Wen 丨 壹 Observation Su Yi
The global Android flagship mobile phone market has not seen an "image rush" for several years.
The negative effects are also becoming increasingly prominent: manufacturers have returned to the "image squeezing toothpaste" model, the overall market has bottomed out one after another, and the domestic TOP brands have hit the high-end road in the past two years.
Users are clearly not happy with this. On the one hand, iResearch report data shows that "imaging is the primary function that Chinese replacement users pay attention to", and even accounts for nearly twice the proportion of the second-ranked processor; on the other hand, users are also "voting with their feet", the domestic user replacement cycle has been as long as nearly 30 months, and Aurora Big Data shows that about 1/4 of the user replacement cycle is as high as 3 years (36 months), and the willingness to buy new machines is significantly reduced.
Who can take over Huawei's flagship image innovation discourse? It has become the common expectation of the entire industry and users.
How difficult is the battle for the right to speak in flagship images?
Since the birth of the world's first mobile phone equipped with a camera in 2000, mobile phone images have spanned the continuous iterative evolution from functional machines to smart phones.
However, the domestic brand has become the holder of the global mobile phone image discourse power, in fact, starting from the Huawei P20 series released in 2018, which is marked by the custom outsole, the custom top multi-lens module, and the close coordination of the chip, algorithm and AI computing power, which jointly achieved the DxoMark "slaughter list" event that year, thus laying the new evolution model of the global mobile phone flagship image anti-super iPhone. In the following year, with the global sales of Huawei's P20 series approaching 20 million units, huawei helped Huawei complete the "four kills" of experience, word-of-mouth, share and word-of-mouth in the global and Chinese high-end mobile phone markets, and also let all domestic brands see the great value of mobile phone image innovation for impacting high-end.
After that, almost all TOP mobile phone brands have entered the new track of image flagships, but after Huawei, few other brands have really taken the "flagship image discourse". The reason for this is that there are three main practical challenges:
First, it's stuck in the simple "heap parameter" logic at the hardware level. For example, the "oversized bottom" competition rose to 1 inch, and the main camera of the mobile phone entered 100 million pixels, but it did not bring a qualitative leap to the mobile phone image, on the contrary, the increase in cost, pricing, fuselage weight and thickness did not meet the flagship users' harsh standards and replacement expectations.
The second is the "soft power" of mobile phone images. With the repeated setbacks of the "stacking" logic, more and more mobile phone companies have discovered the huge image innovation gap brought about by the lack of their core algorithms. The most intuitive performance is that in recent years, mobile phone companies have increased their investment in the field of algorithms, established more independent imaging teams and research centers, and increasingly emphasized the innovative functions of "computing images" at the press conference.
Third, it is the gap between the underlying optimization of the chip and the COMPUTING power of AI. General-purpose processor chips are difficult to meet the flagship image of the computing power and endurance of the balance, as well as the needs of differentiated algorithms and experiences, has become the consensus of the vast majority of manufacturers, which is also an important reason why in recent years, top Android mobile phone companies have launched independent ISP chips. However, the addition of a chip cannot be equated with the real image heterogeneous computing, and the "dual-core image computing" is actually a major challenge to the comprehensive technical strength, chip understanding and algorithm support of mobile phone companies.
It can be seen that the imaging innovation of today's mobile phone flagship is by no means a single-dimensional competition, which requires mobile phone companies to have the industry's top advantages in image technology investment, supply chain management, core strength at the bottom of the chip and system, and industry and brand influence. In fact, this is also an important reason why after Huawei, Chinese mobile phone companies can often achieve a "single point breakthrough" in mobile phone images, but it is difficult to really take charge of the flagship image discourse power again, and entering the video image era has aggravated this difficulty.
Glory has finally broken the ceiling of its flagship image
At the domestic press conference of the Honor Magic4 series on March 17, Honor announced that the Honor Magic4 to The Best Edition surpassed Many flagship models such as Huawei, Apple, and Xiaomi to successfully "slaughter" the DXOMARK image champion again with a total score of 146, becoming the world's strongest image flagship mobile phone
Zhao Ming, CEO of Honor Terminal Co., Ltd., had two sentences in the subsequent media interview that impressed One Observation: "The image experience of the Glory flagship must be comparable to or even surpassed by Apple, so this competition is by no means a simple hardware-level competition, the core is the deep collaboration of software and hardware", "The hardware only determines the lower limit of the image base, and the algorithm and ability of Honor determine whether Glory can truly provide consumers with flagship image value and experience beyond expectations." ”
At the hardware level, Honor Magic4 to Zhen Edition has the top hardware image combination of the flagship mobile phone, with "three exclusive customization" and "four main camera lenses", deep customization includes three exclusive components of lens- sensor - back-end image chip, covering the three key links of optical acquisition- digital imaging - computing image in mobile phone shooting imaging, thus directly and significantly improving the "basic lower limit" of mobile phone imaging.
