Zhigu Trend (ID:zgtrend) | Wang Yanhe
01
Foxconn's Zhengzhou factory, known as "Apple City", is assembled by more than 300,000 workers here, with an average of 350 mobile phones rolling off the production line every minute, with a daily output of more than 500,000 units.
In this round of the epidemic, the normal production of the Zhengzhou factory has appeared on the front page of Bloomberg's report.
As the largest production base of the iPhone, the operation of the Zhengzhou factory directly affects Apple's stock price; and the first quarter financial report is about to be released, and the performance of technology companies led by Apple represents the wind direction of economic rise and fall.
Apple, which was still cutting mobile phone production last month, has now raised its production target for the second quarter by 10 million units because of strong iPhone 13 sales, giving the mobile phone market some confidence.
At the same time, vivo, which reached the top of the Chinese market in 2021, released the long-awaited high-end folding screen mobile phone in just one month, followed by the disclosure of a new generation of V1+ self-developed chips, and then launched the flagship mobile phone X80 series.
The intensive release shows that vivo is putting more research and development resources and technology accumulation into the current products, giving a signal of full scientific and technological innovation.
OnePlus mobile phones, which have always focused on the overseas high-end market, suddenly announced that they would enter 2,800 Chinese counties and build 5,000 offline experience stores, adding another fire to the oversaturated channel war.
The "King of Africa" transsion mobile phone, which has been thriving in the low-end market, has also reported a decline in orders this year, and the sinking market is not optimistic...
Mobile warfare is heading for an increasingly diverse future.
In 2021, the mobile phone shipment volume in the Chinese market will be 310 million units, while the estimated valuation in 2022 will be about 300 million, and it is basically determined that the market will continue to shrink and it is impossible to restore the peak of 400 million units in 2018.
Starting from the release of the iPhone in 2007, to the first decline in global smartphone shipments in 2017 as a turning point, the "golden decade" driven by the three tides of smart phone replacement, mobile Internet popularization, and maturity of the consumer electronics industry chain has ended, and now we are in the silver age of mobile phones.
In 2017, Shen Wei, founder, CEO and president of Vivo, took a group of company executives to Tibet and became enlightened in the real plateau hypoxia:
"It's like climbing a mountain, before it was two or three kilometers, when there was no lack of oxygen, the body was very good, and when you found that you were lagging behind, you could still run; now if you accidentally get to five or six kilometers, you find that your body is uncomfortable and uncomfortable, and it is very expensive to make a mistake."
Mobile phone manufacturers who have landed on the plateau are faced with a simple arithmetic problem.
It is known that the current mobile phone performance is generally excessive, even if it is a model below 2,000 yuan, it can also freely brush short videos, play games, e-commerce shopping, beauty photos, WeChat social networking, to meet the needs of most users.
It can be obtained that mobile phones are no longer "once a year" consumables, and the replacement cycle is gradually extended from 12 months to 18-24-36 months.
It indicates that with the saturation of mobile phone users and no longer large-scale growth, the replacement time will be extended from 1 year to 3 years, that is, the market capacity will also be multiplied.
It also means that in the past, mobile phone manufacturers engaged in price wars and relied on incremental markets to make up for low profit margins, which no longer worked.
Low-threshold competition methods, mobile phone manufacturers have long been "learning from each other's strengths": vivo and OPPO hundreds of thousands of offline stores, millet's cost performance and performance parameters, traffic marketing wars, open up sub-brand operations...
In the war and peace, domestic mobile phone manufacturers have used proven successful paths to expand their territory in India, Southeast Asia, Africa, South America and other places, and tried to counterattack the high-end market in Europe and the United States.
Tactical diligence cannot hide strategic backwardness.
When the smartphone industry faced downward pressure, Apple increased its monopoly position in the high-end market, earning most of the profits in the industry; Samsung, which was "small and transparent" in the Chinese market, ranked first in global shipments.
In the "post-Huawei era" of mobile phones, it is not egalitarianism that dominates market changes, but the naked Matthew effect.
The high-end of mobile phones, mastering core technologies, and making subversive innovations have become the political correctness of all domestic mobile phone manufacturers, and the long-term doctrine of repeatedly questioning their own hearts.
02
On January 9, 2007, Jobs, wearing a black turtleneck sweater, made a harassing phone call in front of thousands of people at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco.
