On March 25, Vivo official micro released a new machine warm-up Weibo of "always better, worth waiting, and a stunning opening on Monday", and equipped with a promotional poster, which caused a lot of discussion in the science and technology circle.
"Vivo is finally going to send a folding screen?"
In the following days, Vivo and Huang Tao, vice president of vivo products, also revealed some new product information on Weibo. According to the current information, at the new product launch on April 11, vivo will bring a total of three products: folding screen - vivo X Flod, large screen flagship - vivo Note, tablet - vivo Pad. Coincidentally, these three products are vivo's first attempt, and vivo seems to be deliberately putting the three of them together.
I believe that everyone has the same question, vivo delayed for so long to send a folding screen, and the market? Since it has dragged on for so long, what advantages does the product have? The products of the three products are released together, what is vivo's intention?
1 Slowing down is not necessarily a bad thing – a dead-end user experience
With the end of the year and the beginning of the year, OPPO and Glory have successively entered the folding screen market, bringing vitality to the silent folding screen market that has not been seen for a long time. Coupled with Samsung, Huawei, and Xiaomi, the mainstream brands on the market are only left vivo to delay releasing its own folding screen products.
For the sake of the dead user experience, vivo's products have always been "half a beat slower" than others, but it takes great courage to dare to be the world. For example, last summer, a brand released a flagship product using an off-screen camera, which was a gimmick, but the user feedback was not ideal, resulting in a price collapse. Vivo does not seem to be able to take out these "black technologies", but in fact, as early as 2020, Vivo crammed a front-facing camera under the screen of APEX 2020. Although it has long been technically possible to do so, if it is difficult to bring a mature user experience, vivo will not take out "show technology".
As Shen Wei, founder, president and CEO of Vivo, said: "Technology does not exist for the sake of showing technology, the focus of science and technology is to make people feel happy and arrive beautiful." As a new form in the development process of mobile phones, the purpose of folding screen is not to "show technology", but to solve the pain points encountered by users in use.
It is worth noting that as early as 2018, vivo has laid out a large number of patents in the field of folding screens. However, Hu Baishan, executive vice president of Vivo, said in an interview that at the current time node, the entire industry cannot give folding screen technology that does not affect the use experience. The folding screen products released in those years without exception confirmed Hu Baishan's point of view. Even the mainstream folding screen products currently on the market have achieved the top level of the industry as much as possible, but in terms of screen, feel, endurance, image, etc., more or less have been sacrificed.
According to the vivo X Fold spy photos currently exposed on the Internet, even the "death angle" can hardly see the "crease" on the screen. Combined with the previous rumors that the hinge cost of 1200 yuan, we can believe that on the folding screen, vivo did bring us a screen that was not sacrificed because of folding.
Most of the folding screen audience is not price sensitive. What they often want is a "dead end" in detail and experience. Although it is late, vivo uses the top hinge and folding screen technology to "die" in the experience of folding screen, achieving several industry firsts, which may be the capital of Vivo "dare to be the queen of the world". So is the vivo of "dare to be the queen of the world" really late? Probably just right.
According to the "Folding Screen Analysis Report" released by the market research agency GFK in March, the sales volume of domestic folding screen mobile phones in 2021 will grow against the trend to 1.1 million units, with a growth rate of 187%, and it is expected to show a steady growth trend in 2022, with sales of more than 1.8 million units. Therefore, as far as the current market situation is concerned, although vivo is not early, it is by no means late, but some are just right.
2 Actively broaden the product line - dead to the needs of users
In addition to the folding screen products, vivo also brought large-screen business flagships and tablet computers. By releasing so many new products in one go, we can also see that vivo is actively expanding the "ambition" of new products and new series as user needs change.
And this "ambition" of Vivo is traceable, taking the Vivo S12 series released at the end of last year as an example. In the past, the S series would position itself in the thin and light portrait flagship, and in the S12 series, in addition to thin and light and portrait, vivo began to emphasize the performance advantages. According to the news, the internal code name of the S12 series is "Superman", which can also surface that the S series is gradually changing to an "all-rounder".
When the S series tends to be all-round, it also means that the X series can focus more on the high-end market, the T and Y series can take root in the low-threshold market, and the sub-brand iQOO can continue to "explore the joy". But no matter which series, they focus on a specific field or group of people, meet the needs of users, and change with the times.
