Source | Deep Blue Finance
Written by | Wu Ruixin
Edit | Zheng Ting
Huami OV, the first echelon of domestic mobile phone sales. Huawei ended, leaving only glory, OPPO, vivo to seize the market share, becoming the "new king" of the domestic mobile phone market. But not yet happy for a few months, another cruel fact to the domestic smartphone manufacturers, especially vivo as a blow: mobile phones, can not sell.
Recently, CINNO Research released a report that the sales data of smartphones in the Chinese market in February was about 23.48 million units, down 20.5% year-on-year and 24.0% month-on-month. Specifically, in the domestic smart phone sales ranking in February, in addition to the glory to rise year-on-year, last year's top two sales of OPPO, vivo sales fell year-on-year, of which vivo sales fell by 38.6% year-on-year, ranking from the second, fell to the fourth.
It is worth noting that a few days ago vivo just held a new product conference, launched a folding screen mobile phone X Fold, and also launched the first tablet, in order to announce the official entry into the tablet field.
Can this be a lifesaver for vivo?
1
Machine sea tactics failed
Vivo can't sell?
After Huawei was "forced to leave", OPPO and Vivo quickly took office. According to CINNO Research data, in the 2021 China smartphone market sales ranking, OPPO (excluding realme) and vivo (excluding iQOO) ranked first and second in the list with a market share of 20.5% and 18.2%, respectively.
But a few months before the good news arrived, the bad news suddenly struck! ——Vivo's sales in February fell to fourth. Although vivo's "half-brother" OPPO also experienced a year-on-year decline in sales in February, it still remained the first in the ranking.
So why did vivo's sales suddenly decline so badly?
The first is the tactical problem, in the stock era, vivo is still using the old machine sea tactics. According to public information, in 2021, Xiaomi, Redmi and Black Shark released a total of 25 mobile phones, OPPO released 21 mobile phones, Huawei and Honor released 12 and 23 mobile phones respectively, while vivo is the most, with a total of 36 mobile phones listed throughout the year, including 13 mobile phones released by its sub-brand IQOO.
But the strange thing is that Vivo released so many mobile phones last year, but the revenue growth is at the bottom. According to the 2021 smartphone revenue data released by Counterpoint, the top 5 smartphones in 2021 have a total revenue of $448 billion, among domestic mobile phones, Xiaomi increased by 49%, OPPO increased by 47%, and vivo ranked at the bottom with a growth rate of 43%.
This is mainly because, in addition to the NEX series and the imaging flagship X series, which covered a price of 3000-7000 yuan, the rest of the series were below 3000 yuan, and vivo's main sales model S12 last year started at 2799 yuan. So overall, although vivo's shipments ranked first last year, because the price is not high, the profit cannot be raised, so among the top five domestic brands, vivo's revenue growth is the lowest.
On the other hand, in the stock era, the decline in smartphone sales continues.
Young people have always been the main force of consumption in the field of digital technology, but in recent years, young people have become more and more reluctant to change mobile phones. In addition to the increasingly expensive prices, in recent years, the innovation of smart phones has been insufficient, the appearance is similar, and it is difficult to bring freshness to young people. Many netizens also said that changing mobile phones is not as fresh as changing mobile phone cases. Coupled with the troubles of data transfer and rebinding brought about by changing mobile phones, young people are becoming less and less interested in changing mobile phones.
Since smart phones entered the stock era in 2018, securities companies generally believe that 5G commercial and folding screen mobile phones will become a new factor driving demand for replacement.
5G commercial and high-end mobile phones have become two barriers and opportunities in front of domestic smartphone manufacturers. Therefore, in recent years, Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo have local 5G, exerting efforts on the high-end market, and want to "grab food" with Apple. But the declining sales volume has poured cold water on domestic smartphone manufacturers:
According to CINNO Research, the Sales of Smartphones in the Chinese Market in 2020 was about 305 million units, a sharp drop of 21% year-on-year, which was the largest decline in smartphone sales. Even if the market has certain expectations that the sales volume will decline when smart phones enter the stock era, this data is still lower than expected. In 2021, the market situation has not improved significantly, and it has only increased by 3% compared with 2020.
In February this year, 5G mobile phone sales also fell sharply:
According to the latest report of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, in February 2022, the sales of 5G mobile phones in the domestic market were declining year-on-year and month-on-month. In February 2022, 5G mobile phones were 11.374 million units, down 24.5% year-on-year, accounting for 76.5% of mobile phone shipments in the same period; down 56.8% from 26.32 million units in January 2022.
In this regard, the explanation of Sun Yanbiao, president of the first mobile phone industry research institute of industry experts, is:
Users' enthusiasm for 5G mobile phones has been released ahead of schedule in 2021. Before the next wave of replacements arrives, sales of 5G mobile phones will decline and tend to be stable.
