"How long have you not changed your phone?"
Recently, the relevant mobile phone market research has triggered extensive discussion on the Internet. Judging from the survey results, the era of waiting in long lines for new products may gradually disappear.
In 2021, after three years of sales decline, the growth rate of global smartphone shipments turned positive by 7% year-on-year, which once greatly increased the confidence of the industry. However, at the beginning of 2022, market data showed that the domestic smartphone market failed to continue the recovery trend in 2021, and once again fell into a decline in sales, and the decline exceeded industry expectations.
The continued weakness of market demand will make the mobile phone industry chain form a "siege city" that intensifies the "inner volume". In order to avoid falling into the increasingly cruel stock market fight, at present, the head mobile phone manufacturers and mobile phone supply chain enterprises or in the mobile phone market to find new innovative growth points, or rush out of the mobile phone market layout diversification development, are looking for a way to break the situation.
Supply chain enterprise of well-known mobile phone enterprises. Industry bodies sorted out
Multiple factors have caused a downturn in the mobile phone industry, and the supply chain has been reduced
At the end of March, according to a report released by market research agency CINNO Research, the sales of smartphones in the Chinese market in February were about 23.48 million units, down 20.5% year-on-year, down 24.0% month-on-month, and contracted year-on-year.
Similarly, the Analysis Report on the Operation of the Domestic Mobile Phone Market in February 2022 released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology on March 21 shows that from January to February 2022, the overall shipment of mobile phones in the domestic market totaled 47.886 million units, down 22.6% year-on-year. In February 2022, domestic brand mobile phone shipments fell by 34.7% year-on-year, and domestic brand mobile phone shipments fell by 27.9% year-on-year in January-February. Several key data indicators in the smartphone market fell by more than 20%.
Xu Qi, vice president of realme and president of China, said that the decline in the mobile phone market in the first quarter was greater than expected, and it is expected that the competition in the mobile phone market will further intensify this year.
Nandu reporter inquired about the relevant research reports of the mobile phone industry since last year and found that in the fourth quarter of 2021, many institutional research reports believed that the mobile phone market had declined significantly at that time, the basic disk gradually stabilized, and the smart phone market or continued to recover.
However, judging from the current data of some authoritative institutions, these good expectations will obviously not be fulfilled in early 2022.
The sluggishness of the mobile phone market has also sparked extensive discussion on the Internet in recent days.
For example, recently, the topic of "young people don't like to change their mobile phones" has been on the hot search. From the perspective of comprehensive related discussions, the lack of innovation of the new mobile phone, the performance of the old mobile phone can meet the use of a long time, and the high cost of replacement are all the reasons for the decline in market demand.
Market data show that the average replacement time of the domestic smartphone market has reached 28 months, and "one change a year" is becoming more and more rare.
At the same time, 5G replacement demand has contracted after the release of shipments in the past two years. In addition, the superposition of short-term factors such as the decline in foreign trade demand for domestic mobile phones has also exacerbated the shrinking market demand.
Tianfeng International analyst Guo Mingqi recently broke the news on social media that China's Android mobile phone manufacturers are generally reducing orders for suppliers, with a total of 170 million units, accounting for about 20% of the original planned shipments. The weakness of end market demand is being transmitted to the upstream supply chain.
Taking The mobile phone camera component A-share leader Sunny Optics as an example, the financial report released on March 22 showed that the company's mobile phone camera module shipments in February 2022 fell by 24.6% year-on-year, and mobile phone lens shipments fell by 15.9% year-on-year.
In 2021, Sunny Optics' revenue decreased by about 1.3%, which is the company's first negative revenue growth in nearly a decade. The sales of Qiu Ti Technology and Daliguang, which belong to the industrial chain of mobile optical equipment with Shunyu Optics, have also declined to varying degrees.
Some insiders believe that if the market downturn continues, the smart phone industry will accelerate into the stock game stage, intensifying the "inner volume" fight, which will lead to a further decline in the industry's profitability, making the mobile phone industry a commercial track with difficulties in survival and low cost performance. This is a situation that the entire mobile phone industry chain enterprises do not want to see, and it is imperative to find innovative growth points and open up new areas of transformation.
As a large mobile phone manufacturing province that has maintained the first mobile phone production in the country since 2015, Guangdong mobile phone production has accounted for more than 40% of the country for many years, and is the most concentrated area of mobile phone manufacturing in the country.
