Wen | Zhou Luping
Editor| Zhao Yanqiu
01 The failure of the market is a foregone conclusion
It has become a consensus that the mobile phone market will be very bleak this year.
Bad news came from all directions. The after-sales person in charge of a large mobile phone factory revealed to Digital Intelligence Frontline that in January and February this year, the maintenance volume of his brand fell by about 20% year-on-year, "One is that the quality of mobile phones is improving, and the second is that the total market volume is declining, which indirectly leads to the decline in mobile phones sent for after-sales maintenance."
Fujian mobile phone dealer Wang Donglin found that the number of customers who try to be early adopters is decreasing significantly. "Now users who buy mobile phones, either the mobile phone is very stuck, or the mobile phone is broken, like the new product in the past, fewer and fewer people changed it."
Consumption of not only mobile phones, but also 3C products such as tablets and PCs is declining. "February and March were in a decline that exceeded expectations." Jingwei Yida Consulting Wang Yi said to the digital wisdom front line that last year should have bought last year. February is the usual peak season for 3C product sales, because the Spring Festival can drive a batch of sales. But this year, not only has there been no growth, but there has been a sharp decline.
The statistics of different research institutions also confirm this judgment. According to the data released by the Communication Institute, in February 2022, the total shipment volume of the domestic mobile phone market was 14.9 million units, a year-on-year plunge of 31.7%. Total shipments from January to February this year were 47.9 million units, down 22.6% year-on-year.
CINNO Research's data reveals an equally bleak reality: Overall sales in China's smartphone market fell by more than 20 percent year-on-year in February. OPPO, Vivo and Xiaomi fell by 45.7%, 38.6% and 20.1% respectively year-on-year.
An executive of a domestic mobile phone brand in China told Digital Intelligence Frontline that the mobile phone market did not perform well in the first quarter of this year, which has little to do with chip supply, "that is, the market demand has decreased."
And this self-healing ability of the market is getting worse and worse. After the double eleven in previous years, the entire market will return to normal in about half a month. However, East China dealer Qin World found that after the double eleven in 2021, the market experienced two months before it slowly recovered.
Mobile phone manufacturers have begun to cut orders to the upstream supply chain. Guo Mingxi, an Apple analyst at Tianfeng Securities, revealed that the 2022 shipment plan of China's major Android mobile phone brands has so far cut about 170 million orders (accounting for 20% of the original shipment plan in 2022), of which more than 70% of the orders are mediatek chips. "At present, from high-end to low-end brands are cutting orders, and the mobile phone industry is undergoing structural adjustment."
At the same time as cutting orders, mobile phone manufacturers are also trying their best to boost consumption. At the end of March, Xiaomi directly reduced the price of 11ultra by 1500 yuan. This model has been released for 1 year. However, on the same day, a Xiaomi agent told The Front Line, "The market has no reaction at all, and it cannot stimulate the desire to buy." ”
In addition to price reductions, manufacturers will also provide commercial loans to dealers, but these loans can only be taken to purchase, and the interest rate is not low. In this case, the more goods are stockpiled, the greater the risk, and it will not solve the problem of declining sales. "The whole industry is in a slump, and what policy is a drop in the bucket."
The control of offline channels has also been relaxed. OPPO and vivo are already reducing the allocation of offline personnel, and business managers and shopping guides are greatly reduced. "In the past, a store put a shopping guide, but now there are only three or four in a county." Wang Donglin revealed to the front line of digital intelligence.
The reduction of personnel will inevitably affect the control of the market. A number of dealers revealed that in these quarters, manufacturers have relaxed their dealers, and there will not be too many restrictions.
"It's so difficult now, and there are basically no requirements, including Huawei." A dealer said that in the past, he would also find a third party to secretly check whether there were irregularities such as price chaos and collusion, and now it will only come after the new products are produced, and other times will not come, "when the market is not good, everyone will survive on their own, and you love how to get it." Therefore, in the local area, even if it is an experience store, how much money to sell mobile phones is basically up to the merchants themselves.
