, and by 2021, shipments will exceed 7 million units, an increase of more than 260% year-on-year, and the overall market share will also increase to 0.5%.
According to the forecast of many analysis agencies, the shipment of folding screen mobile phones will also increase significantly. In 2022, Qunzhi Consulting judged that the shipment of folding screen mobile phones will reach 14 million units, CINNO Research is expected to be 15.69 million units, and Counterpoint Research is more optimistic, which is expected to reach 18.3 million units.
Although the folding screen mobile phone market is growing exponentially, Wang Haifeng said that folding screen mobile phones are unlikely to become mainstream products in the market in the future, but only "a transitional product of the mobile phone market".
Obviously, mobile phone manufacturers do not think so, at the Find N conference, OPPO believes that the folding screen mobile phone is the next journey of smart phones, "from early to common". Honor CEO Zhao Ming even proposed that folding screen mobile phones enter the "main machine era".
Market analysis generally believes that whether folding screen mobile phones can become mainstream products depends more or less on Apple's "face". In recent years, there have been many news that Apple has applied for a patent related to the folding screen, and so far, Apple has not officially expressed its position on the folding version of the iPhone.
One detail is that although Samsung gave away folding screen mobile phones to athletes at the Beijing Winter Olympics, the mobile phones that athletes exposed the most at the opening ceremony were still iPhones.
When does the iPhone "fold"? Tianfeng International Guo Mingxi had predicted that Apple would launch a folding iPhone in 2023, but due to the lower-than-expected development schedule, Guo Mingxi believed that it would be delayed by a year. When Android manufacturers have "folded", even the folding screens of Samsung and Huawei have been iterated 3 times, why is Apple slow to follow up?
Wang Haifeng analyzed to "Leopard Change" that the folding screen mobile phone technology is not very mature, and Apple pays attention to innovation internally, in this unclear situation, Apple is not willing to blindly follow the trend, which is not difficult to understand, and the friendly folding screen mobile phone accidents are frequent, and Apple's caution is more normal. However, the key technology of Apple's folding screen is actually under development, and related patents have also been applied, including mechanical anklets, batteries, and screens.
Wang Haifeng also pointed out that as a substitute for tablets, under the general trend of good sales of Apple's iPad, the launch of folding screen mobile phones is undoubtedly moving stones to drop their feet. In addition, Apple has always attached importance to ecological interconnection, in the Mac, iPad, iPhone to add folding screen mobile phones, which means the entire ecological change, as well as the development of related software, which makes Apple more worried.
In terms of production, Apple has always wanted the technology to remain in-house, and the agency union of new products has made Apple worry, on the one hand, it needs to find new reliable suppliers, on the other hand, Apple itself does not want the foundry to be able to master their technology.
Although it has been three years since the advent of folding screen mobile phones, Apple's "hegemonic position" in the global high-end mobile phone market is safe and secure, and Apple does not need to make any changes at this stage, and can still obtain most of the profits in the mobile phone market, which can be regarded as a kind of confidence. Crisis is often hidden in self-confidence, if the shipment of folding screen mobile phones exceeds expectations, and consumers can't wait for the folding version of the iPhone, it is not excluded that more and more "fruit powder" turns to "passers-by".
(At the request of the interviewees, Wu Yue, Xu Yan, Li Fang, and Yi Tong are pseudonyms)