Author: Wei Qiyang
Source: Insights New Research Agency
The attitude of Chinese mobile phones towards Apple is complicated.
In 2007, Apple with the original iPhone, opened the curtain of an era, followed by Apple's footsteps, China's consumer electronics market also ushered in a leapfrog development, more critically, under the trend of global division of labor, Chinese mainland with demographic dividends and policy incentives, gradually formed a spectacular "Apple industry chain".
How strong is this supply chain?
The New York Times reported that in 2012, just weeks before the iPhone was scheduled to hit the shelves, the phone screen was shipped to the assembly plant near midnight. The foreman immediately woke up the workers, each with a pack of biscuits and a cup of tea, and immediately rushed to the workshop, and within half an hour, the assembly line began. After 96 hours, the company could produce iPhones at a rate of more than 10,000 units per day.
In 2012 alone, Apple's Chinese suppliers more than tripled. Apple's 2021 Supplier Responsibility Progress Report disclosed the list of major suppliers in 2020, and among its top 200 suppliers, there were 96 Chinese mainland manufacturers, accounting for nearly half.
Therefore, when Huami OV wants to do mobile phones, Lens Technology, Luxshare Precision, Sunwoda and other mature suppliers of Apple are in front of them and are ready to use, if you stand in this perspective, it is not too much to say that Apple is the leader of China's mobile phones.
But on the other hand, although Chinese mobile phone manufacturers sit in the world's largest consumer market, the sales volume is high, the scale is large, and it is rarely matched in the industry, but the profit margin of the whole industry is not at all in the order of magnitude compared with Apple.
Statistics from Counterpoint show that the total global smartphone revenue in 2021 is 448 billion US dollars (about 2829 billion yuan), and Apple ranks first with 196 billion US dollars in revenue, about 1238 billion yuan, accounting for 44% of the total revenue of all smartphone brands.
Source: Counterpoint OPPO Data Contains OnePlus Mobile Phone Unit: Billion DOLLARs Chart: Insights New Research Agency
In terms of market share and shipments, Apple is not the highest, but the average price of the single machine can be pulled apart from friends, reaching 831.6 US dollars in 2021, and the corresponding OPPO/vivo/Samsung/Xiaomi single machine average price is 277.1/265/264.7/162.4 US dollars, respectively.
Therefore, for a long time, the market share of the iPhone has been below 20%, but it can grab about 75%-80% of the profits of the global mobile phone market.
Data source: Counterpoint OPPO data contains a plus mobile phone Mapping: Insights New Research Agency
The mobile phone industry has been bitter for a long time. Others are doing the most tiring work, but they can only pick up Apple's "scraps of cold burning", after the dividends of the incremental market of smart phones have been exhausted, opening up a "second battlefield" of "impacting high-end" has become the collective choice of Chinese mobile phones.
Before 2020, Huami OV went forward and followed, after 2020, Huawei launched a competitive sequence due to sanctions, and Glory quickly made up for it, and the entire industry was happy to "impact the high-end".
Under Apple's "words and deeds", Chinese mobile phones have also reached a consensus, "high-end" for the brand is not only a face, but also related to the future of survival.
Huami OV from the circle of foreign brands
Two years after the launch of the original iPhone, the change in the wind direction of the mobile phone industry began to make Nokia and Motorola feel like needles.
In 2009, when Nokia's then-chairman Li Situo visited nokia's flagship store on Fifth Avenue in New York, there were few customers in the store except for sales, and what surprised Li Situo was that when he walked into the Apple store in the same block, it was crowded and difficult to walk through.
This is an era of coexistence of functional machines and smart phones, at that time, Nokia, Motorola and other foreign brands feel the pressure from Apple, but after all, the roots are deep, in the face of Chinese mobile phones, still have an overwhelming advantage.
In the "inertial thinking" of foreign brands, the "pain" of technology "change of dynasty" is only temporary, as long as they have mastered the "core technology", the market will still return to their own hands, before that, HP printers, Canon Nikon cameras, IBM computers and other foreign brands have made very successful examples in different industries.
But "inertial thinking" eventually lost to the trend, foreign mobile phone brands pay too much attention to the basic functions of mobile phones, only think about how to achieve high-quality call effects, how to make mobile phones more durable, and do not realize that after the communication technology jumps from 2G to 3G, the market needs not to be a mobile phone designed for phone calls, but a mobile phone that can be integrated with the Internet and designed for the Internet.