Therefore, it is not difficult to understand that Jia Jingdong, vice president of vivo brand and general manager of brand and product strategy, mentioned on Weibo in early March: "The original NEX series' mission of exploration and innovation of new experiences and new forms will not disappear, and will be carried by our flagship product X series." "And the vivo X Note that carries the NEWX series to appear in a new form is the release of this time."
Vivo's insight into user needs has always been accurate, and we will take a longer-term view. As early as 2011, vivo insight into the user's demand for high-quality music, brought the industry's first HiFi chip implanted into the mobile phone vivo V1, making the concept of vivo music mobile phone household name; ten years later in 2021, vivo insight into the user's demand for the ultimate image experience, brought with the self-developed professional imaging chip vivo X70 Pro+, so far it is difficult to have any product on the market can surpass the image performance of X70 Pro+.
As Shen Wei mentioned in his 2022 Chinese New Year speech: "All our work will be carried out with users as the core, returning to various scenarios to gain insight and study the real needs of users, and defining products that meet user needs and even exceed user expectations." "So we have reason to believe that this conference vivo issued three products in one go, is through vivo's insight and analysis of user needs, to bring users a more comprehensive, more extreme experience of the product."
3 Dead bump experience, will it be the way out of domestic high-end?
The dead-end experience has brought excellent products to users, so what has it brought to vivo?
According to the beginning of this year, a number of international market research institutions released data showing that vivo ranked first in the market share of mainland smartphones in 2021. Among them, we take Counterpoint's data as an example, vivo will occupy 22% of the mainland market share in 2021. At the same time, the data also pointed out that vivo's market share in the price range of 500 to 599 US dollars also rose from 10% in the third quarter of 2020 to 20% in the third quarter of 2021; at the same time, as of the end of 2021, in the price range of 4000-5000 yuan in the Chinese market, Vivo ranked first with a market share of 24.1%.
Although the data and calculations and calculations of various institutions are biased, they basically conclude that Vivo won the championship in the mainland mobile phone market last year. Of course, only with last year's vivo report card, to see if the dead bump experience can become a reference answer for domestic high-end, it is indeed biased. For the development of China's high-end mobile phone market, we still need a marathon to see the results. But with Vivo's performance in this marathon, especially the high-end market part, we can still see some parts that are worth learning.
Last year, vivo brought a self-developed professional image chip V1 on X70 Pro+, as a professional image chip serving high-speed computing imaging, V1 is a fully customized special specification integrated circuit chip. In the overall imaging system design, the V1 chip can be matched with different main chips and displays, which plays a role in expanding the ISP's high-speed imaging computing power, releasing the isP load of the main chip, and serving the needs of users to take pictures and videos. And as a professional imaging chip, the capabilities of the V1 chip do not stop at serving the image experience. Thanks to the V1 chip, vivo X70 Pro+ can achieve game MEMC frame rate enhancement, supplementing the two frames with a transition animation to achieve a real-time game frame rate of up to 120Hz. While improving the gaming experience, it reduces the power consumption of the mobile phone, thereby reducing the pain points of the mobile phone after a long period of gaming.
Behind this, vivo invested more than 300 people in the research and development team, and it took 24 months to bring chip research results. It was also last year that Vivo established the Academia Sinica, which not only further increased Vivo's strength in cutting-edge technology exploration and investment, but also assisted in the steady advancement of the iron triangle of technology research and development. In a speech at vivo's internal annual meeting in January this year, Shen Wei clearly emphasized that vivo's investment in technology will be "not capped". For vivo, technology is the last word, and user experience is the concept of research and development.
A few final words
As the first manufacturer in the mainland mobile phone market share, vivo naturally shoulders the mission of leading domestic brands to achieve a comprehensive breakthrough in the high-end mobile phone market. Coinciding with vivo's "first year of qualitative change", vivo uses products designed for consumers to present the opening year. We also have reason to believe that the opening year designed for consumers will be an important chip to help Vivo usher in the "butterfly change" in the high-end market. In the face of Apple, which is gaining momentum in the Q4 quarter of last year, domestic products that want to continue to expand in the high-end flagship mobile phone market still need long-term user accumulation and technical support.
"Dead bump experience" as the answer to vivo impacting the high-end, whether it can become a reference answer in the domestic mobile phone industry, it also needs to see whether vivo can bring a "butterfly change" in the high-end market.
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