Before Huawei was impacted, the domestic high-end mobile phone market was mainly dominated by Apple and Huawei, and the emergence of Huawei won a place for domestic brands in the high-end market. But when the impact came, Huawei had to give up a part of the high-end share when facing difficulties, but these high-end shares were not equally divided by the remaining mainstream high-end brands as expected, but most of them flowed to Apple, and other domestic high-end mobile phone brands soared and did not take a remarkable market share.
In the minds of consumers, Apple still has an irreplaceable advantage in the high-end market, and a considerable number of original Huawei users have given up other domestic brands to buy Apple. For domestic consumers, where are the unique advantages of Apple's iPhone compared to high-end models of domestic brands? Is the iPhone 13 really "fragrant"? Is there still a chance for domestic high-end mobile phones?
In the tide of replacement on the eve of the Spring Festival of the Year of the Tiger, the Daily Economic News and HCR Huichen jointly launched a high-end mobile phone consumer survey in the Chinese mainland market, which was mainly aimed at users who switched from non-Apple brands to Apple in the past year, with a total of 13873 questionnaires, 12821 recovered, and 1000 valid questionnaires. According to the survey content, HCR Huichen and the Research Group of Peregrine Technology jointly released the "2022 Chinese mainland Market High-end Mobile Phone Consumer Survey Report".
The high-end mobile phone market has changed dramatically: the power of young consumer groups cannot be ignored
It is worth noting that in the great changes in the high-end mobile phone market, young consumer groups are receiving more and more attention and have become the focus of attention of major mobile phone manufacturers.
Judging from this survey, the proportion of young users under the age of 30 who buy or change Apple has reached 35.9%, more than one-third of the users, indicating that the young group has occupied a place in Apple's high-end mobile phone market.
For high-end mobile phones in the price range of 5,000-10,000, 44.9% of users are willing to spend about a month's salary to buy Apple, and more than 5,000 young users account for 77.0%, which shows that Apple has been favored by young people in terms of design concept and product design, and on the other hand, it can also show that young people are more willing to pay for their favorite high-end products.
In the past, domestic high-end mobile phones are often inseparable from mature, stable, business these adjectives, but with the gradual growth of the Z generation, the consumption power of young groups makes it difficult for every mobile phone manufacturer to ignore, and has become a new object of their key layout, such as the design preference for mobile phones, game e-sports demand, etc. has prompted some high-end brand mobile phones to design, use experience, product marketing more to young people.
The most intuitive embodiment is that the UI design of domestic mobile phone brands is becoming more and more beautiful, the functions are more and more abundant, and even some people are "dazzling", trying to get rid of the interface labels of "old soil", "boring" and "cottage" in the eyes of young people. At the same time, manufacturers such as realmme and iQOO are also frequently exerting efforts in the high-end market of mobile phones, realme's true self GT2 Pro focuses on environmental protection themes, hiring design giants to participate in product design to cater to the consumption characteristics of generation Z's "beauty first"; iQOO 9 Pro's track racing aesthetics, integrating e-sports and high-end to meet the needs of young people's high-quality gaming experience; these bold high-end product designs have shown that they will aim more at young people.
At the marketing level, some mobile phone manufacturers also actively hire popular stars to participate in brand promotion endorsements, and join the popular self-media platform to interact with young people, hoping to narrow the distance with young people and attract more young people to become new users.
Apple's new user source analysis: domestic brands are still difficult to retain high-end mobile phone users
Judging from the brand sources of Apple's new users, 35.6% of the surveyed users are from Huawei, 22.0% are from Xiaomi, and other mainstream brands account for nearly 10% of each.
Further excavating the price composition of the previous mobile phone of the surveyed users, with 4,000 yuan as the watershed, 72.4% of the low-end users were upgraded to high-end users, and the replacement of the original high-end user brand accounted for 27.6%.
Specific to each mainstream brand, the upgraded high-end users are mainly from OPPO, vivo, and honor, while the main force of brand replacement users comes from Huawei and Xiaomi, of which the original Huawei high-end users account for nearly 50% of Huawei users.
The reason is that, on the one hand, the external difficulties that Huawei is facing have led to the selection problem of the original Huawei high-end users, and on the other hand, the reason is that other mainstream brands have been deeply involved in the low-end market in the past and have a good performance, and the high cost performance has accumulated a wide user base for them.
