Author: Zhang Rui
Produced by 丨Shenwang Tencent News Xiaoman Studio
On April 11, Vivo launched its first folding screen phone, the X Fold. In terms of price, vivo X Fold offers 12GB+256GB and 12GB+512GB configurations, with prices of 8999 yuan and 9999 yuan respectively.
So far, in addition to Apple, mainstream mobile phone manufacturers such as Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, and Honor have launched their own folding screen mobile phones.
For the launch of the first folding screen mobile phone X Fold, Huang Tao, vice president of vivo products, said: "We began to study folding screen technology four years ago, and many people in the past four years have urged us to hurry up and produce products, don't get up early, and finally catch a late set." However, due to the fact that the standard on the outer screen, camera, screen fingerprint, wireless flash charge and other straight board flagships is difficult on the folding screen, we have spent more time and cost to improve the user's experience."
In addition to the X Fold, vivo also released the X Note large-screen mobile phone that positions the high-end business market, launching an impact on the high-end market. X Note is available in 8GB+256GB, 12BG+256GB and 12GB+512GB configurations, with prices of 5999 yuan, 6499 yuan and 6999 yuan respectively.
Born in 2012, the vivo X series mobile phone has been shouldering the heavy responsibility of vivo impacting the high-end mobile phone market. "The vivo X series has gone through 10 years, released 23 products, and has more than 100 million users," Huang Tao said.
From the perspective of market share, Vivo's market share in the global high-end mobile phone market has increased. According to Counterpoint Research data, in 2021, in the high-end mobile phone market with an average price of more than $400, Apple's market share increased from 55% in 2020 to 60%; Samsung from 20% to 17%; Huawei's share from 13% in 2020 to 6% in 2021; Xiaomi from 3% to 5%; OPPO from 2% to 4%; vivo from 2% to 3% in 2020.
For the "high-end breakthrough battle" of domestic mainstream manufacturers, Sun Yanbiao, president of the First Mobile Phone Industry Research Institute, once analyzed the "Deep Net", "Domestic mobile phone manufacturers want to have a qualitative breakthrough in the high-end mobile phone market, and they need to make a breakthrough in the form of mobile phones." The straight phone form is created by Apple, whether in the operating system or chip capabilities, domestic mobile phone manufacturers can not surpass Apple in the form of the straight board, and the folding screen that breaks through the straight board may be an opportunity."
However, from the perspective of the proportion of sales of folding mobile phones, due to the current folding sales are too small, the success rate of relying on folding mobile phones to impact the high-end market is still doubtful.
According to IDC data, the global shipment of folding screen mobile phones in 2021 will be about 7.1 million, accounting for only 0.5% of the world's smartphones. Omdia predicts that global folding screen smartphone sales will reach 14 million units in 2022 and 61 million units by 2026, accounting for 3.6% of the total smartphone market, which means that whether there is a large-scale rigid demand for folding mobile phones has yet to be verified.
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