Domestic mobile phones, there is no shortcut to go.
Wen 丨 Hua Shang Tao Li Zhang Jingbo
Nokia in 2007, as in the sky.
Despite Motorola and Samsung's eye, ZTE, Lenovo and other domestic brands are in hot pursuit, Nokia still controls 40% of the global market share.
Until the advent of Apple, breaking the rules of the game.
Why did Apple end Nokia's supremacy? What is the enlightenment for domestic mobile phones to conquer the high-end?
[Huawei faded out, domestic mobile phones rushed to the top of the high-end first battle lost, where is the mistake? 】
Domestic mobile phones are facing a new challenge.
As the market gradually saturates, the entire industry has entered a bottleneck period of development. If you don't think ahead, you can only be trapped in the middle and low end. Only by breaking upward can we rush out of a way to live.
This trend has become particularly pronounced since Huawei faded out two years ago. Almost all the head mobile phone manufacturers have accelerated the high-end layout after Huawei. With this process, the hardware configuration of flagship mobile phones is also becoming more and more luxurious.
Taking the chip as an example, from Snapdragon 888 to Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, Qualcomm will be popular every time it releases a new generation of processors; the competition in the image field is particularly fierce, not only the camera from a single main camera to the current four camera, five cameras, mobile phone pixels are soaring, when Apple is still sticking to 12 million pixels, most domestic flagship mobile phones have achieved 100 million pixels; the competition for screens is also white-hot, OLED replaces LCD as standard, and the refresh rate jumps from 90Hz to 144Hz. Colors increased from 16 million colors to 1 billion colors.
However, the luxurious hardware configuration, in exchange for the user's approval? The answer is not very optimistic.
Although domestic mobile phones surpass Apple in many hardware parameters such as cameras and screens, there is still a big gap between the comprehensive experience of mobile phones and the latter.
Apple A series chips, the performance is still powerful. The same is the OLED screen, Apple mobile phone regardless of color, color gamut or brightness, looks more comfortable. Even in recent years, domestic mobile phones think that the most advanced imaging field, Apple still maintains a strong strength, DXOMARK mobile phone image capability ranking, the top 5 Apples occupy 2 seats.
This gap is ultimately reflected in market share. According to CINNO Research, in 2021, in the high-end market of more than 5,000 yuan, Apple's share will increase significantly from 48% in 2020 to 75%.
Source: CINNO Research
The high-end market left behind after Huawei faded out two years ago was almost swallowed up by Apple alone. The dismal data basically announced the failure of the first impact of domestic mobile phones on the high-end.
The reason for the failure lies precisely in the heap hardware.
Heaping hardware and spelling parameters can certainly improve the performance of the product, but without a deep understanding of the user and the hardware, it is difficult to release its maximum performance. What's more, for most mobile phone manufacturers, hardware is not their core capability. If you are only satisfied with being a take-it-all at the end of the industrial chain, it is easy to become an assembly plant and lose the right to speak about the entire industrial chain.
This is not alarmist. In the past two years, when overseas core component manufacturers have made a lot of money, domestic mobile phones have turned the high-end market into a red sea of inner volume. The high-priced flagship mobile phone supported by pile hardware did not arouse the enthusiasm of consumers to change the machine, seeing that the stock became inventory, and rushed to reduce the price, and finally chilled the hearts of consumers.
Embarrassing domestic mobile phones, how to get out of this chaotic situation?
The answer is, like Apple, to have the right to speak in high-end technology.
【Seize the right to speak of high-end technology】
The competition in the high-end market is, in essence, a struggle for the right to speak in the underlying technology.
In the era of mobile Internet, the reason why Apple can beat Nokia and redefine the mobile phone market is based on the software and hardware collaboration capabilities represented by multi-touch, and since then, technological breakthroughs in many fields such as chips, screens, and images.
Behind these technological breakthroughs, it is inseparable from the support of software and algorithms. It is based on user pain points, the ability to use software and algorithms to adjust the hardware at the bottom, so that Apple is ahead of its competitors in the high-end market.
