What was the last time you wanted to change this phone? Is it the mobile phone manufacturers that develop and display various new functions based only on physical objects through PPT? Or because of the processor performance, or simply the manufacturer adjusts the scheduling, resulting in the mobile phone began to stutter, heat, battery life crash, can not meet the daily use of the scene.
As a highly Ender score worker, GameLook is exactly the latter. Imagine that the author's last mobile phone was Samsung Note8 in 2017, in addition to changing the phone in addition to liking Samsung's S Pen, the most important reason was that the device on hand could not move NetEase's "Yin and Yang Division" at that time.
Samsung Note8 in 2021, although the daily experience is still excellent, S Pen is even more used to go back, but the "Original God" released (乆), the performance of Samsung Note8 really can not meet the appetite of "Original God", which has become the only reason for the author to change from Samsung to the current "flagship" OPPO Find X3.
In fact, with the author can use it, can not be replaced by the user is not a minority today. In Canalys' 2021 Q4 analysis of the Chinese mainland mobile phone market, Nicole Peng, vice president of mobile business at Canalys, also said, "The main growth bottleneck in the Chinese market is the demand side. ”
"In the mature category of smartphones, the challenge for manufacturers is how to achieve breakthrough innovation in both hardware technology and experience, thereby accelerating the replacement cycle of mid-to-high-end users."
According to data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, in February 2022, 29 new models of domestic mobile phones were listed, an increase of 3.6% year-on-year, but during the same period, the shipment of mobile phones in the domestic market was only 14.864 million units, down 31.7% year-on-year.
Although in recent years, the conference of various mobile phone manufacturers is still very lively, from the original annual, to the subsequent semi-annual degree, and then most of the manufacturers have to brush their faces every few months, OPPO's sub-brand Realme even once achieved the exaggeration of a new machine per month, but then the lively conference, can not change the mobile phone market, user update iteration desire to decay the general trend.
Glory rises, Apple strong Hengqiang
Since achieving an annual shipment of 400 million units in 2018, China's mobile phone market has begun to decline. According to GFK data, in 2020, the shipment volume of China's mobile phone market was 320 million units, down 11% from 2019, while in 2021 it fell by 3% on the basis of 2020, with annual shipments of 310 million units.
GFK predicts that in 2022, the shipment volume of China's mobile phone market will continue to decline by 3%, with annual shipments of 300 million units.
The most affected by the continuous decline in the domestic mobile phone market is naturally the domestic mobile phone brand. According to data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, in the first two months of 2022, a total of 55 new models were listed on the domestic mobile phone brand, but the cumulative shipment volume was 38.434 million units, down 27.9% compared with the same period last year.
Subdivided into specific domestic brands, according to CINNO data, in January 2022, OPPO, vivo, millet and other domestic mobile phone manufacturers, mobile phone sales compared with the same period last year, have appeared 12.7% -21.2% of the decline of varying degrees, thanks to the newly released Honor 60 series, as well as the folding flagship Magic V, Glory has become one of the few domestic brands in January to achieve a year-on-year increase in sales growth, an increase of 242.9%.
Unlike the general year-on-year decline in sales of domestic brands, since the release of the iPhone 13 series in September last year, Apple's performance has been very strong, from the third quarter of 2021 Chinese mainland smartphone shipments accounted for less than 10%, jumped to 25% in the fourth quarter, in January this year, Apple's sales were still as high as 5.1 million, an increase of 11.4% compared with the same period last year.
In fact, according to Canalys, domestic brands such as Apple, rather than OPPO, may be the biggest winner after Huawei's sanctions, even in the Chinese mainland market.
The data shows that after being sanctioned in 2020, Huawei's share of Chinese mainland smartphone shipments fell from about 40% in the second quarter of 2020 to about 5% in the second quarter of 2021 within one year, and continued to decline. In the same time period, oppo as an example, the proportion of OPPO's shipments reached a high point of about 20% in the first quarter of 2021, but in the second quarter it fell back to only about 15% a year ago.
Instead, Apple has taken one step at a time, steadily rising, accounting for less than 15% of smartphone shipments in the Chinese mainland from the fourth quarter of 2019 (the first quarter after the launch of the new iPhone), more than 15% in the fourth quarter of 2020, and 25% in the fourth quarter of 2021.
In GameLook's view, for domestic mobile phones, not only is the willingness of users to change new ones not strong, but the image of the flagship is also difficult to establish, resulting in the high-end market in Huawei is difficult to force, although the companies have been very hard, but still by Apple a little bit of cannibalization.
Daily use does not need to be replaced, but the game breaks through the ceiling of mobile phone performance
Although many people may feel that domestic brands are not as bad as the author said, and put the news of "Chinese mobile phones are selling well in Russia" on the author's face to refute it. The author does not deny the competitiveness of domestic mobile phones in overseas markets, in fact, in Southeast Asia, Europe, India and other regions, the influence and market share of domestic brands are quite good.
But first of all, Russia is currently depreciating the ruble, on the one hand, ordinary people tend to use shopping to offset the impact of currency depreciation, on the other hand, Apple and other European and American brands have also launched sanctions on Russia, users want a complete smartphone experience can only choose Android, especially compared with Samsung, cost-effective domestic brands.
