Financial Associated Press | New Consumption Daily on April 28 (reporter Tang Zhixiao), since the first quarter of 2022, more and more manufacturers have updated their mobile phone product lines, but also updated their tablet product lines.
In December 2021, after three years, Xiaomi restarted the tablet product line and launched the Xiaomi Tablet 5.
In February 2022, OPPO released the OPPO Pad, OPPO's first tablet product.
In March 2022, Huawei released the HUAWEI MatePad 10.4-inch version, which further refines the tablet product line.
In April 2022, Vivo released vivo Pad, which is vivo's first tablet product.
Coupled with the glory of tablet products that have long been released, the top manufacturers in domestic mobile phone shipments have entered the tablet market.
A few days ago, the reporter learned through the visit to the offline stores of multiple brands that due to the strong demand growth of mobile office, online classes, and "home economy" affected by the epidemic, the value of tablet computers that were squeezed by the mobile phone market in the past was recognized by the industry.
At the same time, tablet computers still have the problem of hardware and software adaptation, and their offline consumption is still not as hot as mobile phones.
Mobile office, online courses demand is strong Tablet market recovery
"The best product we sell is 11 inches (Huawei Mate Pro 11), and everyone can sell almost 7 to 8 units a month," the clerk of the Huawei brand store told reporters, "12 inches is not selling well, buy back are online classes to watch videos, this 12 inches is more business."
The growing demand for mobile and online classes has also led to a steady rise in tablet sales. This change in consumer trends is particularly evident in the Chinese market.
Source: IDC consulting public number
According to an IDC data, total global tablet shipments rose 2.9 percent year-over-year to 168 million units in 2021, the highest level since 2016. In the Chinese market, shipments in 2021 were about 28.46 million units, up 21.8% year-on-year, the highest increase in nearly seven years.
It is worth noting that in addition to the impact of the epidemic, the home economy, mobile office and other factors, the reason why tablets have been recognized by mobile phone brands is partly because of the slowdown in mobile phone growth, and mobile phone hardware manufacturers need to find incremental markets.
Source: IDC China Quarterly Mobile Phone Market Tracker
According to IDC Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, in the fourth quarter of 2021, the Chinese smartphone market shipped about 83.4 million units, down 3.5% year-on-year. In 2021, China's smartphone market shipped about 329 million units, up 1.1% year-on-year.
The value of tablets: hardware ecology and user stickiness
Some insiders pointed out that supplementing their own hardware ecology is also one of the reasons why some brands launch tablet computers. At present, there is still an "entrance" value for tablets.
According to the "White Paper on Tablet Pc Purchase" released by the CBN Commercial Data Center at the end of last year, nearly 70% of consumers are concerned about whether tablet computers can be used in conjunction with other electronic devices.
When purchasing tablets offline, the staff of Huawei Experience Store also repeatedly introduced Huawei tablets to reporters that Huawei tablets can interconnect with smartphones, computers, and even TVs and share data.
At present, because the tablet can realize the interaction between the large screen and the small screen, the interaction across hardware devices and operating systems, while facilitating the use of consumers, it can further increase user stickiness. This is particularly important in the current Red Sea competition of smartphone manufacturers.
In particular, Android mobile phone manufacturers are vigorously building their own IoT intelligent hardware "family bucket", and tablet computers have become an indispensable part of it because they can meet the needs of video entertainment and productivity tools.
Although the value of tablets is once again affirmed, the tablet market is not a blue ocean.
In 2021, Apple, Samsung, Lenovo, Amazon, the four major brands of tablet computers have maintained positive growth, Apple's market share has soared to 34.2%, Lenovo has soared nearly 20% of the high growth, these four brands for any new brand, there are strong barriers to competition.
The "dilemma" of tablets
Although the sales growth of tablet computers has been good at present, the reporter found that compared with the mobile phone counter in the store, the counter of tablet products is almost unloved when visiting the offline stores of multiple brands. Some brand counters don't even display tablet products.
The clerk also told reporters that compared with tablet computers, mobile phones still sell better. "The most expensive folding screen phones (Mate X2 and P50 Pocket) sold dozens of years ago." The clerk added.
Some insiders believe that this is due to the fact that tablet products still have some problems that have to be faced, such as software and hardware adaptation.
In March 2021, QQ HD was removed from the Apple Store. HD is an abbreviation for "High Definition" in English, which translates to high resolution. All applications marked with the word HD are basically suitable for tablets.
In fact, before QQ HD was removed, a very large number of applications had stopped or removed the HD version.
Most of the apps that run on tablets today are so-called "universal" apps. Applications simply stretch the display scale to achieve adaptation to large screens, and many applications cannot even achieve landscape display.
At present, in order to solve such problems, most Android manufacturers only use the system-level adaptation of "parallel windows" and "split screen browsing" to force the application screen to adapt to horizontal browsing. This makes the large-screen advantage of the tablet not 100% played.
However, the software and hardware adaptation problems encountered by tablet computers are similar to the encounters of folding screens that are still in the market cultivation period.
Obviously, if manufacturers want to increase the sales of tablet computers and folding screen mobile phones, they also need to further improve the application ecology with developers and keep up with changes in consumer demand to improve the product experience.