Image source @ Visual China
Text | Moldy
The Redmi K series, once again backstabbing Xiaomi's digital series.
On the evening of March 17, 2022, Beijing time, Redmi held a new product launch conference for K50/K50 Pro. In terms of configuration, Redmi K50 has luxury configurations such as Tianji 8100 chip, 2K+120Hz screen and OIS optical image stabilization under the premise of starting from 2399 yuan, further implementing the product development concept of extreme cost performance.
On the night of the press conference, the Redmi K50 series was on Weibo hot search, and the related topics were read more than 100 million, probably the most concerned mobile phones by netizens recently.
After the release of the Redmi K50 series, the lively discussion scene of netizens has to be associated with consumption downgrading, and recently many users seem to be more inclined to buy a mid-price model with a higher cost performance when buying a smart phone, rather than a flagship mobile phone. Counterpoint's data shows that in the fourth quarter of 2021, the fastest growth rate of 5G mobile phone shipments is the main price-performance model of realme, with a growth rate of up to 165%, and Xiaomi ranks third.
So the question is, will the "comprehensive pricing" of smartphones become more accessible to the people this year? Does consumption downgrade really exist?
This year's domestic smartphone pricing will be more affordable?
Last year, under the background of domestic mainstream mobile phone brands struggling to rush to the high end, the smartphone market ushered in a wave of price increases. According to Strategy Analytics' research report, the wholesale revenue and average selling price of the global smartphone industry in the fourth quarter of 2021 increased by 6% and 9% year-on-year, respectively, which naturally has the reason for the rise in materials and chip shortages, so that mobile phone manufacturers can increase prices actively or passively.
Reflecting on the product, last year's domestic mainstream mobile phone brands seem to have put the focus of mobile phone development on the middle and high price market, so that many netizens directly called mobile phones expensive, and then expensive to buy domestic flagships. At the same time, the "configuration treatment" of the traditional thousand yuan machine and 2-3K price model has become lower, and the lively thousand yuan machine market that used to be "Mi Mei Yao" three strong competitions is also gone.
However, this year's domestic smartphone market has seen some new conditions, at the end of March, the starting price of many new models released has become less expensive, and there have been several 3K flagship models that are more brilliant in appearance design and configuration.
At the end of last year, the first Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Motorola Edge X30 initial tasting price was 2999 yuan, directly pulling the price of the new Snapdragon flagship mobile phone to three thousand yuan, and after more than three months of sale, the starting price was adjusted to 2799 yuan. On the other hand, the realme GT2 Pro equipped with the same SoC is also in a similar situation, and the price has been reduced by several hundred yuan on the third-party e-commerce platform not long after its release.
More ruthless is to return to the mainstream mobile phone market Nubia, its new model Z40 Pro directly set the starting price at 3399 yuan, many netizens who watched the conference on the Internet were stunned, have sent "buy buy buy", "cow ah" and other unexpected bullet screens.
Not only that, but the pricing of the Xiaomi Mi 12, OnePlus 10 Pro and Honor Magic 4 has also been reduced compared to their peers last year. Obviously, after experiencing last year's wave of mobile phone price increases, many domestic mobile phone manufacturers also understand the need to stabilize the market by relying on more affordable mobile phone pricing, and then think of ways to rush to the high-end, which mainly includes two factors.
First, at the market level, the Strategy Analytics report pointed out that the global smartphone market shipment growth rate last year was only 5%, while the domestic market shipment growth rate even fell by 2%. In order to further stimulate users to change machines, many domestic mobile phone manufacturers have to appropriately change their product development strategies and launch more affordable products.
Second, at the level of domestic high-end machine competition, after the development of Huawei's mobile phone business was blocked, other domestic mobile phone manufacturers did not obtain Huawei's high-end machine market as desired, and the original high-end machine double dominance became Apple's one-man show, and the share of high-end machines soared to 75%. Many domestic mobile phone manufacturers are also rushing to the high-end, but relying solely on supply chain component stacking and price increases does not play too much role, so some manufacturers have begun to use more self-developed technology on high-end machines, and in order to prevent the iPhone SE3 and the old iPhone after the price reduction "stealing home" (4K market), so reduce the starting price of some high-end models.
What is more interesting is that many users on the network also scorn the way some mobile phone manufacturers "pile up the price of high-end", but also let the original motorola and Nubia, which are still on the edge of the market, see the opportunity to cut into the market, the former with the supply chain advantage to get the first launch of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, the latter main image also put the starting price of the model in the range below 3.5K, trying to attract more users with cost performance.
