Zhi DongXi (public number: zhidxcom)
Author | Xu Shan
Edit | Yunpeng
In addition to mobile phones, Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo are about to start another big war that may last for decades - to compete for the throne of the entrance device of the "meta-universe era".
If you say, in the era of mobile Internet, Huami OV has made a lot of money with smart phones. In today's slowdown in the demand for smart phone markets, how should major mobile phone manufacturers maintain their growth curves? In addition to loT, cloud services, and car manufacturing, the computing platform in the "meta-universe" period, that is, VR/AR headset, will become a new direction of contention for mobile phone manufacturers.
This is actually not difficult to understand. If mobile phones are one of the important information carriers in the mobile Internet era. Then, VR/AR devices may be the main information carrier of the next generation of the Internet.
Think about it, if VR/AR glasses will replace your mobile phone, allowing you to use them anytime, anywhere to process information and answer calls, then the future market size of VR/AR devices may be as considerable as the current mobile phone market.
In just three months, Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO and Vivo, the four giants of domestic mobile phones, have obtained 13 patents related to the "meta-universe". Among them, the earliest patent application time can be traced back to 2016, and since then, mobile phone manufacturers have been laying out the VR/AR industry.
It seems that even if there is really new hardware to "revolutionize the life of mobile phones", the head players of these domestic mobile phone markets also hope to take their fate into their own hands.
According to the IDC data report, global AR/VR equipment shipments reached 11.23 million units in 2021, an increase of 92.1% year-on-year. It can be seen that the shipment of VR/AR equipment is in a stage of rapid growth, and the market size of VR/AR equipment is expanding.
As the head players who once mastered the mobile Internet entrance device, how do Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo, which have the advantages of innate user base, view the next generation of internet, and how will they seize this opportunity?
We combed through the recent VR/AR patents of Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, and Vivo, as well as investment information. We found that among these mobile phone manufacturers, some mobile phone manufacturers are rushing to the "meta-universe" with 50 billion yuan, and some mobile phone manufacturers have not issued new VR/AR equipment for two or three years.
Mobile phone manufacturers initially laid out a little bit different "metaversics", perhaps in 10 years will go out of a completely different way to create their own completely different meta-universe ecology.
First, the show patent opens the brain hole: WHY DOES VR FIRE BULLET SCREEN? There is also one-click navigation and blood vessel monitoring
After entering 2022, there is very little information about mobile phone manufacturers creating new VR/AR equipment, but it continues to burst out patent information related to VR/AR equipment hardware.
According to the incomplete statistics of Zhidong, in 2022 alone, Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo four mobile phone manufacturers announced 13 VR/AR-related patents, involving VR/AR basic technology, design, optical display and other fields.
From these patents, we can see some of the whimsy of mobile phone manufacturers in the field of VR/AR. For example, how to fire a barrage in the "metaverse"? On March 29, Huawei proposed a VR bullet screen playback system that allows you to speak as you please. For example, Xiaomi released an AR tour system, so that you can visit the supermarket and never go back.
Among these patents, we have selected three more innovative patents to see how mobile phone manufacturers are planning their next-generation mobile terminal products.
1. Huawei VR bullet screen system: Create two screens to divide the new area for the bullet screen
How to fire a bullet screen in a VR device, and how to have "spit freedom" in the virtual world?
According to Huawei's patent documents, the new bullet screen system can set up a new transparent bullet screen layer above the VR playback video, realizing the shunting of the bullet screen in space, getting rid of the limitations of the screen of electronic devices, and the area presented by the bullet screen can be larger than the video itself. In this way, the new barrage system can reduce the stress of the bullet screen during peak periods and improve the viewing experience of video content.
▲Huawei VR barrage system
2, Xiaomi AR shopping: one-click navigation, the road fool party is no longer afraid of finding a place
Xiaomi has played a new trick with its own Mijia ecology. Imagine when you walk into a newly opened shopping store and enter all the items you want on your phone, your AR device will plan the best route for you in time, provide you with navigation, guide you to find goods, and even tell you exactly what height the goods are on the shelf. When you're done with your first item, the navigation will automatically tell you what your next product is and in which direction.
▲Xiaomi AR shopping patent
This is the future scenario depicted in the patent "Shopping Navigation Method, Device and System Based on Augmented Reality Technology AR" approved by Xiaomi on February 15.
The system mainly goes through three steps:
The terminal initiates a data request to the server and provides the location information of the terminal device. The server will then provide the location information of all goods arranged according to proximity and send the final navigation route map back to the terminal.
Finally, the terminal displays a roadmap based on the latest data to help users find items as quickly as possible.
The system solves the problem that when we are faced with an unfamiliar supermarket environment, it is difficult to quickly find the items we need, which consumes a lot of time.
3. OPPO design fundus camera: monitor user health at all times
OPPO has chosen some new innovations, such as designing a fundus camera module.
Many people may not be very clear about the role of the fundus camera. A fundus camera is a medical device that primarily examines the retina and other parts of the eye to check for a variety of diseases such as tears, tumors, cataracts, and bleeding.
