Author | Yang Xiaohe
"Apple prices are milletized, and domestic flagship machines are appleized."
OPPO, Glory, Xiaomi and other domestic mobile phone manufacturers recently released several flagship machines, the rapid rise in pricing, so that many netizens have the above sighs. Obviously, the netizens' complaints, the management of the smart phone enterprise have also heard, Xiaomi China International District President, Redmi General Manager Lu Weibing also raised the question on Weibo: Why in the past two years, everyone feels that the flagship mobile phone is getting more and more expensive?
Before answering this question, let's first look at how expensive is the price of the domestic flagship machine?
The oppo's new flagship machine Find X5 Pro version released on February 27, the highest price reached 6799 yuan; the price of the Honor Magic 4 released at MWC on February 28 reached 899 euros for the standard version and 1099 euros for the Pro version; the maximum price of the Red Devil 7 Pro pro on the 28th reached 7499 yuan, and the Nubia Z40 Pro released on the 25th also reached 4699 yuan by the joint limited edition.
Rough calculations, this generation of domestic flagship machines compared to the previous generation of almost 30% increase in price, and the price finally touched the high of 7,000 yuan. Several folding models have crossed the threshold of 10,000 yuan.
Looking at the high-end brands in recent years, Xiaomi has digital, MIX and Ultra series, OPPO has Find X and OnePlus series, Vivo has X and S series, honor has Magic series, and the price of these series has gone from 3000 to 4000 yuan in 2019 to the current 5000 to 6000 yuan grade. The Pro version is almost the same as the iPhone 13 starting at 5999 yuan, which also makes everyone have "this price, give me a reason not to buy an iPhone." ”
(The flagship machine recently released by domestic mobile phone manufacturers.)
Image source: Weibo machine Wang Tengxiao)
According to data from international research agency Counterpoint, in 2021, the average selling price of smart phones (ASP) increased by 12% year-on-year to $322, and this price was converted into RMB at about 2,000 yuan, which is actually the price of the best-selling mobile phone Redmi K40 in 2021, and daily use is enough, but under the footsteps of the great leap forward of "just Apple, for Huawei", no smart phone enterprises are willing to do "salted fish".
This also caused that the price increase rate of domestic Android flagship machines in the past two years is like the soaring price of Moutai wine. For everyone, smart phones are also products used in daily life, so it is not worth it to start high-end mobile phones.
01
Where is the domestic flagship machine expensive?
At the end of 2021, in the Spring Shoot Building in Shenzhen, OPPO opened the entire Plan of the Mariana Trench.
OPPO released its first-generation chip, a 6NM NPU imaging chip. Although many people later understood that this is not a CPU or a GPU chip, it is not the same as the main chip that Huawei urgently needed after being sanctioned. But for the domestic semiconductor field, it is also worth celebrating. After all, this is one of the remarkable achievements of the domestic smart machine field in addition to Huawei, the impact of high-end in the past 3 years.
What is less known is that after the conference, Jiang Bo, senior director of OPPO chips, spilled tears on the background, and the results of nearly 2,000 people day and night really made people sigh. After Chen Mingyong saw it, he patted Jiang Bo's shoulder, "Hard work", and pulled Jiang Bo to take a group photo.
The chip succeeded, helping the newly released OPPO Find X5, and finally there is a hard-core story to tell, and the slogan of "using two chips in one frame of image" is widely mentioned. But this also made OPPO instantly increase confidence, the OPPO Find X5 Pro priced at 5999 yuan, and has a self-developed chip A15, iOS system iPhone 13 a price point.
Impacting the high-end, the chip is undoubtedly one of the hard currency. Vivo previously applied the self-developed V1 image chip to the X 70 Pro generation, Xiaomi also developed the NPU chip C1 as early as possible, and this generation of Xiaomi 12 is equipped with a P1 charging chip. According to Tech Planet exclusively, Honor is also carrying out chip research and development in Shanghai, which will involve image chips, security chips and charging chips.
So far, the four major mobile phone manufacturers have taken NPU image chips as their core competitiveness, although they do not have Huawei's Soc-level capabilities, but they have also added technology content to themselves. How big is the image chip on the whole machine?
Some evaluators used oppo Find X5 Pro as an example to tell Tech Planet: "There are new stabilization and self-developed chips, which are not small for video recording and night view improvement, but the lens does not have telephoto and periscope, and also uses the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip, and the price of 6000 is afraid to follow in the footsteps of the X2 Pro." "At that time, the OPPO Find X2 Pro was overpriced, resulting in poor sales.
Another way to hit the high-end and increase the price is to improve the configuration, which is also very metaphysical.