Foreign mobile phone brands collectively ignore the extension of mobile phone functions and the development of ecological creation, and ignore the impact of personality experience, brand tonality, channel marketing, etc. on consumers in the process of mobile phone migration from the luxury of a few people to the mass consumer goods.
If Nokia, Motorola has also tried to "struggle to fight back", Ericsson is a typical set of foreign brands to decline, this century-old communications giant has always believed that doing mobile phones is to do technology, when there is no new technology, there is no need to launch new mobile phones, so that for a long time, Ericsson in the market only has one style, several models, such products are difficult to say how strong the competitiveness.
On the other hand, China's mobile phones, with a keen sense of market and industry trends, broke through the siege of foreign brands in one fell swoop and stood on the stage of the new era with Apple.
In August 2011, shortly after Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Note, a 5.3-inch large-screen mobile phone at the Berlin International Electronics Show, Xiaomi made its debut.
At the press conference, the rice noodles were excited, shouting "Rebus", Lei Jun also lived up to expectations, gave a 1999 pricing for Xiaomi's first product, the first batch of 300,000 units of Millet 1 was booked out within 3 hours, Xiaomi was a hit and red at the same time inscribed on its own label that can not be shaken off so far: the ultimate cost performance + Internet thinking.
Xiaomi Mi 1 release site
In November 2011, Vivo released the world's first smartphone X1 integrated with Hi-Fi (high-fidelity) grade professional chips in Water Cube, successfully creating a music mobile phone subdivision category. At the same time, with a 6.55 mm body, the phone became the thinnest smartphone in the world at that time.
With the X1, vivo not only gained a firm foothold in the gear of smartphone switching, but also resolved the inventory problem of vivo function machines to a certain extent.
Xiaomi and vivo are two brands that have gone relatively smoothly, the former has no "historical baggage" of functional machines, and is lightly loaded under the impetus of the Internet wave, and the latter is killed from the bloody battle with the cottage machine, focusing on differentiation at the beginning, pressing the right direction in technology and product design.
Not all Chinese mobile phones are as lucky as Xiaomi and vivo, such as OPPO.
Also in 2011, OPPO's first smart machine X903/Find was folded, when after Apple's "education", the form of the smartphone was basically fixed, but OPPO made the god "avoid" the straight plate shape, maverick with a slide design, and the thickness of the fuselage reached 16.6 mm, weighing nearly 200 grams.
Later, when reviewing the sales of X903/Find, Liu Zuohu, who was still deputy general manager at OPPO, was "embarrassed to say".
Although X903/Find failed, OPPO still learned a lot of experience in this product and carried out tireless product innovation in the subsequent market competition.
With the release of Ulike2 in 2012, OPPO was the first in the industry to increase the front camera to 5 million pixels and pioneered the built-in beauty function.
Also in 2012, the ultra-thin mobile phone Finder became OPPO's turnaround, and then, with a series of products equipped with industry-leading flash charging technology, OPPO stood on the throne of the first sales volume in the Chinese market in 2016.
Led by the original iPhone, global smartphone shipments exceeded 100 million in 2007, reached 1.019 billion in 2013, and three years later, in 2016, they embarked on a step of 1.473 billion units. In this process, there is the lament of the defeat of "China Cool Union", and there is also the glory of Huami OV joining hands to fight against foreign brands, and what plays a decisive role in the market pattern is in addition to the efforts of China's mobile phones themselves, but also in the judgment and grasp of the trend.
The trend mentioned here is not only the trend of switching technology from functional machines to smart machines, but also the deeper trend is that in the face of the surging tide of replacement, where do customers come from, and where does the incremental market come from?
Xiaomi grasps the trend online, almost in sync with the development of the e-commerce industry, Xiaomi firmly occupies the user's mind online, and establishes a highly recognizable brand label.
OV grasps the trend offline, with more than 30,000 dealers, OV will reach the vast low-line market, walking the "anti-war" route of "rural encirclement of the city", so that the British veteran high-end magazine "Economist" published an article summarizing the success of OV as the victory of the channel, and the Wall Street Journal reporter personally ran to China to find out.
Friends also take OV as a learning object and study it carefully. Ren Zhengfei called for at the annual BG conference of Huawei terminals: learn from OV, don't look down on others. Lei Jun also personally ran to a vivo store in Yichuan County, Luoyang, Henan Province, to "learn from the scriptures" to study.
Lei Jun posted on Weibo that he communicated with the boss in the Henan mobile phone store
The reason why Chinese mobile phones can complete the victory of foreign brands, Apple in the Chinese mainland to create the "Apple industry chain" is indispensable, but it is precisely because of the existence of the "Apple industrial chain", the profits of Chinese mobile phone manufacturers can only be "maintain life" look, but the early huge incremental market covered up a lot of problems, the barrier to the development of China's mobile phones was temporarily covered up.
