The smartphone market is becoming a Red Sea market, with global smartphone shipments falling 11% in the first quarter of 2022 and China's smartphone shipments falling by about 5% in the first quarter. Due to the lack of impact of new technologies in the smartphone market, the space for incremental users is getting smaller and smaller, and they can only rely on existing users to change machines. For consumers, the enthusiasm for changing mobile phones is becoming lower, the motivation for changing mobile phones is insufficient, coupled with the slowdown in global 5G construction, the impact of the epidemic, and the slowdown in economic growth. The smartphone market is facing a lack of technology, slowing growth, increased revenue pressure, and small profit margins, becoming a very competitive Red Sea.
For mobile phone companies, in the case of market shrinkage, it is even more necessary to make technological breakthroughs and strive to enter the blue ocean from the red ocean. The folding screen is a new opportunity for many smartphone brands to compete for the high-end market through technological innovation.
Folding is only the first step in high-end
Compete for the high-end market, for domestic mobile phones, this is an important step, completed the development of low and medium products, with a certain market capacity, ultra-low profit margins, has become a big problem that plagues most mobile phone manufacturers, to obtain more profits, let their more hematopoietic ability, have more room for development, must march to the high-end.
But for many domestic mobile phone manufacturers, high-end is often a difficult to climb the peak, the folding mobile phone as a threshold to enter the high-end, for some manufacturers, this seems to be a shortcut but as a professional player of a folding screen mobile phone, I believe that to really make a mobile phone into a high-end, far from a folding can solve.
I have used 7 brands so far, about a dozen folding screen mobile phones, deeply feel that to do a high-end mobile phone, folding screen is only an external feature, there is such a very explicit feature, for public perception has a certain help, this meaning today almost all folding screen mobile phones are high-end positioning. At the same time, we must know that a high-end mobile phone, which is a complex system accumulated by brand, function, system, accessories, design, details, services and other links.
We have seen for a long time, in China's mobile phone market, it seems that the real high-end only one brand, Huawei, other brands also want to make breakthroughs in the high-end field, but it is difficult to do anything for a long time, one of the important reasons is the lack of this comprehensive strength.
Today, Huawei has experienced five changes in the folding screen mobile phone Mate X to today's Mate Xs 2, and has experienced several generations of development, from the initial folding form, to the hinge, to the adaptation of various APP folding screen mobile phones, Huawei's folding screen mobile phones continue to find problems, solve problems, and make the product experience continue to be perfected. From a folding screen mobile phone to really create a high-end series, this requires a period of accumulation, from hardware to software and services integration.
Today's folding screen mobile phone market is Huawei mobile phones and other brand mobile phones, Huawei has a greater advantage, which makes sense, the gap is not in a certain point, but in the comprehensive strength of other manufacturers is difficult to bridge in a short period of time.
Three years and five generations of The Dao flagship "folding" learning
Huawei's folding screen track has a difficult threshold for friends to cross, that is, the accumulation of folding screens in three years and five generations, so far, Huawei's folding screen mobile phones have experienced Mate X, Mate Xs, Mate X2, P50 Pocket, and now launched Mate Xs 2, the front four folding screen mobile phones I have used for a long time, from these mobile phones can be seen that in the past three years, Huawei has continuously broken through in the field of folding screens, continuous attempts, paid a huge price, and paid a hard work. This is the process of a new species from scratch, from birth to perfection, and it is also the result of Huawei's careful polishing from generation to generation.
For folding screen mobile phones, hinge is a very core technology, on the one hand, it needs to be used for a long time is not bad, we all know a mechanical product, multiple movements, loosening, wear is inevitable.
On the basis of the first generation of folding mobile phones, Mate Xs greatly optimized the screen and hinge, the first eagle wing folding design, the hinge structure is fine and ingenious, composed of 100+ precision devices, can achieve collaborative operation, seamless support huawei Mate Xs screen and folding use, screen opening and closing experience smooth and lossless, truly achieve the perfect folding form of integration.
