Nandu News reporter Yan Zhaoxin On March 21, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (China Academy of Information and Communications Technology) released a report that in February 2022, the overall shipment of the domestic mobile phone market was 14.864 million units, down 31.7% year-on-year, and 5G mobile phones were 11.374 million units, down 24.5% year-on-year, accounting for 76.5% of mobile phone shipments in the same period.
This is the second decline in total domestic mobile phone shipments and 5G mobile phone shipments since 2022. In January 2022, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology reported that overall mobile phone shipments fell by 17% in January, and 5G mobile phone shipments fell by 3.5%. According to the january-February 2022 report, the overall shipment of mobile phones in the domestic market totaled 47.886 million units, down 22.6% year-on-year, of which 5G mobile phone shipments were 37.698 million units, down 11.0% year-on-year, accounting for 78.7% of mobile phone shipments in the same period.
In terms of brand composition, in February 2022, 29 new models of domestic mobile phones were listed, of which 15 were 5G mobile phones, down 6.3% year-on-year, accounting for 51.7% of the number of new mobile phone models listed in the same period.
Since the beginning of 2022, the domestic mobile phone market shipments have continued to decline, what is the reason behind it? Zhejiang University International United Business School Digital Economy and Financial Innovation Research Center Co-director, researcher Pan and Lin Xiangnandu reporter analysis, at present, the level of innovation in the mobile phone industry has declined, consumers believe that in recent years, the necessity of mobile phone replacement consumption is not high, one of the reasons is that major mobile phone manufacturers began to innovate in non-key areas such as screens, cameras, and shapes, without significantly improving the performance of mobile phones.
Behind the decline in shipments, the closely watched 5G mobile phones have not had a bright performance. In February 2022, domestic 5G mobile phone shipments fell by 24.5%, and from January to February, the overall decline was 11%. Pan and Lin believe that the current progress of smart phone 4G to 5G is relatively slow, 5G networks do not improve the user experience much, and there is no 5G exclusive mobile phone application, resulting in many users to postpone the replacement plan.
But even so, on the whole, China's 5G mobile phone penetration rate in the global market is high, and the development situation is relatively considerable. A research report recently released by market research firm Counterpoint Research pointed out that China's 5G smartphone usage rate is the highest in the world, with a penetration rate of 84% in January 2022. Counterpoint analysts believe this is due to the push from Chinese telecom operators and the release of competitively priced 5G smartphones to consumers by manufacturers.
How should domestic smartphones break through the application bottleneck and break the current static situation in the market? Pan and Lin believe that to continue Moore's Law, mobile phone manufacturers must not only strive for excellence in chip technology, but also match these advanced hardware in applications to attract users with application ecology. This also shows that there are two shortcomings in the current smart phones, one is the lack of hardware improvement space, and the other is that there is no heavy content and lack of breakthroughs in software applications.