Domestic brands that have not yet succeeded in the first battle have gradually realized the importance of technical discourse and have begun to catch up.
This battle for the right to speak mainly revolves around the four major pain points of imaging, security, AI experience, and software and hardware collaboration, and the ultimate goal is to solve user pain points with technology.
For example, in the field of mobile phone imaging, there is a competition to "solve pain points".
Looking at the entire mobile phone market, OV tries to break through the "defense line" with single-point imaging technology, although single-point technology is indeed innovative, but the overall lack of rapid momentum. Perhaps the real fight may be the contest between Apple and Glory in computational photography, which is also a good play in the mobile phone market in 2021.
Computational photography is a mobile phone imaging technology that has emerged in recent years. In 2016, Google first introduced the technology on pixel phones. Subsequently, Apple Deep Fusion used machine learning (ML) algorithms to process photos pixel by pixel to obtain the optimal photo effect. Apple's 12 million pixel camera, the reason why it does not lose the domestic flagship mobile phone, one of the secrets lies in this.
In 2021, the Honor Magic3 series first launched multi-main camera fusion computing photography technology, so that the mobile phone camera bid farewell to the single soldier combat mode, and made a surprise impact on Apple, because it solved the actual pain points of users taking photos, and even let some fruit fans have the idea of "turning back".
In addition, security is another major pain point for mobile phone users.
Personal privacy has always been very concerned by users. In this regard, Apple was the first forerunner, and iOS has always been known for its focus on privacy protection. The Android camp is also catching up, such as OPPO, Xiaomi and other manufacturers, constantly adding privacy protection functions such as restricting ad tracking in the system, and even surpassing Apple, such as catering to consumers' needs to launch a "mobile phone repair model", Apple has not yet had this function.
But to completely protect user privacy, it is not enough to make a fuss at the software level. Honor Magic series adopts independent hardware security chip and dual TEE (trusted execution environment) software security protection, through the integration of software and hardware, to achieve smart privacy calls, even in elevators, conference rooms, taxis and other relatively quiet public places to receive calls, but also to ensure that only they can hear, do not have to worry about call leaks, greatly meet the needs of high-end users.
In addition to imaging and security, in recent years, domestic mobile phones have also continued to exert efforts in the field of AI experience.
Previously, many of the underlying optimizations of Huawei mobile phones were based on AI capabilities, such as imaging capabilities, such as air operations. When the Honor Magic series was born, Honor made every effort to create a better AI experience for consumers, such as the AI portrait engine and the smart privacy calls mentioned above. Together with Apple, they led the AI wave in the mobile phone industry.
After the hardware competition, major mobile phone manufacturers also launched PK on software and hardware collaboration. In this regard, the focus of each company is different, such as Xiaomi's focus on chips, Vivo's focus on memory, and Glory's ai as the underlying logic, for the image, screen, chip three major tuning.
Take chips, for example. Qualcomm Snapdragon chip has excellent performance, but how to "tame" it and make this "fire" no longer burn into the hands of consumers is an industry problem.
In this regard, everyone is trying to work hard. As early as four years ago, Honor released three self-developed Turbo technologies. The new generation of Magic4 further empowers the three turbo technologies through the Magic Live smart engine. The powerful underlying optimization ability fully stimulates the potential of the chip and brings powerful performance to the mobile phone. In the words of Glory CEO Zhao Ming, a high-end chip is like a green dragon crescent knife, which is plain in the hands of Zhou Cang, but in the hands of Guan Yu, it has become an artifact.
Not only glory, two years ago, vivo also realized the integration of mobile phone memory and flash memory through algorithms, and made 8G memory mobile phones 12G effects. This underlying adjustment ability is now becoming the main battlefield of the frontal PK of major mobile phone manufacturers. Its ultimate goal, in the words of Honor CEO Zhao Ming, is: the same chip, a better experience.