Huawei felt the stones to cross the river, and Xiaomi OV touched Huawei to cross the river
If the market capacity is large enough, China's mobile phone sales growth can be used to make up for the profits with the scale effect, but it can also coexist with Apple without incident, but the turning point of the story occurred in 2017, and the Chinese smartphone market for the first time experienced an overall decline in shipments.
Under the stock competition, changing the product structure and asking for profits in the upper market has become the only positive solution.
The experience of China's mobile phones impacting the high-end, Huawei is successful, but also tragic.
In fact, Huawei was not smooth in the early stage of the development of smart phones, and was once crushed by Xiaomi OV.
Huawei's first smartphone Ascend P1 was also released in 2011, this phone was positioned "high-end" at the beginning, due to the deliberate pursuit of "thin" characteristics, resulting in the aesthetics of industrial design being ruthlessly snuffed out, the entire mobile phone looks like a brick, so that even Yu Chengdong can't help but spit when he sees the P1 prototype: "What is this (tm)?" ”
Although Yu Chengdong did everything in his power, even to personally go to the store for the P1 platform, the final sales of this mobile phone was less than one million, and at this time, Xiaomi's sales were ten times that of P1.
Subsequently, Huawei launched another Ascend D series, word of mouth is still on the street, there are rumors, the angry Ren Zhengfei once smashed this phone in the face of Yu Chengdong in front of many executives.
From the beginning of the D series, to the later P series, Mate series are used HiSilicon's K3V2 chip, has been used to P6, due to the lack of performance of HiSilicon's early chip, incidentally affecting the mobile phone experience, mobile phone fever, slow caton and other symptoms have not been solved.
Huawei's internal pain about this, once shaken, users also have a "hate iron not steel" mood for Huawei, jittery netizens wrote a couplet: "HiSilicon eternal, one (K3V2) forever." ”
The reason why Huawei has become Huawei lies in its insistence on its goal, which is embodied in mobile phones, that is, insisting on using its own HiSilicon chip, forming a core difference with other brands.
In 2013, K3V2 finally withdrew from the product sequence, Huawei P6 S equipped with a new Kirin 910 chip came out; in 2014, P7 equipped with Kirin 910T debuted, and then every product update, Kirin chip is also iterating, until the Huawei P30 is equipped with the Kirin 980 chip when it is listed, which has caught up with Qualcomm's contemporary Product Snapdragon 855 in terms of performance.
In the process of catching up with the Kirin chip, the Mate 7, which costs nearly 4,000 yuan, has truly established the image of a high-end mobile phone for Huawei, and at this time, the HiSilicon chip has also iterated to the Kirin 925. In the first week of the launch of this mobile phone, Huawei's first stockpiling was sold out, and the scalper who usually only fried the iPhone also aimed at the domestic mobile phone for the first time.
Mate 7 final shipments exceeded 7 million units, followed by another flagship model released in 2015 P8 youth version sales to the tens of millions level, 2016 released P10, even if there was a negative public opinion such as "throbbing door" and "memory door", consumers scolded while buying, and finally sales exceeded 6 million units. After that, it is Huawei that carries the high-end banner to fight against Apple head-on, and suffers sanctions, only to retain the fire and gradually fade out of the mainstream story.
Yu Chengdong showed off the Mate 9 at the press conference
Huawei's success, although driven by external factors in a specific historical period, such as trade wars, Samsung's spontaneous combustion door, Apple's security door, etc., but its core is still a victory in product power, in addition to the differences in chips and operating systems, in other functions or technical levels, Huawei's investment is also spared.
For example, when all users are praising the iPhone's camera function, behind it is the technical support of a video department of more than 700 people set up by Apple, in contrast, Huawei also realizes that taking pictures is an important influencing factor in mobile phone sales, Yu Chengdong made a big stroke: We also have to recruit 700 engineers for the imaging department, not less than Apple!
Since then, Huawei has zoomed from 50 times to 100 times zoom, from three shots, four shots to shooting the moon, Huawei has firmly occupied the user's mind, and "Huawei mobile phones take the best photos" has become the biggest consensus in the market.
The 23rd chapter of Huawei's Basic Law mentions the "principle of pressure": in the key factors of success and the selected strategic growth point, allocate resources with a strength that exceeds that of major competitors, or do not do it, do it, and greatly concentrate human, material and financial resources to achieve key breakthroughs.