For example, Xiaomi Mi 12 Pro is the first and self-developed combination: the world's first Snapdragon 8 flagship platform; the world's first second-generation low-power 2K screen; the first support for "intelligent dynamic refresh rate" technology; the world's first Sony's latest generation camera IMX707, self-developed "CyberFocus Everything Focus" technology; with the industry's first large-capacity single-cell 120W secure fast charging.
But these configurations are not the sooner to use the better, april will be released in many flagship machines, will use MediaTek Tianji 9000 chips, compared to Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 power control is better, which is also a worse choice xiaomi must make. Because each generation of Qualcomm mobile chips is handed over to Xiaomi for the first time, but the heat problem of recent generations of Qualcomm chips is serious, Xiaomi cannot switch to MediaTek when there is a problem in the brother company. So Lu Weibing can only say sarcastically: "Knowing that everyone is not satisfied with the Snapdragon chip, Qualcomm refueled." ”
In order to increase the price of flagship machines, many smart machine companies choose to take the sword to the side.
For example, in the charging wattage competition, according to an industry insider, the Realme GT Neo3 debuted 150W this month, 150W on the Q2 of the new direct screen of the OnePlus Tianji platform, and OPPO is developing a 240W pre-research program in the laboratory, which is 4500mAh in 9 minutes. A Huawei mobile phone consumer told Tech Planet: "Daily 60W fast charge is enough, pull up to a few minutes full, will be afraid of mobile phone explosion." ”
So the flagship 120W and 150W fast charger released next are there, who is more risky but does not have safety issues, it is very important to see the power.
There are also companies that will gradually turn the main image of the special machine into a flagship machine, so as to achieve high-end curves.
The vivo X series and the Xiaomi Ultra series are typical, the former has a built-in micro-gimbal, and the latter is equipped with a 50 million outsole CMOS, so both have huge photography modules on the back. Equivalent to a built-in single shot, the photographic effect meets or exceeds apple, thereby comparing the price to apple.
Of course, there are shortcuts to brand co-branding, and now everyone has just grabbed several major camera giants photography co-branding, OPPO and Hasselblad, vivo and ZEISS, Huawei and Lycra, and began to co-brand the whole brand, and released related custom co-brand models.
At the Redmi K50 e-sports edition conference, Lu Weibing unveiled the blind box at the press conference, which is a joint Mercedes-Benz Hamilton W12 car. So far, Huawei has a Porsche version, iQOO has BMW, OPPO has Lamborghini, and OnePlus has McLaren. At this point, there are not many luxury car brands that can be grabbed by flagship machines.
02
The intractable "old two" dispute
In recent years, in the process of impacting the high-end, everyone's playing style has also undergone profound changes.
The biggest change is still OV, before the two mainly rely on the "entertainment marketing" style of play, title a variety of entertainment variety shows and invite celebrities to endorse. There are news reports that OPPO's annual expenditure in this regard in 2018 reached about 2 billion yuan. Vivo is also about this level.
Honor and Xiaomi are online, mainly relying on cost-effective play to carry out fierce fighting. However, whether it is a marketing style or a cost-effective play, it is more aimed at sinking market users. Nowadays, in the process of impacting the high-end, these two playing styles are no longer easy to use, and each family has also changed its playing style, and the two core playing styles have rushed out of the jianghu.
First of all, it is to push new mobile phones, and the price has gradually risen steadily. In mid-2021, the Xiaomi series released 25 models, Ultra will increase the price to 7,000 yuan; Huawei series released 24 models, basically 4G models, but the price is almost reduced compared to the 5G version; OPPO series released 43 models, the top price finally rushed from 5,000 to more than 6,000; and the total number of new models released by the vivo system is the largest, 49 models. Among them, vivo main brand 36 models, iQOO 13 models. Even Vivo's S series, iterated 3 times a year in 2021.
Another way to play is to launch a new series, and the new series is also fully laid out in the high-end, high-end and low-end. OPPO's new sub-brand is Realme, which has won 45 million users in 2 years, vivo's sub-brand is iQOO, and the power is very strong and lacking, and the industry has been rumored that the new sub-brand of glory is Xingyao, which is not expected to be on the market in the short term. These sub-brands all belong to the stage of establishing market awareness, and they are not as good as Redmi in terms of product strength or brand awareness.
But the market share has been quietly changing, from the data point of view, the vivo that wins by volume, the market share from 17% in 2020, the upgrade of 22% in 2021, is the first place in the market share; OPPO is from 16% in 2021, rising to 21% in 2021; Apple has risen from 11% to 16% of the market share, eating most of Huawei's vacated high-end market; Xiaomi has upgraded from 10% to 15%, ranking fourth in the domestic market; Glory's market share has not changed Huawei fell from 31% to about 10%.