5G cannot save the sales of domestic mobile phones. And vivo, which is still using the tactics of the machine sea, has the most obvious decline in sales, falling directly from the second to the fourth.
2
High-end breakout battles
Vivo is in trouble
The vast majority of the domestic high-end mobile phone market has previously been divided between Apple and Huawei. But in September 2020, Huawei had to give up market share due to the loss of chips in the United States, giving mainstream smartphone manufacturers such as Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo the opportunity to redistribute high-end market share.
In 2021, Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo have successively launched high-end flagship models to seize the high-end market. According to the global high-end mobile phone market share data released by Counterpoint Research in 2021, in the high-end mobile phone market with an average price of more than $400, Xiaomi rose from 3% to 5%; OPPO rose from 2% to 4%,; vivo rose from 2% to 3% in 2020.
But recently, Vivo suddenly announced that it was cut, and the NEX series that had undertaken vivo's mission of pursuing the ultimate and high-end was replaced by the newly launched X series new products.
The news caused an uproar. In the industry, it is not common to directly cut off high-end brands. What's more, when the vivo NEX series came out in June 2018, through the design of its hidden front camera, it achieved a real "full screen", and at the same time, more than 90% of the front screen accounted for the industry.leading. All the media guests present at the conference were all impressed by its eye-catching visual impact.
However, "debut is the peak", and the subsequent products of the NEX series cannot reach the height of the original generation. The large curvature "waterfall screen" used by vivo NEX 3 has also been complained about by the industry as "flashy".
In addition, in the high-end market, since the birth of the NEX series, there has not been much sense of existence, compared with Apple has no competitiveness at all, and the original goal of "sharing apples" has become nonsense.
After the failure to impact the high-end market, vivo launched a high-performance, young-age sub-brand iQOO. However, while pursuing high performance with stacking materials, the cost will inevitably be too high, which also deters young people.
3
Folding mobile phones, tablets, cars
Behind the four-sided attack, Vivo panicked
I have to admit that 5G cannot save the sales of mobile phones in the stock market. Manufacturers can only hope for "another way" - folding screen mobile phones.
Since 2018, the mobile phone market has begun to blow up the "folding" wind, since Samsung launched the world's first folding screen mobile phone, domestic smartphone manufacturers Huawei, Xiaomi have also launched folding screen mobile phones. But because the price is too expensive, the screen crease is obvious and other hard injuries, the industry inside and outside the folding screen mobile phone is not very good-looking, think that "folding screen mobile phone is just a rich person's toy", to imagine the original high-resolution screen, OLED screen like the standard of the mainstream machine, the possibility is not high.
But recently, OPPO and vivo, which represent the high-end of domestic smart machines, have also successively launched folding screen mobile phones to make high-end efforts. According to Taobao, oppo find N (512G) is priced at 8999 yuan, and vivo X Fold is priced at 8999 yuan to 9999 yuan. Compared with the previous prices of Samsung and Huawei, oppo and vivo have directly pulled the folding screen mobile phone to a price below 10,000 yuan.
So far, Huami OV, Glory, and the top five brands of domestic smart phones have all been involved in the field of folding screen mobile phones, dividing up the high-end market that Apple has not yet set foot in.
In addition, at vivo's latest conference, in addition to announcing its latest folding screen mobile phone X Fold, vivo also released a heavy news: entering the tablet field!
But in fact, this move of vivo, whether compared to Huawei, Glory, or Xiaomi, OPPO, is already late. In the field of tablets, now Huawei MatePad Pro, Honor Tablet V7 have been listed, Xiaomi Tablet has launched the fifth generation, OPPO's first tablet OPPO Pad was also released on February 24 this year.
In terms of ecology, vivo is also slow to move. From the layout of 2018 to the present, there are only two smart watches and two wireless headphones, with which OPPO is laid out almost at the same time, and it is currently iterating on a variety of products, not to mention xiaomi, which has an earlier and wider layout.
It is also worth mentioning "building cars". As early as 2019, vivo established cooperation with Baidu, Great Wall and other enterprises, and had a preliminary layout in the automotive field; at the developer conference at the end of 2020, vivo also released jovi InCar, a car networking brand, which has cooperated with 80+ car brands. At the end of September 2021, vivo, together with OPPO and Xiaomi, led by Changan Automobile, Geely Holdings, SAIC Motor, Yuanfeng Technology, Zhongke Chuangda, and China Automobile Institute Intelligent Networking, was officially established. Recently, vivo has made new moves in the field of "car building". According to Tianyan, vivo disclosed patents on autonomous driving methods, on-board devices, mobile devices and on-board electronic devices on April 1.
Behind the four-sided attack, it is actually vivo's confusion about the direction of future transformation. The layout is everywhere a step behind friends, smart car this road, can vivo have a bright future?