Source of this article: Time Weekly Author: Tao Yajie
On April 3, 2022, the first day of this year's Qingming Festival holiday, the digital plaza on the 5th floor of Beijing's Xidan Joy City has been full of people since it opened in the morning. Huang Zeming, who works on the Internet, ended his week of work and came here to pick out a folding screen mobile phone for himself.
Ever since he saw his colleague's folding screen phone at a meeting before the holiday, he has fallen into the pit. He told the Times Weekly reporter that the mechanical feeling between the opening and closing of the mobile phone, the transformation of the screen from the mobile phone to the tablet, and the gaze of others or curiosity or approval, all made him feel that the folding screen mobile phone was "too fragrant".
The times are developing, and science and technology are also advancing. From feature phones to smart phones, from 2G mobile phones to 5G mobile phones, from small-screen mobile phones to large-screen mobile phones, the mobile phone industry has never missed the dividends brought by the development of science and technology, and constantly innovates to stimulate people's desire to buy.
But now it's an indisputable fact that Android phone shipments are falling sharply. On March 31, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Guo tweeted that China's major Android phone brands have cut orders by about 170 million units this year, accounting for 20% of the original 2022 shipment plan, and orders may be reduced again in the coming months due to low consumer confidence. An article titled "Mobile phone shipments plummeted, and the post-00s did not change mobile phones for 4 years" pushed this topic to the forefront. Many people said that the innovation of Android mobile phones is weak and the price is inflated, resulting in no desire to change the machine.
(Chinese Academy of Information and Communications Technology Data, Infringement Deleted)
The mobile phone industry, which has developed for more than 30 years, urgently needs to run a dark horse to drive people's weak purchasing power. Li Nan, a former Meizu mobile phone executive and the founder of Nu Meow Technology, told the Times Weekly reporter, "The folding screen mobile phone is a new product with a different style and has enough attraction. ”
According to Canalys, shipments of folding screen phones reached 8.9 million units in 2021, up 148% year-on-year. In contrast, the overall smartphone market grew by just 7 percent. At the 2022 Mobile World Congress, Honor CEO Zhao Ming made a bold speculation, he believes that ordinary mobile phones and folding mobile phones will become the mainstream of smart phones, and the folding screen mobile phone market can grow 10 times in 2022.
Looking at the performance of the track's players, the first to launch a folding screen mobile phone was Samsung. On November 8, 2019, the Samsung Galaxy Fold folding screen mobile phone National Bank Edition was officially released, opening the precedent of the domestic folding screen market; Huawei followed close behind, and began to sell huawei Mate X series folding screen mobile phones in limited quantities on November 15; OPPO, Xiaomi, and Honor are not to be outdone, Xiaomi released the first folding screen mobile phone MIX FOLD in March 2021, OPPO unveiled OPPO Find N in December 2021, Honor also released the Honor Magic V earlier this year...
In the face of the rapid development of the folding screen mobile phone market, the past "low-key" Apple also wants to share a piece of the pie. Recently, Guo Mingxi said on Twitter that Apple will not launch a folding screen mobile phone no later than 2025.
"With the entry of major manufacturers, the folding screen mobile phone market will eventually form a red sea." Li Nan predicted.
A new opportunity
After waiting for nearly two months, Li Xiaofei finally got the OPPO FindN that she had been looking for for a long time. Just after the listing last year, she fell in love with this mobile phone at first sight, and as a result, she ran many offline stores and did not buy it, and she could only choose to wait.
For the problem of out-of-stock, in January 2022, Honor launched the high-end folding screen flagship machine MagicV with a starting price of 9999 yuan. At that time, Zhao Ming, CEO of Honor, once said, "Shortly after the end of the Honor Magic V conference, countless reminder messages have been received. Compared with demand, the supply will be tight. ”
According to a report in the Securities Times in January, although the folding screen mobile phone technology and mass production capacity have developed by leaps and bounds compared with before, due to the market demand is much higher than the manufacturer's expectations, the folding screen mobile phone is still in short supply.
Folding screen mobile phone market situation today, the Times Weekly reporter recently visited the Beijing Xidan Joy City store Samsung, Huawei, Millet, Glory, OPPO offline authorized experience stores, found that folding machines are placed in a conspicuous position, from time to time there will be consumers stop to browse.
In the glory experience store, the staff told reporters that the glory Magic V has no stock at present, and there are more than 80 customers waiting in line in the store alone, and the waiting time has exceeded 2 months.
Oppo experience store clerk told reporters that at present, oppo folding machines only have a small amount of stock, and there is one black and white model of 256G. "The next time the goods arrive, I can't be sure, the goods are sent by the company from the factory in Guangdong, and I'm not sure if there is a model you want."
In the Huawei experience store, the clerk said that Huawei's latest folding screen mobile phone mate x2 has only a small amount of stock in the store, "more can be transferred from the general warehouse."
Ming Shuliang, founder of Zhiwu Technology, told the "Times Weekly" reporter that the current folding screen mobile phone market has not yet entered the mass production stage, most manufacturers just do 100,000 units to test the water, and the shortage of goods is also a normal phenomenon.
