At a time when the global epidemic has not been effectively alleviated, it is not easy for the 2022 Mobile World Congress (MWC 2022) to be successfully launched in Barcelona, and many companies on the communication track have shown a new round of technological muscles.
This year can be said to be the year of the official return of MWC, from 2020, many manufacturers who were ready to participate in the exhibition chose to withdraw from the exhibition due to the epidemic factors, or reduced the scale of the event, and finally the organizer of the global mobile communication system association GSMA, decided to cancel MWC2020. In 2021, the MWC that was supposed to be held in February and March was postponed and adopted the model of online and offline integration, but even so, many manufacturers still opted out for security reasons.
MWC in the era of the pandemic, like all similar large-scale exhibitions, is plagued by repeated epidemics. However, this situation has finally improved this year, almost all large manufacturers have chosen to return, but what surprised Xiao Lei is that the Chinese companies participating in the exhibition this year include 50 of China's three major operators, Huawei, ZTE, Glory, Xiaomi, HTC, Quectel Communications, OPPO, Changhong, etc., which is almost the most Chinese companies in history.
Just like the CES conference held at the beginning of this year, the number of Chinese companies participating in the exhibition plummeted to 210, while in 2018, the number of Chinese companies participating in the exhibition was 1551, which shows that the decline is serious.
Perhaps for domestic manufacturers who have been absent for two consecutive years, this MWC has a more profound significance: in this period of serious decline in users' desire to change machines, what new technologies and new products can impress them?
Innovation has declined significantly
At the MWC, Honor released its own new product Honor Magic4 series, and even Honor specially invited qualcomm CEO to stand for it. From the parameter point of view, the biggest upgrade of the Magic 4 series compared to the Magic 3 series is in terms of software optimization, and the upgrade of the image, performance and other parts that everyone cares about most has not met consumer expectations.
You may not have guessed that the only manufacturer that made people shine at the MWC conference was TCL, which launched 5 new products in one go, and they also brought two concept products, TCL Fold n Roll and TCL Ultra Flex.
The TCL Fold n Roll has three forms, in which the 6.87-inch smartphone mode tucks the folded part of the screen into it; the folded state withdraws this part to become an 8.85-inch phone; and the screen is fully expanded, which becomes a 10-inch tablet mode.
TCL Ultra Flex uses a 360 ° hinge, which can make the screen achieve 360 ° folding, and to a certain extent, it also solves the debate of whether the folding screen mobile phone is "folded inside" or "folded outside". While these concept products certainly won't be in front of consumers anytime soon, they demonstrate TCL's vision of the future form of rival machines.
The 240W and 150W charging technologies shown by OPPO and Realme respectively officially advertise that these two technologies can fully charge a 4500mAh battery in 9 minutes and 15 minutes, respectively. At the same time, OPPO announced the commercial time of 150W fast charging: the second quarter will be the first launch of its OnePlus brand, and it will also be equipped on the sub-brand real me GT Neo3.
Although the two numbers of 150W and 240W sound very scary, but think about it, the mainstream 65W, 80W, and 120W charging technologies on the market today can basically control the charging time at an average of about 20 minutes, and the overall gap is not as large as we think. Although this does improve the user experience, and it is indeed a powerful technological breakthrough, it can only be said that the perception is not strong enough for the user.
However, let Xiao Lei's eyes shine is that OPPO put forward a battery health concept worth learning from all mobile phone manufacturers, according to OPPO's official publicity, OPPO this time is through the algorithm, customized chip and a new battery electrolyte way to fundamentally optimize the problem of battery loss, it is reported that this battery health engine technology through the battery management chip, intelligent battery health algorithm, bionic repair electrolyte technology to optimize battery safety and health, support 1600 times of complete charge and discharge cycle after the still maintain 80% The remaining capacity is 2 times the current industry common standard of "800 charge and discharge cycles, battery health of more than 80%).
In Xiao Lei's view, in this era of bottlenecks in the development of charging technology, how to further optimize the experience of using mobile phone battery materials is the point that mobile phone manufacturers should pay attention to. In this regard, Xiao Lei believes that the development direction of OPPO is correct. As for the actual effect, of course, it will take a while to know.