Looking at the screen, this is also the core original that affects the mobile phone experience. In the past, many manufacturers used to use it without any adjustment, so that the visual experience was poor, far inferior to Apple. This situation has been significantly improved in recent years, and domestic mobile phones have begun to exert efforts on the screen display. For example, both Xiaomi and OnePlus emphasize the precision of color performance. Honor is making innovative improvements. For the first time, magic4 implements a 1920Hz high-frequency PWM dimming function on the LTPO screen, which not only has the power saving and smoothness of adaptive high brushing, but also has better eye protection effect.
Underlying technology has always been a moat for foreign giants such as Apple in the past. Nowadays, the domestic brands represented by Huawei and Honor have not only gradually mastered the right to speak in high-end technology, but also promoted the localization and innovation of high-end components such as screens to achieve a win-win situation in the industrial chain. This has opened up a new path for domestic mobile phones to conquer the high-end market.
[Benchmarking Apple, creating the next era of mobile phones]
Although domestic mobile phones have made great progress in the underlying technology. However, at present, the direction of power is mainly at the hardware level such as performance and imaging.
In the past decade, if there is any big change in the mobile phone industry, it is that the software technology represented by AI has risen rapidly and profoundly changed the industry. Gone are the days of simple hardware.
The reason why Apple is Apple is not only because of its powerful self-developed A-series chips, but more importantly, the software capabilities accumulated in the past decade, especially the AI capabilities. This innovative ability of software and hardware integration cannot catch up overnight.
In the past two years, more and more domestic brands have rooted in the underlying technology and benchmarked Apple. For example, Vivo said that the self-developed image chip is only the first step, and the future goal is to benchmark Apple. Xiaomi also announced that it "officially benchmarked Apples and learned from Apples." Honor has long practiced the ultimate productism of technology research and development and user experience "two-wheel drive", and is determined to be a global iconic technology brand. Specifically, Honor in the global market, with the strongest Apple PK, in the domestic market, to surpass the object is only Huawei and Apple.
For domestic brands that used to be inward-rolled in the past, this attitude of consistent benchmarking apples and benchmarking the strongest in the industry is undoubtedly a good start.
But at the same time, it should also be noted that as of now, domestic brands that can grasp the technical discourse power in four major areas such as security, imaging, software and hardware collaboration, and AI have not yet emerged.
In contrast, glory may have the best chance of breaking through.
In the past two years, in addition to its original advantages such as imagery and safety, Glory has also continued to exert efforts in AI. The newly released Magic4, relying on the AI capabilities of Glory, has created a new AI track for flagship mobile phones with three major Turbo graphics acceleration technologies.
The market has also begun to accelerate the return of those enterprises that are rooted in the underlying technology and have accumulated a lot of money. According to the latest data from Counterpoint Research, in the fourth quarter of 2021, Apple led the domestic mobile phone market, and Honor jumped to second place with a market share of 16.7%.
Behind the market share recovery is the improvement of glory product strength.
As Moore's Law approaches the limit and the proliferation of mobile phone parts, the road of relying solely on stacking hardware to improve the performance of mobile phones in a small space has become narrower and narrower.
Based on the understanding of users, through AI technology, the road to achieve architecture optimization and soft and hard collaboration from the bottom layer to achieve user experience improvement has just begun.
In this sense, AI ushered in the next era of mobile phones.
More importantly, AI brings not only the smart era of mobile phones, but also the smart era of cross-screen, cross-device, cross-system, cross-ecological collaboration, and interconnection of all things.
The competition between mobile phone manufacturers is not limited to mobile phones. For example, at the Magic4 conference, Honor also released all-scenario products such as Earbuds 3 Pro headphones.
In this new era of wisdom, who can build a systematic innovation capability driven by AI capabilities and reconstruct the intelligent experience of products from the bottom will be able to stand in an invincible position in the future competition.
The new battlefield has created opportunities for domestic mobile phones to impact the high-end for the second time. And the glory of magic4, which has just been released, has come out on top.
But the high-end market has never been a game to the top, but a long march towards scientific and technological innovation. If domestic mobile phones want to create their own high-end era, they must:
Step out of your comfort zone and take the right but tough path.
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