But this list actually has many mysteries, because vivo counts the sub-brand iQOO is the first place, but OPPO counts a plus, not counted the new brand Realme 3%, from this point of view, OPPO, one plus, Realme's parent company Oujia can account for 24% of the market, in fact, the market first. Independent Honor and today's Huawei each account for 10%, and after the merger, they are also the top three in the market.
Therefore, after Huawei's departure and 2 years of market chaos, at present, oujia group is the first in sales, vivo second, Huawei glory third, Apple fourth, and millet fifth.
It should be known that Xiaomi also includes the sales performance of red rice here, so xiaomi has fallen into a big pit in the past year. It is said that Lei Jun, who is ready to build a car, must not focus most of his attention on the mobile phone business.
However, it is also the intractable dispute for the second place in the market, indicating that there is no domestic smart phone company to take over the market vacated by Huawei. Everyone rushed up, grabbed a lot of vacated shares, the general fight is speed, really say who can take over Huawei, just as a high praise commented on Lu Weibing: they all want to take advantage of Huawei's fall and seize the high-end market, but they have no ability at all.
03
What does it take to win this war?
Market competition, in the end, must rely on strength to speak.
In the smart machine market in 2022, the pressure will be even greater for domestic flagship machines. Apple's spring conference, which will be held on March 8, is reported to release the cheapest Apple phone in history, the iPhone SE 3, and the Apple autumn conference will bring a cheaper iPhone 14. The domestic flagship machine will be in the high-end and low-end markets, while ushering in the impact of Apple.
(Note: 5 major smart phone brand revenue,
Apple's lead continues to expand. )
Therefore, in order to win this battle against Apple and successfully high-end the war, in addition to continuing to develop hard technologies such as new chips, domestic smart machines themselves have a lot of need to progress.
In the case of vivo, the path of high-end in the past 3 years has been adjusted several times. The NEX series developed in June 2018 is the high-end series at the beginning of Vivo, but it has experienced difficult production in NEX 2, and recently officially announced that "vivo's high-end sub-brand NEX Business Unit was withdrawn", Jia Jingdong, vice president of vivo brand, responded that the X series will assume the flagship responsibility in the future.
According to an industry insider, vivo has developed a NEX series of 7-inch large-screen business flagships and high-end folding screen mobile phones, and will meet everyone again in the future or in the form of new names such as X Fold, positioning ultra-high-end. In just over 3 years, vivo's product line has changed from NEX-X-Y to X-S-Y plus sub-brand iQOO, and the ever-changing product line has made consumers dizzy.
Not only does brand planning need to be clear, but more importantly, product design wins consumer recognition.
Looking at the Xiaomi 3rd generation 9 high-end models, the most classic one is the Xiaomi 10S. In 2021, the overall collapse of Xiaomi's main model, because the Xiaomi Mi 11 Wifi processor and the main CPU are too close, which seriously affects the signal; MIX is too many new technologies such as under-screen camera, not too mature; MIX Fold folding screen is in the size design and other issues to make the wrong trade-off, the price fell seriously. A Xiaomi insider told Tech Planet that Chang Cheng, the general manager of xiaomi's mobile phone product department who left his post, is not unrelated to this.
You know, Huawei mobile phones were also several classic models to support the brand, such as the Mate 20 and Mate 40 are very popular in the market. The Mate 40 Pro currently needs to be purchased at a premium of 1500 yuan, and the second-hand model can be sold for about 5000 yuan.
The more important change is that strengthening channel branding is more critical.
In an internal meeting minutes transmitted online, Zhao Ming, CEO of Honor, pointed out the strength of Apple: Apple's ID design and industrial design capabilities are very strong; product experience and retail experience are also very strong. Enter apple stores, you will find that it is simply a brand temple.
Xiaomi is the earliest domestic mobile phone manufacturers who realized this problem, and in 2021, it will rapidly expand to 10,000 directly operated millet homes in the country, although it will make millet sales "not rise but fall". However, the overall strategy of the direct store is not wrong, or the product problem of Xiaomi's previous generation of main models is more important. Glory has also begun to fully promote the construction of offline direct stores, after all, the dividends of channel shareholders in the past year have been eaten, and in the future, they need to be more powerful in the future and the hard-fought stock markets.
According to Tech Planet exclusively, OPPO and Vivo have also increased the proportion of directly operated stores nationwide and began to rely less on secondary agents. The channel advantage that OV relies on to start with has also caused problems such as price opacity and poor after-sales service, and the price of high-end flagship machines is benchmarked against Apple, and there must also be general services of Apple experience stores.
On the whole, in the domestic mobile phone shipments, the overall decline of 2% in the market environment, the need for multi-faceted improvement of domestic flagship aircraft, to win this war is not easy.
End