High-end mobile phone market has always been a must-fight place, from the previous Counterpoint Research report it is not difficult to see that since 2016, the global high-end mobile phone market share has shown a steady growth trend, its sales increased by 24% year-on-year, and in terms of market share, it reached 27%, what factors led to such a rapid growth in this special era, high-end machines?
It is not easy to analyze the clear, the influencing factors are really complex, up to the upstream supply chain in the technical breakthrough, mobile phone manufacturers strategy adjustment, down to the arrival of the user replacement cycle, are to promote the growth of the high-end machine market, and in the Chinese market is the same, according to the market research agency GFK related data show that the proportion of high-end mobile phone market (more than 4000 yuan) mobile phones has also increased from 30% in 2019 to 41% in 2021, but the shipment has declined.
Image source: Market research institute Counterpoint
On the one hand, the market share of high-end mobile phones has risen, on the other hand, the overall shipment of mobile phones has declined, part of the reason is that various Android brands are working hard to compete for the high-end stock market and constantly try to expand the incremental market, which directly leads to the growth of the high-end market.
Image source: Network
According to a report by Spanish Kanalis Consulting, vivo, Xiaomi, and OPPO are among the top five global mobile phone brands in 2021.
If you are more "concrete", focus on the consumer side, the role of mobile phones in the epidemic era can not be underestimated, coupled with the Internet 5G mobile era to come, consumers use mobile phones in the scene is more and more diversified, and for multimedia, such as games, videos, social networking, etc. The demand for increased, coupled with these applications gradually become "redundant", the performance requirements for mobile phones are also "rising". In addition, the price of mobile phones has risen, and the replacement cycle of consumers has been extended to varying degrees, and a "high-end mobile phone" with strong performance, excellent photography, and some cards that can be used for a long time has become the first choice of some users.
Maintaining "stability" is the "core" strength of high-end products
As a digital enthusiast, it is necessary to briefly talk about "high-end mobile phones" first. Before 2021, performance is synonymous with high-end models, directly equatorial problem is not big, remember that all manufacturers at that time like to compete processor performance, running data, etc. to emphasize high-end mobile phone capabilities. The strength of the competition performance is beyond reproach for high-end machines, but blindly pursuing performance is "regurgitated" by performance.
Some consumers in the so-called "running points first" and "performance of the machine" after the mobile phone, light in the game process of the phenomenon of heat, heavy because of the heat dissipation problem, directly led to the hardware part "burned", itself is ready to use "performance" to impact the "high-end market" but did not expect to be dragged down by various problems. The high-end market did not catch it, and let the good reputation established before "collapse" among its loyal fans.
But by the end of 2021, the high-end mobile phone market ushered in a major "transformation", with the upstream supply chain technology breakthrough, mobile phone manufacturers in place of technical reserves, and mobile phone manufacturers began to be more "accurate division" of their flagship products: some manufacturers began to find segments through "e-sports"; some manufacturers began to launch new series, hoping to be able to grasp the multi-dimensional pricing discourse through different price points of products; some manufacturers made the price "extreme cost performance", intending to cause in such users" Price Empathy".
Only for the "performance" thing, whether it is Apple or the Android camp, usually brings users a surprisingly consistent feeling of use: they are looking for a balance between performance, heat, and battery life. No matter how top-notch the hardware configuration of the flagship machine is, how excellent the camera effect is, and how outstanding the appearance design is, maintaining "stable output" is the "core" strength of the brand's high-end products.
MediaTek and vivo interview Source: MediaTek
MediaTek, known as "Fa Ge", "understands" very well how to achieve a balance between these three.
From Tianji 1000 to Tianji 1200, known as "God U", with excellent tuning ability and excellent power consumption performance, it became the "dark horse" of the flagship processor at that time, coupled with the blessing of the Entry Processor of Tianji, which once made MediaTek's share break through to a new high, but because of its own positioning problems, and mainly benefiting from the mid-end market, in the face of 870, 888 such processors, due to the high-end processor competition is too fierce and there is a "siege", However, it still has been recognized by manufacturers and consumers for its decent performance performance and the most critical energy consumption ratio.