He opened Google Maps on his iPhone, located a nearby Starbucks, got the store's phone number, and typed it with one click:
"Good morning, I want to order 4,000 lattes to pack."
"Lie to you! Typo! Bye! ”
It was the first call the iPhone made to the world.
Under the laughter of the whole hall, people slowly returned to their senses, and a smart phone without a keyboard and screen multi-touch seems to have become an unstoppable trend.
In 2007, global smartphone shipments exceeded 100 million.
At that time, Ren Zhengfei was preparing to find international capital to package and sell the mobile phone business, and Lei Jun had just resigned as CEO of Kingsoft to find the next stop in his life.
Nokia's stores have become deserted, Huaqiang North Cottage Kingdom has been losing ground, and many manufacturers have been crushed to pieces in the thrilling leap from functional machines to smart machines.
The world's first Android smartphone against the iPhone, HTC's G1. It has another name, Dream, Dream.
In 2009, Shen Wei registered and founded the vivo brand, which is late in the strong smartphone market.
In November 2012, vivo released the X1 mobile phone, which was the world's thinnest mobile phone at that time, with a body thickness of only 6.55mm, and it was also the world's first Hi-Fi-level smart music mobile phone.
Recalling afterwards, they lamented: "We were able to come to this day because we were born in a great era and seized the great opportunity of China's information revolution." ”
In the period of historical opportunity of smart phones, a group of latecomers boldly surpassed their predecessors.
Brands such as Motorola, Ericsson, LG, BlackBerry, HTC, etc., are constantly collapsing in the focus of latecomers.
After the termination of the operator's burning subsidy in 2013, the "China Cool Union" that has been rushing to run has become the front wave, and it has gradually been replaced by the "Huami OV" composed of Huawei, vivo, millet and OPPO, and the market share of ZTE and Coolpad has quickly fallen below 1%.
In 2017, Xiaomi and Huawei both aggressively invested in the expansion of offline stores, and the channel war and the sinking war began. Xiaomi spent 4 years to increase the county market coverage rate to 80%, and opened nearly 10,000 new stores last year.
This is the channel for vivo to rush into the first camp, 200,000 stores constitute the sales volume of tieda, but also let vivo deeply understand the Chinese market and mass consumers are like.
After that, user-oriented, design-driven innovation has improved into the core of vivo's strategy.
Vivo is fighting another battle, the sword points to high-end.
Under this expectation, the vivo NEX released in 2018 is a mobile phone that integrates three technologies: full-screen without bangs, screen fingerprint, and lifting lens. Each technology is the first in the industry to be used, and there are few products of the same design on the market.
Looking at the wave of innovation of domestic mobile phones, there are only a few such models.
Subsequently, vivo announced four "long tracks": design, impact, system, and performance. Since then, every important technological breakthrough, such as V1, V1+ chip, under-screen fingerprint, micro-gimbal, ZEISS tuning, etc., is to serve these four tracks.
To this day, technology and manufacturing companies with heavy money still want to cross-border mobile phones.
For example, Musk, the world's richest man who just bought Twitter for $44 billion, has been blowing his Tesla phone in the industry. According to foreign media forecasts, the mobile phone code-named Model π will be equipped with StarLink Internet access, cryptocurrency, AI and other technologies to launch a revolution to the global telecommunications industry and financial industry.
Tesla makes mobile phones, Apple makes cars. Behind the mutual theft of homes, there is a common great madness, great wisdom and great self-confidence in it.
The mobile phone track, on the one hand, the head is highly concentrated, as if it can no longer accommodate even one giant; on the other hand, it seems that there is always room for ambitious latecomers.
In 2022 in the post-epidemic era, after Vivo ranks first in domestic shipments, the only thing that can support it to continue to move forward is hard power.
In September last year, Vivo released the V1 chip, which is the first self-developed ISP chip after 2 years of research and development, and began to explore the core chip design track from the edge.
On April 11 this year, Vivo released the folding screen mobile phone vivo X Fold, opening the folding screen 2.0 era. Aerospace-grade floating wing hinges, 2.3mm minimum water drop bend radius, 3D ultrasonic dual-screen fingerprint technology, the ceiling of the folding screen is raised and the price is reduced.
On April 25, Vivo released the X80 series that reshaped the flagship standard, using the latest V1+ chip, ZEISS optical lens, professional camera T* technology... Customized chips, as well as optical hardware, coupled with vivo's algorithm software strength, pull the imaging function directly to the ceiling.