On the mobile phone, Huawei only recognizes one dead reason: no matter which function, who is the best in this market, I can't be worse than him.
Unfortunately, there is only one Huawei in China's mobile phones, and Xiaomi OV does not have the conditions to invest in a certain goal without a bottom line, from Huawei, Xiaomi OV also sees the core of mobile phone differentiation - dead screen and photography.
In June 2018, vivo released a landmark full-screen mobile phone for the entire industry in Shanghai - NEX, through the lifting lens and off-screen fingerprint technology, vivo NEX achieved a full-screen without bangs, this innovative sample once led the popularity of full-screen and under-screen fingerprint mobile phones, after which various schemes of high-brush screen, curved screen and digging screen took turns to appear.
After Huawei's P20 Pro first applied the rear three-camera solution on the mainstream flagship machine, a variety of three-camera and four-camera module solutions were dazzling, in contrast, Apple only used the three-camera module known as "Bath Master" for the first time in the iPhone 11 released a year later.
On the chip, although the Xiaomi OV cannot directly bite the SoC like Huawei, they cut in from the peripheral edge of the core target and continue to consolidate and strengthen their advantages in imaging.
In March 2021, Xiaomi launched its self-developed ISP professional imaging chip "Surging C1" and configured it in its first folding screen mobile phone MIX Fold; in the same year, Vivo's newly released flagship product vivo X70 series is also equipped with its self-developed ISP chip V1.
OPPO's action is slightly later, but also in February this year launched a flagship new machine with the self-developed NPU chip "MariSilicon X" Find X5 Pro, similar to ISP, NPU is also an image chip, but the NPU has deep learning capabilities, in the data processing and algorithm performance is stronger.
The release and application of MariSilicon X is the first time that OPPO has realized full-link vertical integration in the field of computing imaging, which will fully serve OPPO's customized computing image needs. OPPO CEO Chen Mingyong publicly stated: MariSilicon X is a small step in OPPO's self-developed chips, OPPO will continue to invest resources in the future, with a team of thousands of people, to do self-developed chips in a down-to-earth manner.
Xiaomi 1 from 2011 1999 yuan starting, for a long time, thousand yuan machine is the mainstream of the market, and when the time comes to 2018, the mainstream model of Chinese mobile phones gradually stood at a price of 3000 yuan, the gradual change of users' perception of Chinese mobile phones is also the result of the collective efforts of Chinese mobile phones.
In the post-Huawei era, the trend dispute between 5G and folding screens
Some helpless things are that although Chinese mobile phones have worked hard, after Huawei, Apple is still like a mountain in front of it is difficult to surpass, and Chinese mobile phones need a chance, a chance to overtake in a corner.
The process of switching from 2G to 3G to 4G has created the golden years of the mobile phone market "changing dynasties", Apple has established its own king status, and Chinese mobile phones have also harvested nirvana and growth, and now there are two opportunities in front of Chinese mobile phones, 5G and folding screen, the former is the stall of communication technology switching, and the latter is the trend of mobile phone form changes.
When 2G to 3G/4G, the tide of smartphone replacement of feature phones is unstoppable, when 4G switches to 5G, will the same thing happen again?
When the functional machine evolved to the smart machine, the physical keyboard that occupies a large amount of physical space was optimized, replaced by a large and larger screen, which was accompanied by an unstoppable tide of machine changes, when the folding screen appeared, will history repeat itself?
Chinese mobile phones have become adults, do not do multiple choice questions, whether it is an opportunity or not, the trend of 5G and folding screens must be personally grasped.
In the way of playing 5G and folding screens, Chinese mobile phones are also very clear, using cool new technologies to form a high-end impression in the minds of users, reducing costs with large-scale production capacity, preemptively establishing a competitive bridgehead in the market, and grasping the flashpoint of replacement machines.
From 2019, in just 2 years, Chinese mobile phones will be 5G communication functions into the standard, and completed the coverage of all price ranges, although the "5G mobile phone in the end is necessary" questions are still ringing from time to time, but in the first half of 2020, the national 5G package user breaking 100 million events can be used as a marker, with the continuous reduction of package tariffs, the development of 5G applications, the outbreak of 5G mobile phones is almost at hand.
The current status quo is that in the 5G technology, Chinese mobile phones and Apple are essentially in the same running line, before the emergence of killer applications, the market pattern will not change, but the folding screen is different.