In the high-end mobile phone market, the entire industry is limited by long-term factors such as chip supply and brand power, although domestic mobile phone manufacturers such as Xiaomi are also continuing to launch an impact on the high-end market, the results are not eye-catching, and the high-end user group retains less, and more users who intend to upgrade the high-end are lost.
Analysis of the reasons for Apple's new users to buy: The early adopter experience is also the main replacement factor
According to the survey data, Apple's new users pay more attention to entertainment, performance and details when buying iPhones, accounting for 22.8%; followed by the business attributes of mobile phones (such as ultra-long standby, portable projection, large-capacity storage, etc.), accounting for 22.4%; at the same time, they pay more attention to the cost performance of high-end mobile phones, willing to pay a premium for reasonable functions and performance, accounting for 21.8%; and the proportion of users who buy high-end mobile phones and are constrained by the purchase budget is low, only 9.6% and 7.2%. It shows that consumers have higher requirements for the quality of mobile phones.
Since the launch of the iPhone 13, Apple has adopted a more flexible pricing strategy. Apple's impression of consumers in the past was often that the price was too high to reach potential consumers who wanted to upgrade the high-end, but even if the budget was further relaxed, there were still concerns about price.
Through a flexible price strategy, Apple is increasing the "harvesting" of the high-end market share of mobile phones, while seizing the original Huawei market share, it is also more eye-catching to the high-end share of other brands, in the price segment of more than 5,000 yuan, although the price of the iPhone is still much higher than other brands, but with its brand effect that has been deeply rooted in the minds of consumers for many years and the iPhone series with iOS and A series processors, it is almost difficult for other brands to match.
Relying on Apple's A15 chip and iOS operating system and ecology, iPhone13 for users to create a better experience and environment for users, in addition to still durable service life, 42.4% of users think that the iPhone's fluency is better, while Apple has always paid attention to the polishing of details, pay attention to user experience, respectively, 23.4% and 22.2% of users think that the iOS system is simple to operate, the underlying optimization is more extreme than the Android system, At the same time, it also leaves the impression that the private data is more secure.
In addition to hard power and soft power, it cannot be ignored that in the current market environment, domestic brands have not left consumers with too many choices, and 27.5% of the surveyed users belong to the early experience of iPhone. From the perspective of technology and brand power, in addition to Huawei, other mainstream brands are still in the power stage, chip technology, system optimization and other levels are far from reaching the level of qualitative change, and have not left a prominent high-end impression on consumers.
Original Huawei users are willing to buy machines: If Huawei returns, more than half of the original users are willing to buy again
Huawei in this sudden market shock under the serious loss of users, if the current market environment continues, 23% of Apple's new users will choose Huawei for the next mobile phone, 65.7% of users will choose to continue to buy Apple, what is more unfavorable for Huawei is that the next mobile phone to choose Apple users includes 71.1% of the original Huawei users, this part of the population from Android or Hongmeng system to iOS system adaptation speed is faster, and believe that the experience of using Apple is better, It is a potential group of people who will become new fruit powder in the future.
If Huawei gets rid of the current market dilemma as soon as possible, 50.7% of users will choose to buy Huawei for the next mobile phone, an increase of 27.7% over the unblocked, and an increase of 15.1% over the proportion of original Huawei users who initially flowed into Apple, while Apple will still retain 42.9% of users, including 40% of the original Huawei users, that is to say, the original Huawei users will lose 40% of users, and the possibility of these 40% of users becoming fruit powder is higher.
On the side, the impact for these 40% of users is more like a reasonable opportunity for brand conversion, for them, the market shortage and external impact is only one of the reasons, and on the other hand, more importantly, they believe that Huawei still has some defects in performance and function compared to Apple, after using the iPhone, such users are more impressed by these defects.
Among the reasons why the original Huawei users did not continue to buy Huawei's high-end mobile phones, they could only rank third due to market shortages, while the top two were that There was still a gap between Huawei's performance and functional experience and Apple, accounting for 30.6% and 29.5% respectively, in addition to the high price and low cost performance are also Huawei's main pain points.
Although Huawei has vigorously blocked Apple in the high-end mobile phone market in the past few years, and has achieved great success, greatly enhancing the morale and consumer confidence of domestic brands, it still needs to do a good job in basic skills, and cannot let market reasons cover up deeper user experience pain points, so as to achieve a farther take-off after breaking through the market dilemma.