However, compared with offline channels, the decline in sales of e-commerce is not so obvious.
"February is down less than 10% from January." Peng Nanning, an online dealer in East China, told Digital Intelligence Frontline that this year's sales volume is generally not as good as last year, but compared with the offline market, e-commerce channels are less affected by external factors such as the epidemic, so the decline in sales is not too obvious. Recently, when Shanghai was locked down, he also took orders at home and persuaded the other party to accept the delay in delivery.
But this small gap has not changed the downward trend of the broader market. Peng Nanning also chatted with several friends of e-commerce channels this year, and the consensus was that they would no longer lose money to fight price wars like in previous years, and "basically survive". Last year, they often hit online to the point of losing money.
In addition, Huawei is still a unique presence among many brands. Although Huawei's mobile phones have fallen out of the top five list after being suppressed by the United States, many dealers have also revealed that Huawei still has good sales of 4G mobile phones by relying on the brand influence accumulated before, and 5G has been out of stock for a long time, and even enjoy a premium of four or five hundred yuan.
The Samsung mobile phone in the domestic market has also picked up to a certain extent, after Samsung Electronics once again proposed a strategy to return to China, increasing investment in the Chinese market. According to one dealer, Samsung's stores more than doubled from the previous year.
02 Apple's life is not good either
Domestic mobile phone manufacturers are facing difficulties in declining sales, but Apple's life in the Chinese market is not good.
Every spring is the off-season for iPhone sales. The above-mentioned East China dealers told Digital Intelligence Frontline that every autumn after the release of new iPhone products, hundreds of new machines can be sold every day, and now they can only sell forty or fifty units a day, "the number of gaps is very large."
In March 2022, Apple released the third generation of small-screen phones, the iPhone SE. This little machine didn't do very well. Even on the day of the launch of the iPhone SE, there were merchants selling at lower than the official price on the market. Today, according to the latest information from the wisdom front, the price of the iPhone SE3 in the public market has been about 400 yuan cheaper than the official website.
Previously, the iPhone SE2 brought Apple very good sales, making people think that Apple could impress Chinese consumers with the latest chip, and the iPhone SE3 page could get the success of the previous generation of products. But in fact, the sales of iPhoneSE mainly come from overseas markets such as India, and the Chinese market has not been hot for this machine.
"The iPhone SE is not moving, and the shipment is very general." Feedback from multiple dealers coincided with the iPhone's market performance. The iPhoneSE does have too much appeal to Chinese consumers about what.
Its appearance is still the iPhone 8 released five years ago, not only the model is old-fashioned, the screen is pitifully small, the battery is also pitifully small, the memory has not kept up with the rhythm of the development of the industry, and the minimum configuration is still only 4 + 64GB.
iPhoneSE is not popular in China and is also related to the fierce competition of domestic brands. The 3000 yuan price segment has a lot of models to choose from in China, including OPPO's Reno series, Vivo's X series, Xiaomi and Honor's digital series are all in this price range.
Moreover, many of these models are also equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon's top processors, equipped with a full screen, and Apple's small-screen mobile phones are not much competitive in front of these models.
Soon there were media reports that Apple planned to cut production of iPhone and AirPods devices. Among them, it plans to reduce the production of iPhone SE by 20% next quarter and plan to reduce the order for AirPods wireless headphones by more than 10 million units for the whole year of 2022.
Kuo also lowered the iPhone SE3 shipment forecast from 25-30 million units to 15-20 million units, a forecast decline of up to about 40%.
The stock prices of domestic Apple supply chain companies, including Luxun Precision, Goertek and Desay Battery, fell sharply. Apple's folding screen products are expected to be on the market until 2025, before that, in addition to the price war, it is difficult for the iPhone to have major innovations and breakthroughs.
03 In addition to no money, there are many reasons
"It's not that I don't want to change, it's that I'm shy." A netizen commented under a report that young people have not changed their mobile phones for four years, and the message has received high praise.