ZTE showcased the new Nubia Z40 Pro, the cost-effective ZTE Blade V40 and the fourth generation of 5G MBB (mobile broadband) product families, achieving the global debut of a new generation of Snapdragon SD X65/X62 platform products. The new products involve smart phones and home terminals, covering multiple consumption areas, and also improving their own ecological environment to a certain extent.
Although Huawei only released an ink screen tablet for reading, Yu Chengdong said at the meeting that Huawei's current main direction is how to make the full-scene intelligent life more perfect, Huawei will focus on the five major scenarios of sports and health, smart home, smart travel, smart office and audio-visual entertainment, and Huawei will continue to bring consumers the ultimate experience and innovation. With the vision of "free creation and boundless communication", Huawei Smart Office creates a new smart office experience for users through the two core capabilities of "device collaboration" and "ecological integration".
It is not difficult to see from the new products/technologies released by various domestic manufacturers that this year's manufacturers have become more pragmatic and stable, and no longer like to show "PPT" black technology as in previous years. Almost every technology emphasizes its practicality and rapid landing.
Domestic mobile phones fully embrace internationalization
Perhaps many readers are like Xiao Lei, feeling that this year's MWC is much inferior to the previous one, especially in terms of mobile phone innovation, in fact, it has a certain relationship with several foreign mobile phone manufacturers no longer "attach importance" to MWC. It can be said that the previous MWC were the home of Samsung, and top flagships such as the Galaxy S7, S8, and S10 were released at the MWC of that year, but this year Samsung not only did not let the S22 series appear on MWC, but also announced that the Galaxy Note series will permanently withdraw from the historical stage.
In Xiao Lei's view, in addition to the epidemic will affect their enthusiasm for overseas exhibitions, there is also an important reason why Chinese manufacturers are paying more and more attention to MWC exhibitions, or MWC is relying more and more on Chinese mobile phone manufacturers, which is not a surprising thing.
From the statistics of authoritative data agencies, it can be seen that although mobile phone manufacturers such as vivo, OPPO, and xiaomi have performed well in China, they still cannot be compared with international manufacturers such as Samsung Apple in the entire mobile phone market. Therefore, for mobile phone manufacturers, instead of continuing to roll in the domestic mobile phone market, entering the overseas market is the easiest and most direct way for them to increase their market share.
For example, OPPO's overseas development in the past two years is a very typical example, it adopts a similar strategy in overseas expansion and the domestic market, focusing on the combination of publicity and promotion and local retail store model. On the one hand, the heavy layout of offline retail channels, as long as OPPO is allowed to enter the store, retailers can make a steady profit and high channel margin. On the other hand, it will increase brand exposure in a large area and lay out strategic resources such as local iconic outdoor advertising spaces and posters. From the data released by Canalys, it can be seen that oppo (including realme) in the European market is growing much faster than other brands, and has successfully ranked among the top five in Europe, which is a point worth learning and learning for mobile phone manufacturers.
Therefore, for domestic mobile phone manufacturers, MWC, an exhibition that can gather a large number of authoritative media in a short period of time, has naturally become a fragrant feast in their eyes, after all, consumers around the world may be attracted to the brand technology at the exhibition and become potential users.
MWC is on its way to transformation
It can be said that the MWC conference is a small microcosm of the "spread" of war from domestic to overseas by domestic manufacturers, and almost all mainstream domestic mobile phone manufacturers have shown their thinking on the future development of the mobile phone industry. However, unlike the previous two years, they no longer focus on releasing some "gimmick" technologies that are difficult to land in a short period of time, but use some practical and fast landing technologies to make the market and consumers recognize.
This also coincides with the situation of this MWC conference, in this era of serious hardware homogenization and longer and longer user replacement cycles, only those technologies that are truly practical and can bring practical improvements to users are likely to be recognized by consumers. Although from our consumer point of view, the MWC without the blessing of black technology does lack some fun, but for the entire market, such MWC is what they want to see, after all, in the past few years we have to wait for half a year or even longer to use the "PPT" technology released by mobile phone manufacturers, and now manufacturers have really achieved "release and mass production".
At the same time, we can see that the traditional consumer electronics exhibition similar to MWC has begun to integrate into the discussion of the technical level, and gradually become a communication platform for industry leaders and experts to discuss the latest technology trends, which may become the new main theme of the future MWC conference.