▲OPPO fundus camera module patent
In the patent document, OPPO said that the current fundus camera is expensive and cannot provide users with real-time monitoring. After the simplification of this fundus photography module, it may be able to play a role in health monitoring on smart glasses.
From these patents, we can see that mobile phone manufacturers are more inclined to start from the actual landing scene in the direction of creating VR/AR, which is the most direct and practical function for users.
Second, Xiaomi and OPPO have invested in two companies in a row, and Vivo and Huawei have quietly invested
From the perspective of patents, Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, and Vivo all have their own unique thinking about how VR devices can bring consumers a better experience.
Based on this thinking, Xiaomi and OPPO chose to actively layout the upstream of the industry of startups, 2022 just after the first quarter, Xiaomi and OPPO twice shot companies related to the "metacosm". But in contrast, after the beginning of 2022, Huawei and vivo are cautious about the investment layout of the "meta-universe", and there is no latest investment information disclosure.
Xiaomi mainly focuses on the two directions of optical display and screen. On January 4, 2022, Xiaomi invested in Shenzhen Stan Technology Co., Ltd. Stan Technology is mainly responsible for the development, production and sales of Micro LED technology, which was established on October 18, 2018.
As the founder of Stan Technology, Liu Zhaojun graduated from the Optoelectronic Technology Center of HKUST in 2011 as a doctoral student, and is one of the first researchers in the world to engage in Gallium Nitride Micro LED technology.
He received the Peter Brody Prize from the International Society for Information Display, the world's most authoritative organization in the field of display in 2020, in recognition of his contributions to the field of Micro LED. At the same time, Liu Zhaojun is also the second Chinese mainland scholar to win the International Information Display Society Award after BOE founder Wang Dongsheng.
▲ Liu Zhaojun, founder of Stan Technology
At present, Stan Technology's Micro LED chip has entered the pilot line stage, and Stan Technology plans to achieve mass production of small and medium-sized display screen driver chips around 2023.
After investing in Stan Technology for two months, Xiaomi once again sold a company that developed AR optical display modules - Zhige Technology.
Zhige Technology is a high-tech enterprise incubated by the Department of Precision Instruments of Tsinghua University, and has previously received strategic investment from OPPO. It is reported that the diffractive optical waveguide lens used in the previously released OPPO Air Glass comes from Zhige Technology.
Zhige Technology, which is favored by Xiaomi and OPPO at the same time, may successfully enter the supply chain of Xiaomi and OPPO VR/AR equipment with its own diffractive optical waveguide lens.
▲Ar diffractive optical waveguide of Zhige Technology
After the release of OPPO Air Glass, OPPO began to speed up the layout of the "metacosm".
On February 9, OPPO participated in the A round of financing of Chenjing Technology. Chenjing Technology is a company focused on space intelligence technology, committed to building a 3D meta-universe infrastructure. Previously, OPPO participated in the angel round of financing of Chenjing Technology in June 2021, helping it complete tens of millions of dollars in financing.
Another company that OPPO invests in, Resisi Core, whose main business is to independently develop machine vision sensor chips, which can be used in AR/VR and other fields.
Unlike Xiaomi and OPPO, Huawei and vivo are particularly cautious on this track, which is also related to the company's different perception of the "metacosm".
Jiang Guo, Huawei's blue army consultant and independent enterprise consultant, in an interview with the media on March 22, mentioned that there are two main routes for manufacturers to invest in the "meta-universe".
This dimension is the areas that can be seen at present, such as VR/AR hardware, VR vocational education training and auxiliary experiments, and VR/AR games. Through VR/AR remote operation, remote driving, in these industries can choose the head of the enterprise investment. The other dimension is the long-term dimension, many technologies have not yet appeared, and I don't even know what the business is, but there are many basic technologies that are necessary. Jiang Guo said.
▲Huawei's blue army consultant and independent enterprise consultant Jiang Guo
He also explained that in the first investment direction, simulation and imitation fields, such as imitation machinery, imitation can be included in the scope of investment considerations. The second type is basic technologies such as engines, including algorithmic engines for content construction, content display, and delivery transmission.
But he also said: "At present, the development of the metacosm is the early stage of hype, and it has not yet crossed the crack. I expect to cross the crack in 5 years and enter the early days of the business in another 10 years. ”
This also explains why Huawei has less investment in enterprises in meta-universe-related fields. Through a multi-channel public information search, we found that Huawei has not invested in enterprises related to the "meta-universe" since the beginning of 2022.
Third, in the face of the next generation of Internet transformation, Huami OV has different views
Although Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo have all launched their own hardware products in the VR/AR field before, they have different views on the next generation of the Internet. We try to see how manufacturers think from some key and only public statements, among them, Huawei believes that the "holographic Internet" will be the direction of Internet development, and based on this launched a number of products such as River Map and Starlight Tower, while vivo believes that the "meta-universe" is still in its early stages, far from the stage where it needs to be used as the focus of development.
1, Huawei: Holographic Internet is the next generation of Internet
As the big brother of domestic mobile phones, Huawei believes that the "holographic Internet" will be the direction of the development of the next generation of Internet.