Data from Canalys shows that shipments of folding screen phones reached 8.9 million units in 2021, up 148% year-on-year. In contrast, the overall smartphone market grew by just 7 percent. At the 2022 Mobile World Congress, Honor CEO Zhao Ming made a bold speculation, he believes that folding mobile phones or will become the mainstream of smart phones, and the folding screen mobile phone market can grow 10 times in 2022.
When Chinese mobile phones seize the heights of the folding screen market, they also adopt the playing method of technological innovation + low-cost popularization. In response to the pain point of folding screen creases, Chinese mobile phones have come to a "hundred schools of contention".
Among the several models recently released, OPPO Find N introduced the UTG program to domestic brands for the first time, using Seiko quasi-vertebral hinge design, which greatly improved the crease effect; Honor Magic V developed a set of ultra-thin suspended water droplet hinges, creating the thinnest record of the inner folding mobile phone; the just released vivo X Fold further advanced, and the aviation-grade materials were used on the hinge accessory - titanium alloy, zirconium alloy (liquid metal), carbon fiber plate, The 18Ni250, etc., which is applied to the rocket engine shell, has created a series of floating wing hinges composed of a series of complex keels, floating plates and gripper structures.
In 2020, OPPO even released an "OPPOX 2021 Reel Concept Machine" at its own brand's Future Technology Conference, which is equipped with a minimum 6.7-inch, maximum 7.4-inch stepless OLED flexible scroll screen. With just one swipe, the screen stretches like a picture scroll, presenting an almost "zero crease" screen effect. Behind this concept machine, OPPO has laid out 117 patents, including 12 core patents related to the reel mechanism.
Folding screens have become the focus of recent competition among mobile phone manufacturers
When it comes to the competition of folding screens, we will find that Glory has quietly emerged and replaced Huawei's position, yes, in the post-Huawei era, Honor has inherited Many of Huawei's heritage in talent, research and development, channels and even innovative thinking, and to a certain extent, it has also taken over Huawei's high-end class.
Due to well-known reasons, when Honor divested from Huawei in November 2020, due to a variety of factors, the market share once fell to 3%, and with the hot sales of the Honor 50 series, Honor completed the Jedi counterattack, and Q4 of 2021 finally filled the gap left by Huawei, and the Shipments of the Chinese market climbed to second, ranking first in the Android camp, second only to Apple, ranking first in domestic mobile phones.
In February this year, a new generation of flagship models Magic 4 series was released, of which the Glory Magic4 to the best version is priced at 7999 yuan, directly benchmarking the Apple 13 pro in price, honor's layout of magic 4 is quite grand, the internal defense of the basic disk of the domestic market, the external is to break through France, Finland, the Czech Republic, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Mexico and other countries, with the help of Huawei's foundation, hit the European market upwards, thus forming a strategic encirclement.
In terms of price, the price of the early folding screen is as high as "only can be viewed from a distance, can not be blasphemed", and now, Chinese mobile phones are trying to fold the screen to the direction of "going" closer, compared with the price of tens of thousands to tens of thousands of early folding screens, the current price of domestic mainstream folding screen mobile phones are within 10,000 yuan, OPPO Find N is to pull the price down to 7699 yuan.
Obviously, after Huawei, Chinese mobile phones are using practical actions to change users' inertial bias against themselves, and find the best balance between many opposing sides such as technical reserves and product commanding heights, cost control and penetration.
Chinese mobile phones are indeed competing with Apple, but more is to compete with themselves, OPPO CEO Chen Mingyong once said a set of "Go theory": the real Go master is you around your territory, I surround my territory, we may not have any fight, high and low have seen.
epilogue
The infinity war that hits the high end continues, and a recent trend is the ecological warfare of "the whole family going together".
In this regard, Apple is the originator, Xiaomi also laid out the Mijia ecological chain early, Glory took over Huawei's "mantle", the main "1+8+N" wisdom full-scene landing, OV layout slightly, but also gradually taking shape, vivo launched the "1+3+N" strategy, OPPO was rumored to upgrade the emerging mobile terminal business unit to the IoT business group last year, and increase the Internet of Things ecology.
Returning to the essence of China's mobile phone impact on the high-end, whether it is the competition on the main track of the mobile phone, or the side knocking of the peripheral ecological war, whether it is the innovation at the level of technical products, or the change of the channel marketing dimension, it is ultimately necessary to return to a point, that is, the user and the original intention, doing so many things, what is it for? Want to break the head of countless innovations, users recognize? The judgment may be supported by a mature management system and data model, but true success requires consistent persistence, which looks easy and can only be tasted by yourself.
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