"The first half of February was better, and the second half of the epidemic was not good, down 30% to 40% year-on-year." Tong Xin, a mobile phone dealer in Shanxi, told Digital Intelligence Frontline.
This impact is not only related to the Data of February, but also the overall sales volume in the past March. Wang Donglin's county and city, in February to catch up with the New Year, a large number of people returned, bringing him a lot of business. But "business in March was much worse, down in half."
"The next few months will not be better, if it is good, look at the summer, if there is no epidemic in the summer, it will be good, if there is an epidemic, this year the whole will be wasted." Wang Donglin said.
The dilemma of no money in the pocket has begun to make consumers carefully calculate. The above-mentioned after-sales person in charge revealed that the charging screen changing business fell by 12% year-on-year. In addition to the decrease in new machine sales, there is also a reason that many users choose unofficial channels to repair, and there are economic factors to consider. The same is to change the screen, the official original screen may need five or six hundred yuan, but in the outside maintenance shop, the price is only more than one hundred.
In addition to the decline in the consumption power of users, the innovation bottleneck of mobile phones themselves is also inhibiting consumer demand. Wang Yi said that young people either have no money to change, or mobile phones are enough to change, and the business crowd is facing the embarrassment of no machine to change.
The business people around him generally use Huawei, and they are not very likely to consider other domestic models for the time being, but Huawei has not launched a new flagship model for a long time since it fell into chip trouble.
An embarrassing fact is that the model from two years ago is still competitive. Huawei Mate40pro is a model released in 2020, but it is still a sought-after commodity, especially the 5G version is still difficult to find, and the Mate40Pro 5G version can now enjoy a premium of several hundred yuan. Of course, there is a problem with chip supply behind it, on the other hand, it also shows that the changes and innovations in mobile phones are very small now.
The extension of the changeover cycle is the most direct market feedback. "The changeover cycle has increased by 50% compared to before, at least for a year and a half." Qin World said.
The overall data given by industry analysts is even more exaggerated. Strategy Analytics believes that the average replacement cycle of Chinese users is 28 months, while Counterpoint said that the average replacement cycle of domestic users has exceeded 31 months.
It should be admitted that the quality of the phone is getting better overall. "To be honest, now that your phone is only used for a year, the quality is definitely going to be complained about." Peng Nanning said.
In addition to quality, what many people don't realize is that mobile phone memory is also generally enough. The previous mobile phones still started at 16GB or 64GB, but now the flagship models start from 6+128G or 6+256G. Memory leaves a fairly rich space.
These small factors are influencing consumer decisions, and the motivation to change a new mobile phone is constantly being worn away.
Another factor that many people don't consider is that operator subsidies are getting less and less.
"When the original can be changed or not, the operator changed it." Qin World said that before the operator shot is still relatively generous, coupled with the allowed number portability, so the operator's additional subsidies, for consumers have considerable attraction. For example, the replacement of the new machine to sign a package, the operator subsidy of 500 yuan - 1000 yuan is a relatively normal phenomenon in the past.
And 5G is less attractive to consumers, "in major cities 5G is OK, but in the edge of the city, 5G does not have much attraction, 4G is enough." ”
It is not difficult to find that behind the plunge in mobile phone sales, there are both macro factors such as the epidemic and currency shrinkage, as well as micro factors that the mobile phone industry has entered a bottleneck period and it is difficult to stimulate consumption.
Not long ago, Tong Xin of Shanxi took advantage of the bad market and also accepted two shops in the mall. Now the other party does not have much room for bargaining, just need to take over the goods, and there is no transfer fee. He plans to close the street shops and move to the malls with greater foot traffic. In the past, when the market was good, no one was willing to change hands, but now it gave him a chance.
"Now is waiting, waiting for the sky to clear." Before the digital intelligence front line communicated with Qin World on the phone, Qin World had just finished a meeting with the internal team to discuss how to survive during the epidemic and how to develop after the epidemic. He also considered whether to close some stores, but because the house signing is 2 years, the high cost of default made him decide to stick to it and survive until the end.
(Note: The requirements of the party, the dealers in this article are pseudonyms)