Jiwei Network news, "Huawei has made a significant contribution to the entire mobile phone camera industry. ”
For the entire camera market, some insiders commented on it earlier. Deeply rooted in the reasons, he said that Huawei has promoted the development of multi-camera, and since then more and more players have squeezed into this track, and many people have made a lot of money.
However, after Huawei faded out of the mobile phone market due to sanctions, the amount of mobile phone cameras has obviously declined to a certain extent. So after Huawei, who is in charge of the right to speak about images?
In this regard, Jiwei Network interviewed a number of industry insiders, but the conclusions given were obviously different. Among them, an industry insider gave his own opinion, he believes that it is currently Apple, and the back can focus on Honor and Huawei.
Huawei has made a contribution to the imaging industry
In fact, since the first mobile phone with a camera function came out in 2000, the mobile phone camera has undergone several technological changes.
In 2007, the release of Apple's first generation of smart phones received widespread attention, and since then, the camera function of mobile phones has developed by leaps and bounds, and the rear camera has risen rapidly from 2 million pixels of the first generation of iPhones to 8 million pixels of the iPhone 4S, and at the same time, users' demands for smartphone selfie functions have become increasingly strong.
Therefore, the mobile phone terminal has also invested more research and development energy in the front camera, and gradually developed towards the middle and high-end configurations of more than 8 million pixels.
Source: Frost & Sullivan
However, from the perspective of the amount of cameras, the continuous upgrading of the rear camera is the main force driving the development of mobile phone cameras. Judging from the evolution route of the rear camera of the flagship of the mainstream brand over the years, in 2016, Huawei first released the world's first Leica dual-camera mobile phone product of Huawei P9, and since then, dual camera has been popular in 2016-2017.
According to Frost & Sullivan data, the penetration rate of global rear dual cameras peaked in 2018, accounting for 40% of the share. Subsequently, in 2018, Huawei launched the world's first triple-camera mobile phone Huawei P20 Pro, which is a further upgrade of dual-camera, which can greatly improve imaging quality, provide better optical zoom function, and also have higher requirements in hardware and algorithms, bringing new development opportunities for camera manufacturers. Since then, multi-camera has continued to develop and become the mainstream product in the mobile phone market.
It can be seen that from dual to triple cameras, Huawei has made a lot of contributions on the road to image upgrades, and this is reflected in the mobile phone supply chain, and the camera production capacity and shipments of mobile phone camera manufacturers continue to rise.
When the micro network inquired about OFILM's announcement, it was found that at the end of 2016, the effective production capacity of OFILM dual camera module was about 3KK/month, and by 2017, OFILM's dual camera production capacity was 15KK/month, as of 2017, of which the overall production capacity of OFILM camera module exceeded 60KK/month, and OFILM's multi-camera shipments reached 123 million in 2018.
In terms of total mobile phone camera module shipments, OFILM's camera module shipments increased from 551 million in 2018 to 660 million in 2019, and its total shipments of mobile phone camera modules in 2020 reached 806 million.
However, after Huawei was sanctioned, it affected the shipment of mobile phone upstream camera suppliers to a certain extent. Taking Sunny Optics as an example, in 2021, the shipments of shun yu optics' mobile phone lenses declined year-on-year, and the revenue of the sunshine optics parts and optoelectronic products division also declined year-on-year.
In this regard, Sunny Optics admitted that it is mainly due to the impact of mobile phone lenses, mobile phone camera modules and changes in customer structure, and the average sales unit price has decreased compared with the previous year.
In other words, Huawei has promoted the process of continuous development of mobile phone cameras to multiple cameras, and after Huawei was sanctioned, the mobile phone camera market has decreased the phenomenon of downsizing, while domestic mobile phone manufacturers have not made up for Huawei's vacant market share, which in turn has led to a decline in shipments of mobile phone camera-related products.
It is not difficult to see that Huawei has a profound impact on the entire camera industry.
A manufacturer that truly matches Huawei's imaging capabilities has not yet appeared?
Some people say that the right to speak of imaging is in the hands of Apple, Apple has quite an advantage in imaging, and the actual effect is better, Huawei has led the dual camera trend, it is a breakthrough of 0 to 1, and now it is 1 to N, and the difficulty of innovation has increased.
But someone also gave a different answer. Some insiders believe that at present, we have not seen a manufacturer that can truly match Huawei's imaging capabilities. In its view, Apple, Samsung, Huawei is a grade, while the domestic millet, OPPO, glory is another grade, the main difference between the two grades is more than 6,000 yuan mobile phone sales there is a large gap.
The above-mentioned people said bluntly that the sales of mobile phones above 6,000 yuan should reach at least 50 million or more, which is a very large investment in the imaging team, not something that can be completed by less than a hundred people or dozens of people, but hundreds of people or even more investment, plus expensive hardware investment.
"Apple, Samsung, Huawei invested heavily in imaging, so their technology for lenses, motors, and sensors has surpassed or matched upstream suppliers such as Sony, Daliguang, TDK, Mitsumi, etc. They will pay huge development fees to these world-class lens, motor, and chip suppliers to produce the high-end customized image components they want," the person further said, "Most of the other terminals use lens, motor, and chip factory standards, which is difficult to work with Apple, Samsung, Huawei competes with the same grade of image level, which is the biggest difference. ”
Of course, it is worth mentioning that the industry understands that after Huawei was sanctioned, domestic smartphone sales are mostly concentrated in the low-end market, the high-end market sales are limited, and the low-end market competition is more intense, so the profit is far lower than that of international manufacturers, and the huge gap in profits further affects the investment of products in research and development, and the shortage of talents may also be an important reason for the gap.
Overall, from the current situation of the entire smart phone camera, the upgrade of the image is obviously weaker, and its upgrade road seems to have encountered a bottleneck, on the one hand, the configuration of the camera is significantly reduced, on the other hand, the higher profit of the mobile phone periscope camera, 3D TOF usage is not satisfactory, and for the camera upstream suppliers, they urgently need to find an incremental market to fill the capacity gap caused by factors such as mobile phone downgrade. (Proofreading/Aruko)