Highlights:
1. In January this year, domestic 5G mobile phone shipments fell rarely year-on-year, hitting a four-month low. Instead, shipments of 4G phones hit the second highest in nearly a year. Is 4G mobile phone recovery showing signs?
2. Experts believe that first of all, shipments are not equal to sales, and secondly, this may be related to Huawei's shift to 4G products, and the still existing demand for entry-level 4G products from other manufacturers.
3, although the popularity of 5G mobile phones is a major trend, experts admit that 5G mobile phones in the low-end market such as 100 yuan machines still cannot completely replace 4G mobile phones. Conquering the sinking market is the key for all parties to promote the popularization of 5G.
The galloping 5G ushered in bad news.
According to the domestic mobile phone shipment data released by the Academy of Information and Communications Technology in January this year, the shipment of 5G mobile phones was 26.324 million units, down 3.5% year-on-year, which is also a rare year-on-year decline in domestic 5G mobile phone shipments.
What is more serious is that from the proportion of 5G mobile phones in mobile phone shipments in the same period, there has also been a continuous month-on-month decline since November 2021.
This makes many netizens exclaim, 5G network popularization today, 4G mobile phones are popular again?
5G phones are not fragrant? Shipments saw a rare decline
With the advancement of the 5G commercial process, 2021 ushered in the rapid popularization of 5G mobile phones.
According to the data released by the Academy of Information and Communications Technology, the domestic market mobile phone shipments in November 2021 were 35.252 million units, an increase of 19.2% year-on-year, of which 5G mobile phones were 28.967 million units, an increase of 43.9% year-on-year, accounting for 82.2% of mobile phone shipments in the same period. This is also the first time that the proportion of 5G mobile phone shipments has exceeded the 80% mark.
However, after the peak is a recession, in December 2021 and January this year, the proportion of 5G mobile phone shipments began to decline, 81.3% and 79.7% respectively.
What is more noteworthy is that in January this year, the domestic market mobile phone shipments were 33.022 million units, down 17.7% year-on-year. Among them, 5G mobile phone shipments were 26.324 million units, down 3.5% year-on-year. January 5G phone shipments also hit their lowest in nearly four months.
This has also triggered many netizens to complain about 5G, "5G mobile phones and 5G packages are too expensive to use!", "I didn't feel the speed of 5G, and it was good to use 4G mobile phones." ”
Xiang Ligang, an observer of the communications industry, told Sina Technology that in January this year, the year-on-year decline in 5G mobile phone shipments was 3.5%, far lower than the 17.7% decline in the overall mobile phone market. The reason behind this may be caused by the epidemic, which has led to a decrease in the spending power of users.
He believes that with the construction of 5G networks, the network demand of users will be more and more, and more and more users will use 5G mobile phones. At present, 80% of users will choose 5G mobile phones when buying mobile phones, while only about 20% are willing to choose 4G mobile phones, and the share is actually relatively low. "In other words, it is not that there is no so-called explosive 5G application, and everyone does not try to use 5G."
Sina Technology noted that in January this year, 30 new models of mobile phones were listed in the domestic market, down 43.4% year-on-year; Among them, there are 15 5G mobile phones, down 53.1% year-on-year, accounting for 50% of the number of new models listed on mobile phones in the same period. As January is approaching the Spring Festival, mobile phone manufacturers have launched fewer 5G mobile phone models, which also has a certain relationship with the decline in shipments.
4G mobile phones are hot again?
For the decline in 5G mobile phone shipments, some people even believe that this is due to the re-sales of 4G mobile phones.
According to the data of the Academy of Information and Communications Technology, the shipment of 4G mobile phones in January this year was 6.42 million units, while the shipments in January 2021 were 12.54 million units, and the shipment of 4G mobile phones did not rebound sharply year-on-year in comparison in the same period. However, in contrast to a single month, the shipment of 4G mobile phones in January this year did hit the second highest point since April 2021.
Fu Liang, an independent telecom analyst, believes that netizens have misunderstood the data, and 4G mobile phone sales have not rebounded significantly.
First of all, "shipments" is not "sales", "shipments" is not "shipments" to users, but the manufacturing plant "shipments", goods in the channel will have different "retention" periods, therefore, "shipments" can not directly reflect "sales".