Honor Magic4 to The Ultimate Edition uses a "4+1" camera combination of "four main cameras". Among them, the main camera is a 1/1.12-inch, 1.6-aperture 50-megapixel GNH ultra-large-bottom sensor, and the actual light sensitivity is equivalent to a 1-inch professional camera at f/1.8 aperture, which brings about a comprehensive improvement in night scene capabilities. Honor also exclusively customized 8P optical lens, super anti-glare coating technology, OIS optical image stabilization, closed-loop motor autofocus system together, so that it can provide a bright and clear imaging experience in a variety of extreme scenes.
In addition, the 64-megapixel 100X periscope telephoto main camera owned by the Honor Magic4 to the best edition is currently the industry's highest quality telephoto lens; the 50-megapixel ultra-wide-angle main camera is the industry's first "double freeform" camera, and the lens edge distortion can be reduced to 0.5%; the addition of the 50-megapixel CV spectrum enhanced camera can obtain more complex real-world information to achieve "beyond what the human eye sees"; the hardware bonus of the 8*8 dot matrix laser ranging dToF lens ", can better make up for the current computational photography often appear in the hair edge abrupt edge or "AI cutout" mistake problem.
At the software and algorithm level, the Honor Magic4 series is equipped with the HONOR Image Engine image engine, which can be mainly reflected in three levels:
1) Fully integrate the powerful multi-main camera customization hardware of honor magic4 series, which further enhances honor's multi-main camera fusion computing photography capabilities with full lens participation and full focal length integration with leading innovation advantages in the industry;
2) Through heterogeneous different chip platforms, plug-in integration of chip capabilities ensures the full release of image capabilities of Honor Imaging on Qualcomm Snapdragon and other platforms, and at the same time boosts the significant improvement of imaging capabilities from hardware and software dual tracks, while reasonably reducing computing power consumption.
3) Focus on innovation and breakthroughs in the use scenarios of pain point images used by users at a high frequency. For example, the functions of "Recording Chinese and American Shooting" and "One Record more get" solve the pain points of hard-to-obtain clear and high-quality stop-motion photo imaging in mobile phone video scenes, including iPhones; the latter can automatically identify wonderful moment captures and generate "AI one-click blockbusters", which is convenient for users to quickly share and greatly reduces the threshold for video creation.
Although the conference was not deliberately explained, the isp chip hybrid accuracy AI computing power of Honor customized is as high as 28.8TOPs, which can support 4K level night scene real-time preview, RAW domain real-time image calculation, super night scene video and other heavy computing power application scenarios with strong user perception. At the same time, the Honor Emeralds 3 Pro, the maximum noise reduction depth can reach 46dB, and the Honor Magic4 series can effectively reduce the mixing problems in various noisy environments, which can be called the "best shooting partner" of the Honor Magic4 series.
Zhao Ming told OneWatch that no camera in the Honor Magic4 series is a total, and each one has its significant value. Honor's way to break the image ceiling is to use the industry's best hardware to cooperate with honor HONOR lmage Engine image engine to jointly make the image experience the best in the industry. Zhao Ming stressed that since the day Honor became independent of Huawei, all technical links have not existed, and all the image breakthroughs made by the Honor Magic4 series have come from the hard work of the Honor R&D team in the past year. Today's Honor Magic4 to the best edition with DXOMARK 146 points to break the flagship image ceiling again, this is only the initial embodiment of honor image capabilities, and then there will be "bigger moves" to continue to consolidate the "flagship image benchmark" status of honor magic digital series.
The flagship mobile phone market ushered in the "pain point terminator"
The impact of the high-end market of domestic mobile phones is, of course, not a key support force for "image", and performance, security, and system interaction are equally important.
For example, the need for flagship mobile phone performance and battery life is difficult to balance, the gap between Android flagship and closed iOS system in terms of security, and the "dazzling" feeling of the screen in the dark light scene are all long-term stubborn pain points for Android flagship users. If these bottlenecks are not broken, it will be difficult for the Android flagship to achieve a positive benchmark with apple's iPhone.
Zhao Ming clearly put forward a concept at the Glory Magic4 series conference, Honor to be the real "pain point terminator" of the flagship mobile phone market.
In response to media questions about the "broken chip" remarks of executives of other manufacturers at the press conference, Zhao Ming responded: When mobile phone manufacturers decide to use a chip on their flagship models, they have actually made a judgment of "this is an excellent chip", but whether they can really release their performance and characteristics, which tests the technical strength and driving skills of mobile phone companies for flagship new products. For example, the new Snapdragon 8 is the "Green Dragon Crescent Knife" in the hands of Glory, and it may be a scrap iron that cannot be moved in the hands of other manufacturers, and there is a huge difference between them.