People's attention is more focused on the self-developed V1+ core.
This is the second generation of self-developed chips launched by vivo, from the data point of view, the data throughput speed of V1+ is maintained at 8GB/s, while the power consumption is reduced by 72%, and the energy efficiency is improved by 3 times.
From a functional point of view, compared with the previous generation of V1, the plus version hardens and encapsulates 3D real-time stereoscopic night scene noise reduction, MEMC interpolation, and AI super-resolution algorithms, which are the three most performance-eating algorithms.
If there is no V1+ chip, when using these three algorithms, it needs to occupy a lot of CPU and GPU resources, with serious energy consumption and low efficiency.
Under the GPU Fusion jointly developed by vivo and MediaTek, the V1+ chip can also collaboratively undertake the task of GPU.
For consumers, the intuitive feeling is that in high-performance scenes such as image processing and mobile games, the picture can be clearer, the operation is smoother, and the heat and energy consumption of the mobile phone can be greatly reduced.
X80 is the decade of the X series, which represents vivo's technological innovation. In addition to the camera module, the main chip, screen, material, etc., are used in the industry's top.
The deeper meaning of this product release is that vivo has the ability to develop a more self-developed chip every year and mature application to high-end product lines.
In the high-end battlefield of this mobile phone of chip + ecology, vivo has opened a breakthrough.
In another 10 years, this will be a new starting point for vivo qualitative change.
03
When mobile phone manufacturers compete to show their muscles, a thing that has long been worried about people has finally come.
Tianfeng International analyst Guo Mingji revealed on Twitter that Apple is reducing its dependence on China because of the risk of epidemic uncertainty.
"In order to reduce supply chain management risks, the establishment of a new product development base in non-China is no longer a proposal plan, but an action plan."
Once, Apple deeply transformed China's industrial chain. More than 300 "fruit chain" enterprises, such as Luxshare Precision and Goertek, have become a solid base for the rapid rise of China's smart phone and consumer electronics industries.
But the highly profitable part of the design and patent is always "Designed by Apple in California" left in Apple's own hands. Non-core supply chain enterprises are all replaceable.
Apple's "imperial heart" style of supply chain management, each part will support multiple suppliers, do not put eggs in the same basket, not only to disperse the risk, but also to maintain Apple's right to speak and pricing power.
This is doomed to many fruit chain enterprises to rely entirely on large customer orders. At the beginning of the month, when Apple wanted to cut production, the stock prices of many domestic suppliers fell sharply; and like OFILM, after being kicked out of suppliers, it immediately turned from profit to huge loss, and divided and sold its own camera business.
Countries such as Vietnam, Indonesia, And India are actively grabbing manufacturing shares in the electronic information industry chain.
The high-value components and core technologies, basically from the United States, Japan and South Korea, are in the hands of established giants such as Samsung, Qualcomm, Intel, Micron, LG, Sony, and Armor.
In the past, the "assembly machine" created by purchasing parts and integrating assembly solutions could get a piece of the mobile phone market. This dividend has receded with the tide of the times in 2016.
How high the supply chain threshold is, how vulnerable it is in the countercurrent of globalization, and how much advantage collaborative innovation can accumulate, just look at Apple and Tesla.
In the face of netizens' questioning of "you don't have the courage to make a mobile phone", Luo Yonghao also said bluntly:
"Because I want to burn investors' money, so I really don't have the courage, or you can invest, as long as 2 billion."
At the just-concluded Boao Forum for Asia 2022, governments, businesses and academia have raised current challenges: the global epidemic is extremely uncertain, new technologies are emerging in an endless stream, and the development gap is further widening.
At the forum, cooperation in regional economic integration was once again proposed, and innovation and change are strategic choices in times of crisis and opportunity.
At the Boao Forum, Hu Baishan, vice president of Vivo, said, "Investing in innovation is a very reliable path to prosperity, which has passed the test of practice and is applicable to every country, every industry, and every technology enterprise." ”
At this point in time, the names of domestic mobile phone manufacturers appeared for the first time among the partners of the Boao Forum, and vivo was chosen.
There are many hidden meanings behind this: domestic mobile phone manufacturers should not only open up to the outside world, but also highlight the siege. This requires a flagship, and integration drives the domestic supply chain forward.
The baton of the market was handed over to vivo.
1. Vivo can transform the needs of consumers into orders in the industrial chain.
All tech companies are talking about user orientation, but the reality is that consumers only have a general description of their needs.