Technical difficulties cannot be escaped
Searching for "folding screen mobile phones" on platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Douyin, many netizens have expressed their love and yearning for folding machines. "Looks great", "Really yds", "I'll regret not buying". Does the folding screen mobile phone that wins with the appearance value also satisfy the user in the process?
The two most interesting core elements of folding screen mobile phones are flexible OLED screens and hinges. Li Nan pointed out that in the past, mobile phones did not have mechanical structures, and now new mechanical structures have been added, which also brings challenges to the reliability of long-term use of folding machines.
Wu Maolin, general manager of CN314 intelligent life network, told the Times Weekly reporter that although many merchants claim that the screen can support multiple folding, but in his personal experience, he used a folding screen mobile phone for only half a year, and the screen had a bad point. From the current process point of view, it is not difficult to meet the basic needs of users, but the yield rate will not be very high.
According to 36Kr, folding screen mobile phones have a fatal flaw, that is, the "folding marks" on the screen, especially after the folding phone has been used for a long time, the creases on the screen will become more obvious. For consumers, the original intention of buying a folding screen mobile phone is generally the large, clear and other characteristics of the folding screen, once the screen is folded when there is a significant crease, it is bound to seriously affect the use experience.
What is more noteworthy is that the durability of the folding screen is far less than that of the straight-screen mobile phone. Some netizens in the Little Red Book said bluntly. "It broke three times, the last time it couldn't be repaired, and it was sold in 2000."
(Screenshot of Little Red Book)
Although major mobile phone manufacturers have launched broken screen insurance ranging from 699-2999 yuan, many consumers still bluntly say that they "can't afford to fall". According to the C114 communication network, Huawei's 5G folding mobile phone Mate X has a broken screen insurance of up to 2699 yuan, and some netizens bluntly said that "enough for me to buy a mobile phone plus a pair of headphones."
Huang Ruohan, editor-in-chief of the First View Network, told the Times Weekly reporter that hinges and screens are the two major "roadblocks" of folding screen mobile phones, even if Samsung is at the top of the supply chain, there are many failures due to hinges and screen problems.
"There are foreign media measurements, in more than 110,000 times (official announcements can be 200,000 times), one of the screens of the Samsung Galaxy Fold is broken, and soon the hinge is also broken." Huang Ruohan said.
Li Nan said that whether the screen is resistant to bending, how reliable the hinge is, and whether it can maintain a good state after long-term use, all require mobile phone manufacturers to continuously optimize. With the improvement of the hinge process, the mass production and cost of OLED screens, and the continuous maturity of the supply chain, the process of folding screen mobile phones will reach a relatively high level in the near future.
Vivo and Apple entered the game, and competition intensified
According to the latest research results released by Jiwei Consulting, the global shipment of folding screen smartphones will reach 8 million units in 2021, and the shipment of foldable OLED screen mobile phones in 2022 is likely to double to more than 18 million units. It is precisely because the folding screen market comes with "money" power, more and more mobile phone manufacturers have also joined in.
Previously, Vivo officially announced that its first folding screen mobile phone vivo X Fold will be officially released on April 11, 2022. Vivo claims that this is a professional folding flagship machine that integrates the possible achievements, and even represents the arrival of the folding screen 2.0 era. So far, several major domestic mobile phone brands have launched their own folding screen mobile phones.
It is worth mentioning that Apple, which has always been high and cold, has also joined the team of folding screen mobile phones. Recently, Guo Mingxi revealed on social platforms that Apple is testing a 9-inch OLED folding screen, which is expected to be launched around 2025.
Guo Also said that Apple's folding screen products initially focused on medium-sized or larger screen devices, and would eventually expand to small-screen devices such as the iPhone. Apple's first foldable device should be a hybrid of the iPhone and iPad, and possibly even an iPad that is directly made into a folding screen.
"Seeing that Android phone manufacturers are so aggressive, Apple is likely to follow suit." In the past, Apple was not optimistic about large-screen mobile phones, and the success of the Samsung galaxy note directly taught Apple to be a person, Apple honestly followed up, and the folding screen was the same reason. Li Nan said.
According to iResearch data, in the third quarter of 2021, the global shipment of folding screen mobile phones was 2.6 million units, an increase of 480% year-on-year, of which Samsung's share was the highest, reaching 93%, and Huawei ranked second with a share of 6%. In the domestic market, Huawei ranked first with a market share of 64%.
Will Apple's entry pose a challenge to Huawei?
Ming Shuliang pointed out that from the information of the industrial chain, the material selection and design of Apple's folding screen will be very different from Samsung and Huawei, and Apple will pay more attention to products and experiences.
"Android folding screen mobile phones basically solve the hardware design and manufacturing problems, but there are fixed spam advertising, scheduled installation and other drawbacks." In contrast, Apple's IOS system has a greater advantage. After Apple's efforts, it can drive the great development and leap forward of the global folding screen supply chain.
Li Nan pointed out that the early entrants have a higher gross profit margin level, and the later period will bring about an increase in the efficiency of the entire supply chain with the compression of gross margins, the compression of costs, coupled with the increase in shipments. In the end, the price of folding screen mobile phones will drop to about 5,000 yuan, or even two or three thousand yuan.
(At the request of the interviewee, Huang Zeming and Li Xiaofei are pseudonyms)
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