In the first quarter, the domestic mobile phone market declined significantly, and domestic manufacturers aimed at the e-sports market

Per reporter: Wang Jing Per editor: Wei Guanhong

Recently, data released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology showed that the total shipment of China's mobile phone market in February 2022 was 14.864 million units, down 31.7% compared with the same period. From January to February 2022, the overall shipment of mobile phones in the domestic market totaled 47.886 million units, down 22.6% year-on-year, of which the shipments of domestic brand mobile phones totaled 38.434 million units, down 27.9% year-on-year, accounting for 80.3% of mobile phone shipments in the same period.

"The decline in the Chinese market in the first quarter is more obvious, and the whole market is not particularly good." Xu Qi, vice president of realme and president of China, said in an interview with media reporters including the Daily Economic News reporter recently. Unlike previous years, the reason for the impact on smartphone shipments this year is not the "lack of cores". Xu Qi said, "The chip shortage situation is not serious, but the downward trend of the entire market is more obvious, because the epidemic has repeatedly brought great challenges to the entire market replacement cycle and everyone's consumption capacity." ”

Based on this, realme has made corresponding policy adjustments. A few days ago, realme released the e-sports flagship mobile phone realme GT Neo3 series to win more and more e-sports users. "The size of China's e-sports market this year is expected to exceed 180 billion yuan, and the entire e-sports economy is rising very quickly. This means that the crowd will not be small, and it will gradually become the mainstream population. We are very confident in the path of esports. Xu Qi said.

In addition, at the beginning of this year, Li Jie, president of OnePlus Mobile China, said in the introduction of product planning that the main crowd of the future OnePlus series will become "young people who love to play games and chase performance".

Weak smartphone demand Vendors are targeting the esports market

Weak demand for smartphones has spread to the upper reaches of the supply chain. At the beginning of March, the shipment data of major products in February 2022 disclosed by Sunny Optics showed that mobile phone lenses shipped 109 million pieces, a year-on-year decrease of 15.9%; mobile phone camera module shipments were 49.716 million pieces, a year-on-year decrease of 24.6%. The company explained that "the decline in shipments is mainly due to the weak demand for the smartphone market." ”

Image source: Screenshot of the company announcement

Xu Qi judged, "The domestic mobile phone market will slowly pick up, and in the second and third quarters, with the arrival of e-commerce, including the offline peak season, sales will definitely have a more obvious increase." However, overall, this year's domestic mobile phone market will be lower than last year, and the competition between mobile phone manufacturers will further intensify, even the most intense year in recent years. ”

The situation overseas is also not optimistic. "On the one hand, there are war factors, on the other hand, there is the epidemic, and the whole market is in a state of instability." Xu Qi said. But he stressed that the current 50% growth target of realme for the whole year has not been adjusted. "Among them, the domestic market is working hard according to the growth rate of 30%, and the overseas market is slightly higher, according to more than 50%."

In order to broaden the market, on March 22, realme released the e-sports flagship mobile phone realme GT Neo3 series, which is equipped with a Tianji 8100 processor and independent display chip, as well as a 150W light speed second charge, the price of the product is starting from 1999 yuan, compared with the common e-sports mobile phone, making a big concession in pricing.

In fact, e-sports mobile phones and game phones are not a new category. According to incomplete statistics, since the beginning of the black shark branding of game mobile phones in 2018, in the past 5 years, black sharks, red devils, Lenovo saviors and other mobile phone brands such as IQOO, redmi, and one plus have been born.

The wide variety of categories also reflects the broad population base of the e-sports market from the side. Under the influence of the epidemic, many offline sports events have been suspended, but the e-sports industry has bucked the trend with the help of live broadcast and short video platforms. In November 2021, the live broadcast of the S11 annual finals of the League of Legends was watched by 350 million people on the B station; the number of people watching the live broadcast of Douyu and Huya exceeded 100 million, and related topics continued to ferment on the Internet. There are as many as 80 hot searches related to EDG and S11, and the Weibo topic #EDG Wins the Championship alone generated 3.26 billion reads and more than 4.01 million comments.

The strong influence and dissemination of e-sports events has also spawned huge traffic and heat, and some people believe that the golden age of China's e-sports industry has begun. According to the 2021 China Game Industry Report, the scale of mobile game users in China will reach 656 million in 2021. At the same time, e-sports will also appear at the Hangzhou Asian Games held this year, which means that e-sports will not only open up the space of the mobile phone market, but also affect more and more young people.

Esports phones for the masses

It is worth noting that although the e-sports market is vast, compared with mainstream mobile phones, game mobile phones as a subdivision category are rarely paid attention to by the public. Relevant data show that the shipment of 1.6 million game phones in 2020 is still stuck in a niche market.

In Xu Qi's view, "e-sports is a very big trend, and now it has spawned two forms of positioning mobile phones, one is the main machine of the partial e-sports experience, but it is very all-round; the other is a special e-sports mobile phone that is specially born for e-sports and positioned vertically." I don't think the two positions themselves will converge in the future, it is a different series of products for different groups of people. For realme, we're definitely geared towards the masses. ”

Li Jie, president of OnePlus Mobile China, has also revealed the planning of e-sports products to the outside world. "In addition to the original high-end flagship series, OnePlus will consider adding a mid-range product line for consumers with different consumption capabilities, performance and game experience, and is currently planning." Li Jie said.

But Li Jie stressed that OnePlus has not undergone great changes in positioning and will not launch pure game phones. He believes: "The game is one of the scenes that reflect the performance of mobile phones, and there are a considerable number of people who pursue performance among the original users of OnePlus. With this as the starting point, the main crowd of the future of the OnePlus series is 'young people who love to play games and chase performance'. Based on this positioning, OnePlus will make a differentiated layout in terms of appearance, game experience, performance optimization, and charging.

In order to grab more e-sports users, Xu Qi said that realme has set up an "iron triangle" special team (including research and development, marketing and products) composed of elite teams internally, specifically to overcome the development of e-sports, technical pre-research and so on. "The whole direction of gaming esports must be our next fist function and focus."

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