At the 2021 World VR Industry Conference, Luo Wei, vice president and chief scientist of Huawei, said: "On the basis of years of information technology research, Huawei defines the next stage as 'holographic', which is why Huawei believes that the next generation of internet will be 'holographic Internet'. Luo Wei believes that the next generation of the Internet will at least be a three-dimensional information presentation, containing sound, and even containing smell and touch when the technical conditions are ripe.
▲Luo Wei, vice president and chief scientist of Huawei
Therefore, Huawei actually began to lay out the next-generation Internet transformation plan as early as 2018, and established the "Cyber+verse" (digital universe) project, named "River Map".
"Because 'River Map' and 'Luo Shu' are the two symbols of the earliest origin of Chinese civilization, they are the code for deconstructing the rubik's cube of the universe." Luo Wei added.
Huawei also released the AR interactive experience App Starlight Tower based on the river map. Starlight Tower offers a variety of AR gameplay, and participants can see a variety of information after entering the interface. At the same time, Huawei has also accumulated many advantages such as 5G, cloud services, and Hongmeng ecology in the mobile Internet era, which will lay a good technical foundation for the next generation of mobile Internet.
2, millet: lay a good loT ecological foundation, do a good job of technical reserves
Xiaomi can be regarded as one of the earliest mobile phone manufacturers in China to enter the VR market. However, for the transformation of the next generation of the Internet, Xiaomi has not yet shown a clear layout plan to the public, and can only show that it is laying out related fields from related investments and patent applications.
In the face of the views of the metacosm, the relevant spokesperson of Xiaomi said, "The future of the metacosm may be a new highland for digital economy innovation and industrial chain extension." ”
But what cannot be ignored is that whether the next generation of internet is zuckerberg's "metacosm" or Huawei's "holographic internet", it needs to be connected to other things. Therefore, Xiaomi's loT ecological layout will be one of its key advantages in the next generation of Internet.
3. OPPO: Preemptively exert "meta-universe", content ecology and talent training
OPPO has always held a high research and development, high output in the field of VR/AR. Not only is iterative at the rate of one VR/AR hardware device per year, but it is also trying different forms to find the best product form.
▲OPPO founder and CEO Chen Mingyong
OPPO founder and CEO Chen Mingyong at the 2021 OPPO Future Technology Conference, called to build a technology moat, the group will invest 50 billion yuan in science and technology research and development in the next three years, focusing on 5G/6G, intelligence, AR, data and other fields.
At the same time, in April this year, OPPO officially launched the "OPPOAR Developer Co-creation Program", which is to explore the outstanding AR development team in China, expand the potential of OPPO AR products, and promote the development of OPPO AR content.
In the loT ecology, OPPO, which is slightly slower in the hot air outlet of car manufacturing, is ahead of many mobile phone manufacturers in VR/AR equipment research and development, talent training and content ecology this time.
4, vivo: AR commercial farther, millions of annual salary to seek talents
Compared with other manufacturers, whether it is technical reserves, product updates or even investment, vivo action is somewhat conservative.
This may be related to vivo's view of the "metacosm". On December 17, 2021, Vice President of Vivo and President of Vivo AI Global Research Institute, it was mentioned that the metaverse is still in the relatively early stage, and it will take several years for some AR devices to be practical and accurate. The commercialization process of AR has not been particularly smooth, and the content and services have not kept up. "But there are a lot of things we can prepare for in advance." he said.
▲Vice President of Vivo, President of Vivo AI Global Research Institute
Recently, vivo has also begun to look for XR chip design talents with millions of annual salaries, from which it seems that vivo is re-picking up the VR/AR field and laying out the "meta-universe".
Overall, we see that mobile phone manufacturers have different views on VR/AR, and these views also fall on their layout rhythm for the next generation of Internet, vivo, xiaomi in the layout of the "metacosm" rhythm, compared to Huawei and OPPO slower.
Conclusion: Opportunities and challenges coexist, Huami OV stores power "meta-universe"
On the one hand, major mobile phone manufacturers are optimistic about VR/AR equipment, and have applied for a number of patents, with certain technical reserves in this field, is one of the important players in the VR/AR field. At the same time, Huami OV is also investing in related industrial chain companies to drive the development of start-up enterprises such as optics and display chips.
On the other hand, mobile phone manufacturers have a large number of users accumulated over the years of hardware equipment for the mobile Internet, which will help them attract a large number of users to pay attention to their own VR/AR devices through the existing software and hardware ecological advantages, bringing about the growth of the underlying base of users.
But the brand positioning and company style of each mobile phone also affect their perception of the "metacosm". Some manufacturers regard the "metacosm" as a new outlet and increase investment efforts, while some manufacturers believe that the "metacosm" is still in the conceptual stage and the action is conservative.
At the same time, at present, mobile phone manufacturers are not perfect enough to create VR/AR devices, have high replaceability, and do not have much substantive function breakthrough. It remains to be seen whether Huami OV can break the bottleneck of existing VR/AR equipment and rewrite the story of an era.