Guangdong mobile phone industry chain major enterprises. Industry bodies sorted out
After years of development, Guangdong not only has Huawei, ZTE, OPPO, VIVO, TRANSSION and many other well-known mobile phone terminal brand manufacturers, but also has TCL Huaxing Optoelectronics, OFILM, Luxshare Precision, Huiding Technology, Fenghua Hi-Tech and other display panels, communication components, lens modules, sensors and many other mobile phone industry chain areas of the head listed enterprises. The development trend of the mobile phone industry chain will also play a key role in Guangdong manufacturing.
Impact folding screen, mobile phone factories and supply chain enterprises to find a new direction of business
How to get out of the "siege"?
Recently, a number of institutional research reports are mainly concentrated in the field of folding screens, which has become a new battlefield for mobile phone companies to impact high-end and market increments, and has also driven the R & D and production power of the entire mobile phone industry chain.
It is understood that compared with the straight-panel smart phone, the key new technologies needed to be used in folding screen mobile phones mainly include flexible AMOLED screens with good bending, hinges and hinges, and driver chips. These incremental components relative to traditional smart phones have become the incremental market opportunities that domestic mobile phone industry chain enterprises focus on.
Nandu reporter investigated the layout of the industrial chain behind the key technology of the folding screen and found that at present, domestic parts manufacturers have supplied BOE, Visionox, Huaxing Optoelectronics and other manufacturers to mass-produced folding screen mobile phones in terms of screens, and domestic UTTG glass protection covers, hinge integrated products, driver chips, etc. There are also many industrial chain enterprises entering the development /trial production stage.
CINNO Research predicts that global folding screen mobile phone sales are expected to reach 15.69 million units in 2022, an increase of 107% year-on-year. Southwest Securities expects that the global folding screen mobile phone shipments will reach 18 million to 20 million in 2022, an increase of more than 100% year-on-year, and the penetration rate will rise from 0.18% in 2021 to 1.83%.
Overall, for mobile phone brand enterprises, due to the high technical content of folding screen mobile phones, large upgrades, and high prices, it is expected to become the mainstream of high-end machines, so folding screen mobile phones can be said to carry the hope of many domestic mobile phone manufacturers to expand to high-end mobile phones.
However, there are still some deficiencies in the current folding screen mobile phone that need to be improved, such as the price is still high, the product weight is heavier, the folding screen crease, the application adaptation and other issues, as well as the overall economic environment pressure leading to the market's acceptance of high-end pricing products is doubtful, which makes the rise of the folding screen mobile phone market still facing many challenges.
For example, in the past few years, royole technology, a Shenzhen company that first explored the folding screen mobile phone market, was not successful in the market, and led to the development of royole technology in trouble. Since obtaining the last financing since May 2020, Royole has successively broken through in the process of promoting the listing of US stocks and the Science and Technology Innovation Board, and since October 2021, there have been rumors of wage arrears. A number of institutional research reports also jointly reminded that there is still a risk that the market demand will not meet expectations in the process of folding screen mobile phone promotion.
Industrial chain enterprises are also running across borders to the smart car market
In the past two years, many mobile phone industry chain enterprises, especially the leading enterprises among them, have also set their sights on the active layout outside the mobile phone market.
In 2022, many representative companies have promoted new business to form the company's second and third growth poles. These new businesses are more concentrated in emerging areas such as non-mobile consumer electronics (smart wearables, smart homes, VR devices), new energy smart cars, photovoltaics and the Internet of Things.
Affected by supply chain sanctions and other factors, Huawei, where the decline in mobile phone business is most obvious, can be used as an observation sample.
Huawei's 2021 annual report shows that the revenue of its consumer business in 2021 fell by 46% year-on-year. Huawei has a layout in the above areas in terms of finding new growth points from the accumulation of consumer electronics manufacturing technology. At the launch of Huawei's annual report, it highlighted the new business achievements in smart wear, smart car parts and digital energy, which have become several new growth points for Huawei.
Nandu reporter previously investigated and learned that Huawei's smart auto parts business mainly adopts the path of productizing the accumulation of past advantageous technologies to match the incremental needs of upgrading and developing emerging downstream applications.
For example, Huawei's technical products on the core three-electric system of new energy vehicles actually come from the technical extension of the existing mature products of Huawei's network energy product line, as well as the related accumulation of communications and cloud computing. Its product development on autonomous driving systems is also supported by long-term research related to artificial intelligence. These make Huawei appear "prepared" in the field of cross-border new energy intelligent vehicles, rather than blindly entering the hot field.
It is worth noting that the field of new energy intelligent vehicles has become one of the most popular choices for the transformation of enterprises in the mobile phone industry chain. For example, Luxun Precision, a "fruit chain" enterprise headquartered in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, ranks first in the total market value of the Oriental Wealth consumer electronics sector, has also frequently reported cross-border new energy intelligent vehicles recently.