Secondly, the domestic smartphone market has its own unique attributes from hardware to software.
There are many reasons behind the domestic user's willingness to iterate, the new Android flagship processor energy consumption is more than the overturning, fever and other similar external factors, may be a lot of netizens who pay attention to digital will come up with a lot, but for ordinary public users, the core reason is only one: enough.
In the video titled "Snapdragon 8Gen1 Flagship Performance Heat Endurance Horizontal Evaluation" of the B station UP main "Rice Review", it was found that mainstream Android manufacturers including Xiaomi, IQOO (Vivo sub-brand), one plus and so on, have made significant restrictions on the daily performance of their latest flagships, and some netizens have sent a bullet screen saying, "(CPU frequency) even without my Snapdragon 855 running high." For xiaomi, which has stricter restrictions, some netizens quipped that "xiaomi uses I7 as i3."
The Snapdragon 855 is the flagship processor released by Qualcomm in December 2018, which is the common configuration of the Android terminal's 2019 flagship. This is enough to show that today, most netizens in addition to the game, the performance requirements of daily machines are actually far lower than the performance limit of high-end flagship devices.
Not to mention that today's flagship equipment prices can be said to be rising, according to GFK data, the average price of domestic mobile phones from 2956 yuan in 2020, has risen to 3295 yuan in 2021, and is expected to rise to 3420 yuan in 2022. Another data survey agency, Counterpoint, also found this trend, showing that the average market unit price of China's smartphone market has also increased from 1500-2000 yuan to 2700-3000 yuan.
In addition to digital enthusiasts, for the average player who does not play large games such as "Original God", there is almost no reason to replace their smooth devices.
Lei Jun: Disobey to run a original god
But gamers are not the same, as an Android user, the author has been suffering from Android game performance for a long time.
Take the "Original God" that many game manufacturers use to prove their performance strength at the conference as an example, its frame rate change has almost become a mobile phone, and even a "college entrance examination paper" for processor performance. At present, on the mobile side, including Apple's A-series processors that are two years ahead of the Android camp, and the M1 processor on the IPad that is ahead of Android for an unknown number of years, it is almost difficult to conquer the full-power 120-frame 1688P "Original God".
Not to mention the Android platform, the current maximum resolution of "Original God" on the Android side is only 720P, the highest frame rate is only 60 frames, and even such a requirement, the latest flagship mobile phone on the market equipped with a new generation of Snapdragon 8 platform, when running "Original God", need to secretly reduce the resolution to 640P or even lower, to ensure the basic smoothness of the game, and the average frame rate will be greatly reduced with the extension of running time.
Not to mention the "Original God", even if the national game "Glory of the King", with the increase of adjustable picture quality options in the game, the addition of 120 frame mode, many of the latest Android flagship mobile phones even need to reduce the rendering resolution of the game in the background to ensure the operation of 120 frames, and even after reducing the resolution, some brands of mobile phones still cannot stabilize at 120 frames.
Hold on to the mobile phone manufacturers of the game ecology
Although the overall performance of Qualcomm's last two generations of Android processors is not outstanding, but for the already weak Android game performance, there is an improvement better than nothing, the GPU level of the new generation of Snapdragon 8 platform even changed the previous squeeze toothpaste, Android flagship GPU surpassed Apple's A13 (2019) for the first time in the running score.
Many mobile phone manufacturers obviously also realize that compared with ordinary users, players are the most motivated to update their mobile game equipment, of which OPPO and VIVO are the most typical.
Vivo's sub-brand IQOO is the designated machine for the KPL King Glory Professional League; OPPO's sub-brand Realme GT series is the designated machine for the official events of the "QQ Flying Car" mobile game S League; OPPO's sub-brand OnePlus 10 Pro is the designated machine for the first "League of Legends Mobile Game" Professional League, and will also be the 2022 PEL Peace Elite Competition Special Machine, the previous generation of mobile phones for the competition is OPPO's Reno series.
In addition, not long ago, it was rumored that the game mobile phone brand Black Shark, which was acquired by Tencent, was established by Xiaomi, and the Xiaomi sub-brand Redmi K series also has the tradition of "e-sports version"; the influence of the two game phones of Red Devil and Savior in the field of smart phones can even be on a par with their parent company Nubia and Lenovo.
On the one hand, the daily experience of Android mobile phones is difficult to innovate, differentiate with other brands, and drive ordinary players to change machines; on the other hand, the basic performance needs of gamers are not met, even if they squeeze toothpaste, there are players who pay for it, and mobile phone manufacturers embrace the game naturally.
GameLook believes that games will certainly not be the ultimate antidote to the mobile phone market, technology and innovation are, but before the mobile phone market ushers in the next cross-era innovation similar to the original iPhone, games may be an important factor driving players to buy.
No matter how strong the pixels are rolled on the camera, the impact on ordinary people is probably not as big as the full resolution 60 frames of a new machine "Original God", after all, the former represents the experience of a certain aspect of the entire equipment, but the latter often means that the overall quality of the equipment and the experience are strong.
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GameLook Daily Game Industry Report
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