Sun Bing, a reporter from China Economic Weekly, | Beijing reports
Although Apple's folding screen mobile phone is still rumored, since last year, domestic mobile phone manufacturers have begun to accelerate the speed of folding screen products, Huawei P50 Pocket, Xiaomi MIX Fold, OPPO Find N, Honor Magic V... It has been listed one after another.
On April 11, Vivo's first folding screen phone X Fold was officially unveiled. As the latest head manufacturer in the Android camp to launch a folding screen mobile phone, the online live broadcast released by Vivo's new machine has attracted more than one million people to watch, which shows the user's attention to the folding screen. Coupled with the Samsung Galaxy Fold series, at this point, the six giants in the Android camp have all "folded", and a "folding screen war" for the high-end market has been on the string.
Why is Android more anxious to fold than Apple?
Folding may be one of the important forms of various smart terminals such as smart phones and Pads in the future, which can form a consensus in the industry. But why is Apple very calm, and Android manufacturers are relatively positive? Even Samsung, which was the first to launch a folding screen phone, has been described by critics as simply "catching ducks on the shelves", saying that it is too radical.
The reason why Android is in a hurry to "fold" than Apple is not difficult to understand. At present, the mainstream price segment of folding screen mobile phones that have been launched is around 10,000 yuan, which means that folding screen mobile phones are obviously oriented to the high-end market. At present, Apple is the only giant in the global high-end smartphone market, although the product has been repeatedly complained about as a "squeezed toothpaste innovation", but still selling well, Apple is naturally not in a hurry to stir up the existing market pattern with new products.
But for other mobile phone manufacturers, in the face of the attractive high-end market, in order to shake Apple's dominant position, it needs a "killer skill", after all, local innovation is not enough to shake Apple's accumulation for many years, especially in the high-end market. So, can folding screen mobile phones with huge breakthroughs in form and experience bring new opportunities?
In recent years, the innovation and product power of domestic mobile phones have been continuously improved for all to see. Many innovative breakthroughs in smart phones, whether it is curved screens, high brush screens, gradient colors on the design, or night scenes, anti-shake, zoom, algorithm optimization on mobile phone photography, or innovative experiences such as fast charging and high brush screens, these trends and trends are led by domestic mobile phones.
And all kinds of signs show that the domestic mobile phone manufacturers that have "folded" are using it as a high-end "killer" to break the game.
Why are users increasingly reluctant to change their phones?
Although Apple's life is more stable, there is a bad news that all mobile phone manufacturers have to face, that is, longer and longer user replacement time.
"Why don't young people want to change their phones?" Recently, such a topic about mobile phones hung on Weibo hot search for two days, and some young consumers after 00 said in an interview with the media that they had not changed their mobile phones for four years.
Although it is a case, the statistics also confirm that this is representative. Data from industry analysis firm Counterpoint shows that the average replacement cycle of Chinese users has exceeded 31 months. A year ago, that number was around 22 months.
The sharp reduction in consumers' desire to change machines has also led to a sharp decline in smartphone shipments. According to the latest report of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, 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 fact, since 2017, the global smartphone market has declined for four consecutive years, and although 2021 has picked up compared with 2020, it is still declining compared with 2019. Under the background of the global epidemic, economic growth pressure, and insufficient consumption power, the global smartphone industry is facing the problem of lack of growth momentum.
The pressure is likely to be even greater in 2022, especially since the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, and many market research institutions have lowered their forecasts for global smartphone shipments in 2022 and 2023. For example, Strategy Analytics, a well-known market research institute, predicts that global smartphone shipments will increase by only 1% year-on-year in 2022; by 2023, the growth rate may increase to 3%.
The reasons for the decline in the overall market size of smart phones and the longer and longer cycles of consumer replacements are not only the objective factors of the general environment, but also the reasons for the smartphone industry itself. Mainstream analysis believes that on the one hand, it is true that the performance of smart phones is getting better and better, and consumers are still good at using performance for two or three years; on the other hand, in recent years, there has been no important transformative innovation in the smart phone market, and the lack of bright new products is naturally difficult to stimulate consumers' desire to change machines.
Can "folding" make consumers move and break the high-end?
Under the above background, folding screen mobile phones are placed high hopes by various manufacturers. The industry believes that if 2021 is the "first year of folding screens", then 2022 is expected to become a "folding screen outbreak year".
Industry reports from GfK Sainuo show that the domestic sales of folding screen mobile phones will grow against the trend in 2021, reaching 1.1 million units, with a growth rate of 187%, and it is expected that domestic folding screen sales will exceed 1.8 million units in 2022.
The same is true of global market trends. The latest research results released by JW Insights show that 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.
As one of the important development directions of the current smart phone industry, the folding screen mobile phone display is large and the visual experience is good, which means that for business people, it can better meet the needs of convenient mobile office, large screen reading, multi-task split screen, fast charging and long battery life... It's all about attracting consumers. In daily scenarios, large-screen games and large-screen dramas can also provide a more cool experience.
The reporter also interviewed several early adopters of folding screen mobile phones, and the feedback received was that folding screens still need to evolve. For example, the problems and pain points where consumer feedback is more concentrated are higher prices, unstable experience, and insufficient software support.
In fact, from the user's point of view, folding screen mobile phones should not compromise on performance because of changes in form. At a price of about 10,000 yuan, can't you still buy a mobile phone that meets the performance and experience of mainstream flagship machines? After all, most of the mobile phones in this price segment are aimed at business people, and the performance is discounted, which will indeed dissuade a considerable number of consumers.
But it is not easy to achieve any experience that should be achieved without sacrificing the experience of a flagship phone, and to create a surprise experience in the form of a folding screen. It takes a lot of R&D investment and real hard-core innovation to win consumers.
Take a small hinge, for example. According to Huang Tao, vice president of vivo product line, in order to create the "aerospace-level floating wing hinge" adopted by vivo X Fold, vivo invested a design and development team that far exceeded the number of three times the number of straight board machines, and the development time was as long as 12 months, the simulation scheme was done more than 100 times, the large program was adjusted 10 times, and the mold was opened 7 times. In the end, the hinge contained 174 parts, and used six aerospace-grade materials such as liquid metal zirconium alloy and FS53 aviation high-strength steel, and obtained 150 patents before it was presented to consumers.
Although the market prospect of folding screen is attractive, mobile phone manufacturers still need to accelerate product updates and maturity improvement, with more affordable prices and more mature quality to truly ignite consumer enthusiasm. Especially for domestic mobile phone brands, if you want to shake the high-end mobile phone market, it is destined to be a protracted battle, testing the innovation, product strength and brand power of domestic mobile phone manufacturers, which require hard-core innovation.
However, we have reason to believe that domestic mobile phone manufacturers can seize the valuable market opportunity, go to the forefront of the world in the field of folding screens, and then compete with their opponents in the global market on the high-end track.
Editor-in-charge: Guo Jiyao
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