Standing at the end of the industrial chain, vivo wants to transform consumer needs into specific product, engineering, and technical problems into a large number of orders, so that the upstream supply chain can begin to solve - innovation must rely on forcing it out.
For example, the pain point of a folding screen mobile phone is a crease, which greatly affects the consumer experience.
The solution of this requirement is transformed by vivo into an engineering problem of hinge improvement.
A hinge is composed of hundreds of precision parts, involving materials, processing, assembly technology is very difficult.
Vivo placed an order for the new materials industry, and the hinge used 6 kinds of aerospace-grade materials and 174 precision parts for fighter jets and rocket engines, and withstood 300,000 bending tests.
The cost price of vivo a hinge has reached 1200 yuan, and the pull of large orders on the new material industry is also obvious.
For example, when the mobile phone takes pictures in the face of strong light, there will be glare and ghost problems.
This is because after the light enters the lens, it is reflected between the different lenses many times, and the excess light of the strong light continues to reflect, and there will be a ghost on the sensor.
Most mobile phone manufacturers try to use algorithm optimization to solve, but the difficulty is very high. Some manufacturers who are deeply trapped in ghost doors can only say that the ghost phenomenon is a normal phenomenon, and it is recommended that consumers avoid strong light when shooting.
Vivo has long cooperated with ZEISS, which is the top company in the field of optics, and the solution they give is to use coating technology for professional lenses, T* coating, and use them on mobile phone lenses.
The use of precision optical manufacturing methods, rather than algorithmic optimization, solves the ghost problem. This is an innovative idea that collides in the cooperation of the industrial chain.
Whether it is a shake-proof gimbal, a curved screen, or a super fast charge, every small innovation is to meet the needs of different users, and it is also the result of the joint breakthrough of new materials, optics, glass, chips, batteries and other partners in the supply chain.
2, 70 million units of shipments, giving technical practice and iteration space.
The chip design capabilities of Apple, Samsung and Huawei HiSilicon are not achieved overnight. Especially Huawei's early self-developed chips, the problems of heat generation and slow speed are extremely serious, and the market response is very bad.
If it is not long-term investment and sales support, it is impossible to raise a good technology and R & D team.
With 70 million units shipped, Vivo has the courage to test new technologies; there is no listing, no need to revolve around the financial report, and vivo has less constraints on investing heavily in research and development.
In 2021, Vivo set up the Academia Sinica to invest and plan for medium- and long-term technologies for more than 3 years, becoming a "technology beacon" for the industry.
But also to admit that the current competitive environment has become very tolerant of mistakes, trial and error, so vivo will also break through from relatively easy and certain technology.
At present, when developing V-series chips on its own, vivo is also mainly responsible for the design part. After the production and manufacturing, tape-out packaging and testing, etc., or leave it to the supply chain partners to complete.
The main chip of X80 is Tianji 9000, which is the masterpiece of MediaTek's counterattack on the high-end chip market dominated by Qualcomm, and is also a chip representative that catches up with Apple's A15 chip.
Vivo's V1+ is not only compatible with the flagship chips of Samsung, Qualcomm and MediaTek on the market, but also to cooperate with several chip companies to communicate, Tianji 9000 has made temporary design adjustments specifically for V1+, in order to play the effect of 1+1>2 with two full blood chips.
After special cooperation and debugging, among the current models equipped with Tianji 9000, vivo X80 series running score is the best.
Behind the circulation of the supply chain is the competition of countries and giant enterprises. It has been formed for nearly two years, and it is also the biggest influencing factor of the industrial economic situation in the coming period.
The local industry has not yet completed the upgrade, and there is not much time left for us.
04
Since Jobs's joke, Starbucks has often received calls for 4,000 coffee reservations, and people have always tried to imitate his lifelong legend.
Compared with the big guys who often go out of the circle, vivo's founders and executives have always been low-key.
Hu Baishan's first sentence in his speech at the Boao Forum was "A technology company needs to bury its head in the causes and look up at the road." ”
After all, any good idea can be learned quickly, technology will one day become obsolete, and only a system that can constantly adapt to change and innovate and evolve can transcend time.
Tyrannosaurus rex rests in the ground, while birds fight in the sky.
For Chinese mobile phone manufacturers, now is the time for another innovation war to start, and the situation is not optimistic.
Who will be the first to evolve?