The subsequent release of 8 Gen 1 should have served as a "shoulder handle", but due to power consumption and heat problems, it directly led to performance fluctuations in the mobile phones on board, and the reputation was not satisfactory.
This provides an excellent opportunity for MediaTek.
Chen Guanzhou, general manager of MediaTek, said at the dual-core technology communication meeting: "The launch of The Launch of Tianji 9000 has injected new vitality into the global flagship 5G chip market and brought more new opportunities, which is not only a milestone on the road of MediaTek's technological innovation, but also brings a unique flagship experience to consumers. In the face of other competitors, they can "calm down", and when the environment changes, they can seize the opportunity to achieve a leap with their own strength, and then achieve a "counterattack" on the high-end machine market.
Tianji 9000 appears at the right time, and it is indispensable to be in the right place.
"Tianshi" does not need to be talked about, "geographical advantage" refers to the strong performance of the processor itself, such as 4nm process technology, stronger power optimization, stronger performance in photography, AI, multimedia performance and so on.
And "Ren" is mediatek's choice of partners such as vivo, "we all adhere to the user-oriented, user demand-driven, hand in hand to deepen the industry "difficult and correct things", we believe that such efforts can achieve the flagship market reshaping and breakthrough." Chen Guanzhou said.
Chen Guanzhou, General Manager of MediaTek Source: MediaTek
From the first integration of HiFi chip solutions in the vivo X1 fuselage, with a fuselage of only 6.55mm, becoming the thinnest HiFi music mobile phone on the market, "dare to pursue the extreme, continue to create surprises" has become the spirit of vivo internal, and its internal has also established product direction through the five basic principles of "first know what users need, do not consider the budget, do not rush to mass production, do not pursue the first launch, and do not engage in people to be superior", which is the same as MediaTek to do "difficult and correct things" In fact, there are commonalities. Positioned to the product, these two manufacturers are working hard for the flagship vivo X80 series, which can release the strongest performance of the Tianji 9000 and maintain "stable operation".
Go head-to-head and tap into the potential
At this media communication meeting with MediaTek and Vivo, the most concerned question for the media attending the meeting was why Vivo chose to cooperate with MediaTek. To this end, Yang Qing, product manager of vivo X series, said: "First of all, our concept is very consistent, whether it is vivo or MediaTek, it is innovative and practical, that is to say, we are committed to innovation, but also very down-to-earth. We all adhere to the user-oriented, user-driven demand to drive, we also see each other's determination and confidence, do our best, work together to create. ”
In order to achieve the best, this time MediaTek and vivo jointly set up an elite team of hundreds of people and a development cycle of about a year, greatly innovated the software channel architecture, so that Tianji 9000 and V1+ chips and tuning, so that vivo became the first terminal mobile phone manufacturer to achieve tuning with MediaTek's flagship platform on the self-developed imaging chip, "As early as last year, the two sides jointly launched a comprehensive joint investigation work, setting up a research and development goal of releasing the strongest performance of Tianji 9000. Start from the bottom layer of the chip to the terminal application, through the open architecture of Tianji, to create a full-link, benchmark-level flagship experience. Chen Guanzhou said.
Image source: vivo
V1 + this key improvement of the function, in addition to the night scene noise reduction has a good performance, the biggest part of the improvement is the comprehensive "performance", and as the vivo X80 series equipped with this chip, naturally will not lag behind in performance, but as mentioned earlier, "running score" can only represent "a moment", and "stability" is the "invisible" condition for measuring "high-end" products.
For example, in the game scene, in order to further reduce power consumption while maintaining the smooth operation of the game screen, the GPU Fusion function launched by Vivo is based on the principle of reducing the GPU load through the AI capability of MediaTek APU, and calls the hardware-level interpolation algorithm of vivo's self-developed chip to deeply optimize the game frame rate.