From the perspective of the Honor Magic4 series, Honor has carried out two major levels of innovation: one is to adopt the third generation of graphene + VC liquid cooling technology, which is a larger and stronger heat dissipation solution; the other is to further empower the three turbo technologies (OS Turbo X, GPU Turbo X, LINK Turbo X) through the Magic Live intelligent engine, so as to achieve "the same chip, better experience", "stronger output, lower power consumption", and "the same scene, Better joins".
Actual test data show that in the "Bright Mountains" heavy load game scene, both the average frame rate and peak speed of the game are significantly better than the main competitors such as Apple's iPhone 13 Pro and Samsung Galaxy S22+.
In addition, the smart privacy call of the Honor Magic4 series, the 1920Hz high-frequency PWM dimming on the LTPO screen, and the "double insurance" of dual TEE OS to provide data security and payment security are all innovative technologies of Honor's leading industry, and also solve the core pain points of users' privacy, health, security and other core pain points with "knife method precision".
Behind it, Honor has always adhered to the core values of consumer centricity and the correctness of the ultimate productism of two-wheel drive. The former ensures that Honor must do "innovation that is useful to users" and prevents innovation from becoming a marketing gimmick or even a huge loss caused by technical deviation. The latter allowed Honor to build a strong self-research team in only about a year after independence, and quickly launched a variety of "moat" innovative technologies on the Honor flagship series.
Zhao Ming said that the breakthrough of high-end mobile phones must have leading technological innovation, and must be able to continuously solve the pain points of consumers' daily use of smart phones, and only by continuously meeting the higher needs of consumers, rather than repeating at a low level or just the accumulation of hardware configurations, can we impress and win the support of consumers.
OneWatch review
The smartphone market in 2022 can be summarized by three keywords: innovation slowdown, market bottoming, Android's overall market share and high-end proportion "upside down".
From the data point of view, GFK expects that the Chinese mobile phone market may directly fall below the shipment scale of 300 million units in 2022, and continue to decline for six consecutive years after 2016. In 2021, Apple accounted for 17% of global smartphone shipments and Android accounted for 83%, but Apple's revenue accounted for nearly half of the country, and it took away 75% of the industry's profits. The high-end market share of 5,000 yuan in the Chinese market has increased significantly from 48% in 2020 to 75%, and in the fourth quarter of 2021, it has rushed to the first place in China's overall market share with high-end mobile phone shipments (Counterpoint Research data).
The replacement cycle of Chinese users has approached 30 months, but domestic flagship innovation is still in a state of lack of innovation. The direct performance is the wave of battles in which domestic brands have collectively impacted the high-end in the past two years, which can be called a failure from the market level, and "Huawei falls" No brand can prevent "Apple from eating".
Glory has the potential to be the "sword bearer" to turn this around.
From the market level, the strong growth potential presented by Honor has created the "fastest rebound case" in china's mobile phone market. Although the domestic market fell to 3% to become a "Nothers brand" in April 2021, the global market has shrunk sharply due to previous external sanctions. However, it took only about half a year for Honor to rise to second place for the first time with a market share of 17% in the fourth quarter of that year, becoming the "double first" between domestic brands and android camps, ending with a "smile curve" and leading the domestic mobile phone market with a 100% increase (Counterpoint data). Counterpoint predicts that the new 2022 Glory will continue its high growth trend, with a market growth rate of more than 40%, "thriving" among the world's major smartphone brands.
In the high-end market, with the launch of the Magic dual flagship product portfolio, as well as the 2022 Magic V folding screen flagship and magic4 series, the high-end successive breakthrough trend is also far beyond the outside world's expectations. Honor Magic V also sold today two months after its release to "a hard machine". Counterpoint defined it as "one of the best-selling folding screen phones in China" in the survey report. The Honor Magic 4 series was rated as "better than the iPhone" by the official journal after the 2022 MWC Global Launch, and subsequently won 19 "Best for MWC" media awards around the world. Reuters directly commented in a previous report that "Apple's biggest rival in the country is glory."
Zhao Ming said that the first wave of domestic manufacturers impacting the high-end is not as expected, in fact, the results were already doomed two years ago, which has a gap in technical capabilities and a wrong judgment of route choice. The high-end market should not be an inner volume of price and stacking, but should return to user experience and technological innovation. Now that the second wave of the battle has begun, Glory believes that if you want to really win the high-end competition, you should not do the high-end of the East Shi Gong style, but take your own path, return to the consumer experience, and solve the real pain points of use.
This is also the "right but difficult" road that Zhao Ming has always emphasized. The high-end market is called the real "Battle of Tianwangshan" by the industry as a mobile phone brand, and there has never been a "short way" and it is doomed to have no smooth road. It is a painful process full of risks and difficulties, and even questioned and challenged.
There were two sentences in the media dialogue session after Zhao Ming's press conference that impressed One Observation: "I hope that Chinese consumers will use the most critical eyes to evaluate and compare our experience with Apple, and we hope that we can use our products to win the recognition of more high-end users and more consumers." "The launch of the Honor Magic4 series is to show that honor goals can really change the situation of Apple's dominance in the high-end market."