Judging from the feedback from the market, the way to lower the starting price has indeed achieved a certain effect, Jingdong data shows that the monthly sales of nubia Z40 Pro have exceeded 20,000, and even employees who claim to have worked in Nubia for two years use "live long to see" to describe the sales performance of the new Z series models.
Objectively speaking, playing with cost-effective Motorola and Nubia has forced other brands to follow up, or reduce prices or launch other models to cope. The Redmi K50/K50 Pro is intended to continue to consolidate Xiaomi's position in the 2-3K mobile phone market and prevent target users from being diverted by other mobile phone brands.
However, this year, many domestic mobile phone pricing has become more close to the people, which does not mean that users are affected by consumption downgrade to choose more price-friendly mobile phones.
Mobile phone manufacturers want to eat the dividends of consumption downgrade?
It is true that many domestic mobile phone manufacturers adjust product pricing, which is related to the general environment of the market and caters to the needs of many users for cost-effective mobile phones. But in fact, the so-called consumption downgrade may not exist, on the contrary, some users' attention to consumption downgrade is actually the expectation of consumption upgrading.
Affected by the epidemic, in recent years, many people have been discussing topics related to consumption downgrading, and some have even adjusted daily consumption expenditure. From the data analysis, the National Bureau of Statistics data show that in 2021, the total retail sales of social consumer goods in the mainland increased by 12.5%, specific to February this year, the total retail sales of social consumer goods in the country increased by 6.7% over the same period last year, and in the data on the retail value of enterprises (units) above designated size, in February this year, except for furniture goods, which fell by 6% compared with the same period last year, other types of goods were positive growth.
Not only that, at the end of last year, Fu Linghui, spokesman for the National Bureau of Statistics, also said in an interview with the media: "The consumption situation in the past two years will often be disturbed by the epidemic, but from the overall point of view, the trend of consumption upgrading is continuing, and I have not seen a change in consumption downgrade." ”
That is to say, many consumption indicators are maintaining positive growth, but due to the impact of the epidemic, many consumers have changed their consumption strategies and consumption has become more cautious. Speaking of smart phones, users' more cautious consumption strategies have just coincided with the rising price of domestic smart phone brands, and many manufacturers have rushed to high-end products and cannot come up with enough new selling points to stimulate user consumption, which naturally affects the sales of products.
It is worth noting that the hot market of the Redmi K50/K50 Pro also reflects consumers' expectations for mid-range smartphone consumption upgrades.
In the past, the 2.5-3K price segment was the main pricing range of many domestic mobile phone manufacturers' flagship products, but as manufacturers rushed to the high-end, the flagship products were raised to a price point of about 5K, making the existence of the original 3K price segment products embarrassing, "the configuration is not as good as the flagship, and the cost performance is not as good as the 2K file thousand yuan machine." ”
This year, many manufacturers are enhancing the competitiveness of products in the 2-3K price segment, and the side is also promoting the consumption upgrade of users. Take the Redmi K50 as an example, the starting price is four hundred more expensive than the previous generation, but there are a series of new selling points such as Tianji 8100, 2K screen, 67W fast charging and so on. Similarly, the more balanced realme and Nubian flagships were estimated to sell more than 4K last year, while the actual product starting price was around 3.5K, actively embracing users.
This also leads to a problem, in the smart phone industry, the so-called consumption upgrade is not only by raising prices and piling materials to attract users, but also needs to take the actual needs of users as the starting point, while providing better products and services, reasonably increase the starting price of new products, that is, the "comprehensive pricing" mentioned at the beginning of the article.
iPhone has brand advantages and A series of chips, iOS systems and other exclusive advantages, so that it can more calmly set the price, and only by virtue of the supply chain components procurement lack of product uniqueness of the manufacturer, hastily large price increases are easy to make users feel worthless. Therefore, it is more important to control the comprehensive pricing of the product, and when the price of the product is raised, consumers think that the part of the money they spend is valuable.
At this time, domestic mobile phone brands want to eat not the dividend of consumption downgrade, but in the context of the epidemic affecting user consumption, as far as possible to promote the user's consumption upgrade. From this point of view, driven by the competition of mid-range machines, the high-end machine competition in the domestic mobile phone market this year will be more intense, and it is not easy for domestic brands to persuade users to pay for their own products, after all, the comprehensive gap between the domestic mid-range machine and the domestic flagship machine that has been upgraded is rapidly narrowing.