In addition, the two sides through the processor "deep mining", in the performance of the improvement at the same time, but also through the various aspects of the trade-off, to find the "optimal solution" between performance and power consumption, had to mention mediatek open platform, as early as vivo X70 products, MediaTek for the open architecture of Vivo has some cooperation, MediaTek wireless communication division technical planning director Li Junnan said: "Tianji 9000 open architecture we have added display link screen high-precision calibration hardware Combined with vivo's newly developed calibration algorithm, it achieves low-power, super flagship level of thousand-screen one-color performance on the display link. ”
Image source: vivo
Through the new display link screen high-precision calibration hardware in the Open Architecture of Tianji 9000, combined with the calibration algorithm newly developed by Vivo, the low-power, super flagship level of thousand-screen performance is achieved on the display link, such as the addition of AI-ISP open architecture interface in the recording link, so that vivo's AI algorithm can achieve lower power consumption and better EFFECT AI functions, coupled with the use of AI-3A/AI-AWB this kind of function, through vivo and MediaTek for the image part, Especially in the adjustment of video environments such as extremely dark night recording, the picture can be cleaner and less noisy.
Why can MediaTek rely on the Tianji 9000 to "counterattack" the high-end market?
Back to the beginning, when all manufacturers are working on high-end products and striving to occupy a place in the high-end market, how can MediaTek impact the high-end through the Tianji 9000?
The first is to have enough chip reserve capacity to serve customers' high-end products, since two years ago, chip production capacity supply has become the first problem facing high-end machines, and for MediaTek, market prediction and supply chain control capabilities have enabled it to gain higher independent control in the "epidemic" era and avoid the lack of "core" situation.
"Tianji 9000 is a very important product, for us, our stock is quite sufficient. The pandemic and capacity used to be a big challenge for the industry, but we were basically quite well prepared in this place. To this end, Zhang Genghao, director of product planning of MediaTek's wireless communication division, said.
The second is that the chip itself has few competitors at the moment. In this way, it will be combined with mobile phone manufacturers, for example, and vivo, which also has the ability to dig the chip "scheduling", through joint efforts, in addition to reaching a high score of 1.04 million in the running score software such as Antutu, in order to make the vivo X80 series have a significantly different experience from other products, it must also be based on the joint adjustment of both parties and the differentiation of scenarios:
How to ensure performance at the same time, bring about strict control of power consumption, so that users can play more cool?
Hardware is on the one hand, and through the software side of the "free setting" is equally important, the processor "back-end" performance to "assist" software settings, to ensure that when playing some heavy games, to ensure stable output, such as with the help of vivo in the system to provide personalized settings GPU Setting Panel, so that users can for anisotropic filtering, texture filter quality, etc., to define their own settings, improve the display effect, which is the "differentiation" embodiment of high-end models.
How to "consolidate" sustained stability?
For MediaTek itself, how can high-end product operations be stable and "continuous"?
This actually involves the operation of high-end brands, from products to high-end products, it is not a difficult task, MediaTek believes that to achieve the "transformation" from high-end products to high-end brands, it is not to seek "fast" overnight.
Because if you want to be fast, you can't reach it.
With MediaTek digging out the "pain points" of high-end mobile phones, and then cooperating with vivo in depth to "tune through" to dig out the "poles" of processor performance, of course, this aspect can be performance; it can also be AI, imaging, and even communication and voice, which can enhance the differentiated experience of the flagship, help vivo and MediaTek find their own exclusive channels on the road of impacting high-end, and achieve a win-win situation.
As Zhang Genghao said, "Good products can naturally drive brands to gain user recognition." Therefore, MediaTek will continue to focus on technology and product level to innovate steadily. While creating a great product, we will also strengthen the operation of the brand. The wine aroma is also afraid of the deep alley, and good products need to be known to the family, and it takes a little time to brew." And the world's first-class mobile phone manufacturer vivo, is naturally an innovative and practical school, a "core" friend who can chat with MediaTek.