Huawei Mate X2 finally adopts the industry's unique double-spin water drop hinge, through the multi-dimensional phased control linkage mechanism, to solve the problem of the body gap in the folded state, but also to ensure the bending traces, and finally presented to consumers a more complete and more reliable inner folding screen display.
The Huawei Mate Xs 2 features an innovative ultra-light material, twin-rotor wing hinges, and a composite reinforced structural screen. Innovative ultra-light materials will lead to a lighter body, composite reinforced structural screens will bring a stronger screen, and double rotor hinges will make the phone more flat when unfolded. It is a complete set of design solutions to solve the pain points of folding form, bringing users ultra-thin, ultra-flat and ultra-reliable experience.
Huawei Mate Xs 2's hardware innovation is the result of long-term accumulation and exploration, such as in order to create the industry's flattest folding screen mobile phone, the use of car collision avoidance structure cushioning design, the use of composite laminated structure to add a buffer layer to the screen, effectively absorb and buffer external forces. It is such an innovation process, after groping again and again, a little progress, and finally obtaining a folding screen that is almost crease-free and safe and reliable. Therefore, Huawei's folding screen mobile phone is not difficult to understand in the hardware, it is the leading of this hardware, the user's most painful points of the problem to solve very well, in order to make the folding screen, not only can be folded up, but also can experience well, feel good, and even have obsessive-compulsive disorder, will not have a knot in the heart because of creases, soft screens, unevenness.
In the matter of "flagship folding", Huawei's current solution is the most representative of the industry, and every breakthrough it makes may require friendly businessmen to work hard for a long time.
Experience is the final battle of folding screen mobile phones
The birth of the folding screen is to get a large screen experience on a more portable basis, compared to other brands of folding screen products, Huawei has always put the experience in the first place, not for folding and folding, but to give full play to the advantages of the large screen, so that users have an unprecedented intelligent experience.
Huawei's advantages in folding screen mobile phone experience are reflected in several aspects:
1. Powerful Hongmeng system. Today all Huawei's new mobile phones are Hongmeng system, this powerful system, distributed computing, storage, is optimized at the bottom, its stability, fluency has been greatly improved, since the release of the user response is very good, and this process, Huawei can also at the bottom by constantly clearing bugs, to solve all aspects of the problem, because it is its own system, so there are problems to solve the problem of high efficiency, fast response, the ability to solve the problem is also strong, some friendly products, if there is a problem, need multi-party coordination , and Huawei can find a solution internally through the upgrade of the system, which is not a level of capability.
2. Powerful adaptive engine. For many of the various applications applied on Huawei smartphones, this may be the application developed by other manufacturers, these applications if they want to make them very good smart folding mobile phones, which need to be adapted, which increases the burden on manufacturers, especially a smaller manufacturer, their enthusiasm will not be high, if not adapted, the user experience is of course not good. Huawei has developed a powerful adaptive engine, through which to adapt, which greatly reduces the investment of manufacturers, but also a good solution to the adaptation problem, so that users have a good experience.
3. The establishment of the software ecological alliance ensures the smoothness of cooperation. Over the past few years, Huawei has formed in-depth cooperative relations with many application developers and established a software ecosystem alliance, thus forming a mechanism in standards, technical specifications, various technical communications, and information sharing, so as to achieve information sharing and timely solution of problems, which can also ensure that users can use the experience to the extreme.
Entering 2022, with the maturity of technology, the mobile phone market will gradually enter an era of folding screens, and folding screens will also reach the audience of more and more users from remote reach. The development of the folding screen can not be a fold, not only to stack some hardware, but to let the user in the use of the folding screen process, the experience has a good improvement, feel folded, valuable, meaningful, change, there is an improvement. This requires more consumers in design, aesthetic experience, function experience, function adaptation, expansion experience, and even some pain points, which can make consumers shine, which requires more manufacturers to have more investment, and we are more looking forward to Huawei, which is in front of huawei, which can launch more excellent products, bring us new experiences and feelings, and create a benchmark for folding screen mobile phone trees.