Apple mobile phone use pain points: battery life and signal is still a functional shortcoming
In recent years, the domestic mobile phone market has sprung up, and a large number of excellent domestic brands such as Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo and so on have emerged, and have launched competitions for old giants such as Apple and Samsung. There is no doubt that domestic brands have created a greater challenge to Apple in the domestic mobile phone market, which has effectively boosted the confidence of domestic consumers in domestic brands.
The pain point of apple mobile phone use is like the opportunity point of domestic high-end mobile phones.
From the perspective of consumers, Apple's new users believe that there are many deficiencies in the purchase and use experience of the iPhone, in addition to the user perception in terms of battery life, the improvement of the iPhone 13 series compared to the 12 series is not obvious, and the original Android or Hongmeng users have a prominent perception of the high price of the iPhone.
Putting aside the price factor, consumers are more concerned about battery and signal problems, and many pain points of the iPhone are still not fully solved compared to the previous generation. On the other hand, domestic high-end brands have made great improvements in such aspects as fast charging and battery life.
Combined with the current situation of the market, many pain points have not prevented more users from choosing the Apple brand. This also indicates that domestic mobile phones still have a large breakthrough space.
High-end mobile phone user cognition: technology, security, details are the core
When it comes to high-end mobile phone brands, most consumers first think of Apple, indicating that Apple's eye-catching market performance this time does not only depend on the product and this sudden market opportunity, but also relies on the user's mental share accumulated over the years. Apple's model series as the main force in the domestic market are located in the high price segment, in the minds of users for a long time to create a high-end image, and it can even be said that Apple is playing an irreplaceable role in defining what is a high-end mobile phone.
From the perspective of consumers' emotional factors for high-end mobile phones, Huawei's high-end image highlighted by consumers is innovative and technological, while Apple is highly value-preserving, detail-oriented and safe, and the consumer distinction is more obvious and different. However, from the perspective of consumers' functional factors for high-end mobile phones, consumers obviously tend to prefer Apple to be more in line with the two important high-end brand images of operating system friendliness (easy to use) and smooth non-caton, and Huawei is more in line with the high-end brand image of stable signal and high configuration. Although such as Glory, Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo have also left a trendy, avant-garde, enterprising, and high-value impression in the minds of users, they do not conform to the user's product positioning for high-end mobile phones.
Domestic high-end mobile phones look forward to: young users pay more attention to fluency
For these new Apple users, will they consider other domestic brands in the future? Fortunately, only 1.5% of users only consider iPhone in the future, indicating that only 1.5% of users have directly become new fruit powder after purchasing Apple, thanks to the fact that domestic mobile phone brands have indeed made great progress in recent years, and have been recognized by many consumers.
However, users' expectations of domestic high-end mobile phone brands are mainly Apple, such as improving the fluency of mobile phones, accounting for 38.7%; improving the stability and reliability of the system, accounting for 38.5%; reducing Android advertising, accounting for 35.5%; focusing on user privacy and security, accounting for 32.4%; the operating system is more friendly, accounting for 17.8%, you can see that the above indicators are the core advantages of the iPhone, and the above advantages need to be based on self-developed chips, A more adaptable operating system and a longer period of time to hone to form.
epilogue
Apple relies on the ecology and simple and easy-to-use operating system to cultivate a group of loyal users, while the birth of iPad, MacBook and other series of products makes apple users with these ecosystems more expensive to change machines, Apple obviously has a time advantage over domestic brands.
For domestic brands, there are still many problems behind the short-term successful development, some from the technology is not yet mature, and some from the failure to gain insight into the deeper needs of users. From the research and development of self-developed chips to the polishing of system details to the shaping of brand influence, all of them do not need to take a long time to develop.
The rapid iteration of smart phones has created a broader development and living space for domestic brands, such as the emergence of technologies, functions and products such as folding screens, which will become a new opportunity point for domestic brands. The vitality and potential strength of domestic brands in the development process are not inferior to Apple, in the future competition, domestic brands may not be able to surpass Apple, and the latecomers are on top.
Producer: HCR Huichen, Per Jing Digital Intelligence Technology Research Group
The survey was supported by HCR Huichen's "XMfactory Experience Factory" one-stop experience management solution SaaS platform, which can provide full-process services from project program design, data collection and execution, statistical model analysis, and insight report output for the experience management goals of enterprises.
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