In February 2022, Luxshare Precision announced that it intends to form a joint venture with Chery New Energy to engage in the development of the ODM platform and the assembly of complete vehicles. Luxun Precision spent 10.054 billion yuan to purchase the equity of many of Chery's companies. Luxun Precision said that the cooperation aims to provide a cutting-edge R&D, design and mass production platform for the company's core auto parts business, and achieve the company's medium- and long-term goal of becoming a leading manufacturer of auto parts Tier 1.
Before Luxshare Precision, Foxconn Industrial Fulian, headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, ranked second in total market capitalization in the Oriental Fortune consumer electronics sector, laid out the field of new energy vehicles earlier. On March 23, Zheng Hongmeng, CEO of Industrial Fulian, said at his 2021 financial report performance briefing that in terms of progress and layout in the field of new energy vehicles, Industrial Fulian laid out from the needs of lightweight, power-saving and intelligentization of automobiles, focusing on the three areas of electronic drive electronic control parts, vehicle networking and intelligent vehicles, and industrial Internet empowerment.
Zheng Hongmeng expects that the industrial Fulian intelligent cockpit solution aims to enter mass production in 2023. Mass production of automotive motors and high-voltage connectors using the company's high-end precision manufacturing technology is expected to be mass-produced in 2023. In terms of AI computing units for new energy vehicles, the L3/L4 products designed and produced so far have been mass-produced, and the L5 products have also entered the scheduling.
Tianfeng Securities Research Report believes that new energy intelligent vehicles have become the world's largest entrepreneurial outlet after the Internet, and at the same time, technology will make the automotive industry "value revaluation". Zhang Ruifeng, president of Shenzhen Automobile and Aviation Institute, also said in an interview with Nandu reporter that with the future of electric vehicle batteries, chassis, body, etc. to the standardization of production, scientific and technological intelligence and related intelligent components will be the most important differentiated embodiment of the value of an intelligent car. This is also the advantage of consumer electronics companies across borders.
It is not difficult to see that the path of consumer electronics manufacturing technology to match the incremental demand for upgrading and developing emerging downstream application fields is also reflected in the representative enterprises of the mobile phone supply chain. Take Wingtech Technology and Lens Technology, which are among the top six in the market capitalization of the A-share consumer electronics sector, as an example.
On April 6, Wingtech Technology said in an institutional survey that benefiting from the company's strategic layout and R&D investment since 2020, that is, the acquisition of Nexperia, the world's leading manufacturer of automotive power semiconductor IDM, in 2020 and the company's original technology accumulation of collaborative research and development, the company's product integration business has now undergone fundamental changes, from mobile phones to laptops, IoT, servers, automotive electronics and other non-mobile phone business expansion, customer structure continues to optimize, from the consumer field to industry, automotive and other fields. At present, the non-mobile phone business is constantly acquiring new customers and new orders.
Lens Technology combines the existing processes such as high-end window protective glass panels, new materials for appearance protection, and electronic functional components accumulated in the mobile phone industry chain with the needs of emerging industries, not only to open up the market in the new energy automobile industry, but also to the photovoltaic field to take ultra-thin glass as an opportunity to cut into it, forming differentiated competition with the original market players, which is expected to bring considerable order increments to the company.
Pan Helin, co-director and researcher of the Digital Economy and Financial Innovation Research Center of Zhejiang University International United Business School, said in an interview with Nandu reporter that the leading enterprises in the mobile phone industry chain represented by smart phone brands have developed over the years and have abundant cash flow, and actively seek new profit growth points when the demand for consumer electronics and smart phones declines, which is the right approach. At present, emerging application industries such as smart cars, photovoltaics, and the Internet of Things are all outlet industries with broad prospects, so they should be supported to go out of the safety zone, explore the market, and achieve enterprise development through diversified operations.
Pan and Lin suggested that enterprises in the mobile phone industry chain should lead business transformation with technology. Generally speaking, diversified development has both model innovation and technological innovation, but it is recommended that mobile phone industry chain enterprises use technological innovation to establish barriers in new fields and establish competitive advantages in the early stage. At the same time, he said that the diversification of related industries is better than the diversification of unrelated industries. It is necessary to take advantage of the advantages formed in the field of mobile phone manufacturing, such as the ability to optimize the UI system, such as combining the application ecology to create products across fields. To enter the diversified fields related to the main business, the industry span should not be too large.
Producer: Nandu Kechuang Studio
Written by: Nandu reporter Xu Jincong