Before the article starts, I would like to ask you to think about whether there are more and more people using Apple mobile phones around me (especially the users who originally used Huawei).
On March 23, counterpoint Research, a well-known market research organization, released a latest research report, which showed that in 2021, China's high-end smartphone market share (more than 600 US dollars, about 3828 yuan), Android models fell sharply from 44.6% in 2020 to 36.5% in 2021.
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For many people, this may not be uncomfortable, but it really happened: domestic mobile phone manufacturers are unable to seize the high-end market share left by Huawei, and consumers who buy high-end mobile phones have turned to Apple.
Taking Xiaomi, which has a large volume of domestic mobile phone manufacturers as an example, the sales of its main high-end digital series models have shown a sharp downward trend in the past two years, and the sales of Xiaomi 11 series and Xiaomi 12 series in the first month of listing fell by nearly 60%; and at the beginning of the listing, the MIX4, which was titled "Android Machine King" and intended to create a high-end benchmark for Xiaomi, was cold after the listing, and after a few months, it had to take diving prices to return funds.
However, from the perspective of total smartphone shipments, domestic Android manufacturers still occupy the head position, and the 2021 Chinese mainland smartphone market report released by research institute Canalys shows that the five brands with the highest sales volume in the Chinese mainland smartphone market in 2021 are VIVO, OPPO, Xiaomi, Apple and Glory.
The ratio of domestic Android manufacturers to Apple's total shipments reached 8:1, which is a completely opposite of the sales volume of the high-end mobile phone market, and it can be seen that compared with the lack of strength in the high-end market, the low-end mobile phone market is the biggest guarantee to support the sales of domestic mobile phones.
So, why do domestic manufacturers have to focus on the high-end market in the past two years?
According to Counterpoint Research's monthly report on mobile phone sales, the global high-end smartphone market sales increased by 24% year-on-year in 2021, far exceeding the global smartphone growth rate of 7%; it is worth noting that the share of the high-end smartphone market also reached the highest 27% ever.
The high-end market has become a new battlefield.
Moreover, in the context of the consumption upgrade of the mobile phone market, the profit margin of mobile phone manufacturers has also become an insurmountable "heart" for each company.
Taking the 2021Q2 quarter as an example, although Apple's shipments accounted for only 13%, it accounted for 75% of the operating profit and 40% of the revenue of the entire mobile phone market; while Android manufacturers accounted for more than 80% of the shipments, and the operating profit was only 25%.
Strong profits ensure that Apple has the ability to continuously strengthen its own products, improve user experience, and promote more users to switch to the iOS camp, thereby further increasing Apple's operating income and forming a virtuous circle.
Android manufacturers choose to exert high-end power, which is a top priority and a realistic situation.
However, domestic Android manufacturers do not master the core technology of mobile phones, the system uses Google's Android, and the SOC uses Qualcomm and MediaTek, which leads to the entire experience of the mobile phone will be affected once the upstream manufacturers pull across. Taking Qualcomm as an example, the Snapdragon 888 and 8Gen1 have two consecutive generations of power consumption and heat rollover, resulting in an Android high-end machine experience that is not as good as some mid-range models, which further hits consumers' confidence in supporting Android high-end.
Android manufacturers that only rely on low-end mobile phones will not only be trapped in a price war and unable to extricate themselves, but also watch their own consumption upgrade users switch to other camps.
The core technology is limited by people, and it cannot be truly developed after all. Domestic Android manufacturers still have a long way to go if they want to seize the share in the high-end market.