Secondly, in January this year, 5G mobile phone shipments decreased from the previous three months, and the decline was not large, and these three months significantly exceeded the shipments of each month in the previous six months. At the same time, from April 2021 to January 2022, 4G mobile phone shipments reached a maximum of 6.47 million (October 2021) and a minimum of 5.54 million (July 2021), an average of 5.975 million. The up-and-down amplitude is only (-7.3%, 8.3%), and due to the production line scheduling in batches, this difference can be said to be negligible and does not constitute a trend change.
However, the phenomenon of 4G mobile phone shipments rebounding is indeed worthy of attention.
In fact, the third quarter report of 2021 released by the research institute IDC shows that although 5G mobile phones have become the mainstream of China's smartphone market, the proportion of domestic 4G smartphone shipments in the quarter rebounded for the first time in nearly two years.
IDC analysis said that on the one hand, this is from Huawei's force majeure under the influence of force majeure had to turn sharply to 4G products, on the other hand, the market demand for entry-level 4G products of other head manufacturers still shows clear continuity, including in the second half of the year, there are still a number of new 4G products in the domestic market.
Xiang Ligang believes that 4G mobile phones will not necessarily be completely replaced by 5G mobile phones in the future, because the cost of 5G chips and modules is still higher than that of 4G, which means that the cost of some 4G mobile phones is very low, and there is still demand in the market of hundred-yuan machines and thousand-yuan machines.
Fu Liang also pointed out that at present, there are very few 5G mobile phones below the thousand yuan available, and 5G mobile phones cannot meet the needs of some users, so 4G still occupies a certain share in the entry mobile phone. In the future, the share of 5G mobile phones will expand, and the key is not in high-end mobile phones above 5,000 yuan, but in the 500-1,000 yuan file to replace low-end mobile phones such as 4G.
Sinking the market, the next battle of 5G
As experts say, due to cost reasons, 4G mobile phones still have a certain living space in the low-end market such as hundred yuan machines and thousand yuan machines. To win this bone, it is necessary to popularize 5G networks and 5G mobile phones to the sinking market.
Judging from the planning of the three major operators, they are already in action.
At the main forum of the 2021 China Mobile Global Partner Conference, Yang Jie, chairman of China Mobile, said that he will make every effort to build a 5G boutique network covering the whole country to ensure that by the end of 2022, the continuous coverage of 5G above the township level in the country will be basically realized, as well as the effective coverage of important parks, hot spots and developed rural areas; China Telecom and China Unicom are also covering 5G co-construction and sharing to counties and developed townships.
But one of the challenges faced by operators is that there is a mismatch between the user's mobile phone and the package.
As of January this year, in terms of the number of 5G package users, the sum of the three has reached 750 million households; However, since 2019, the cumulative shipment of domestic 5G mobile phones has only reached 469 million units. This means that 280 million users of 5G packages are using 4G phones.
What is more embarrassing is that after some users buy 5G mobile phones, they have been turning off the 5G network function due to power consumption and other issues, and directly used as 4G mobile phones. This has made operators who have invested heavily in 5G networks even more anxious.
In fact, guiding users to turn on the 5G switch of 5G mobile phones has become one of the important tasks of operators' branches around the world. For example, China Mobile has specially produced a tutorial on how to open the 5G switch for mainstream mobile phone products such as Huawei and Apple, and some local branches have also launched preferential activities such as opening the 5G switch to send traffic.
In addition, the important bearers who promote the popularization of 5G in the sinking market are also various mobile phone manufacturers.
However, their motivation to launch 5G mobile phones in the 100-yuan machine and 1000-yuan machine markets does not seem to be so great; On the contrary, the popularity of 5G mobile phones is regarded by many mobile phone manufacturers as an opportunity to enter the high-end market, the most obvious example is the folding screen mobile phone, Android manufacturers have raised their price segment to tens of thousands of yuan, and Apple directly opposed.
Before the 5G network coverage in the sinking market is ideal, and before mobile phone manufacturers launch 100-yuan 5G mobile phones at the right price, 20% of 4G mobile phone nail households may continue to exist for a certain period of time.