On the evening of April 28, Huawei's folding flagship and all-scenario new product launch conference was officially held. Among the many electronic products, Huawei's folding screen mobile phone has attracted much attention. Since the launch of the first folding screen mobile phone in February 2019, this is already the fifth generation of Huawei's folding screen mobile phone iteration.
Folding screen mobile phone is undoubtedly a popular category in the field of consumer electronics this year, from the market launched 4 new products in half a year, folding screen mobile phone has become a must for brands to compete for the high-end market. In the case of the overall sales decline of the consumer electronics industry in the first quarter, the popularity of folding screen mobile phones has also given the market more confidence.
Consumer electronics were weak in the first quarter, but manufacturers piled up new ones
In the first quarter of this year, the consumer electronics sector market was weak. According to Bloomberg, in the first quarter of this year, China's quarterly semiconductor production contracted for the first time since the beginning of 2019, and one of the main reasons was weak consumer electronics demand. The impact of the epidemic in the Yangtze River Delta region has caused a sharp decline in semiconductor production in the first quarter.
Smartphones, as an important category of consumer electronics, are also in a bad situation. According to the china smartphone market shipment report for the first quarter of 2022 released by market research agency IDC, the Chinese smartphone market shipped about 74.2 million units in the first quarter, down 14.1% year-on-year, falling to the level of the first quarter of 2020. Not only domestic, but also the global mobile phone industry in the first quarter was also sluggish, with smartphone shipments falling by 11%.
Despite the weak demand, in the track of folding screen mobile phones, manufacturers are unabated. Before Huawei launched the latest folding screen mobile phone on the 28th, vivo released the first folding screen mobile phone X Fold on the evening of April 11, priced at 8999 yuan; honor released the first folding screen mobile phone Magic V in January this year after becoming independent from Huawei; looking further ahead, in December last year, OPPO also launched the first folding screen mobile phone.
Manufacturers are released in a bunch, and folding screen mobile phones seem to have come to a good time. Although the launch time of several major manufacturers is later than that of Samsung and Huawei, from the current point of view, folding screen mobile phones are in the early stage and are expected to have a round of growth this year.
According to the "Fourth Quarter 2021 Smartphone Market Tracking Report" released by the market research agency Omdia, the annual shipment of folding screen mobile phones in 2021 reached 9 million units, an increase of 309% year-on-year, of which Samsung shipped the most and Huawei ranked second. The report also pointed out that since the launch of the first folding screen smartphone in 2019, by the end of 2021, the cumulative shipment of folding screen smartphones worldwide has reached 11.5 million units, and from the second half of 2021, sales have grown rapidly.
Many people think that the shipment of folding screen mobile phones is far less than that of smart phones, and it still belongs to a niche category. However, Sanlin believes that when the market has just begun to mature, it is not surprising that there is such a situation, on the contrary, the rapid market growth indicates the promising future of folding screens. From the perspective of growth trend, at this time, the entry can occupy a share before the market takes shape, which is also beneficial to each company's high-end layout, it is a good time, and then do not shoot, with the current research and development strength and market share of Samsung and Huawei, it is likely to be difficult to reach the back.
Taking Samsung as an example, on the folding screen track, whether it is research and development strength or market share, Samsung is in a leading position. In the article "Samsung 'Disappeared' in the Chinese Market" released on Wednesday, we have already mentioned Samsung Semiconductor's strong position in the global market, in fact, folding screen mobile phones are also considered to be a major opportunity for Samsung to return to the Chinese market.
According to the 2021 folding market survey report released by DSCC, as of now, Samsung folding screen mobile phone shipments have exceeded 10 million units, accounting for 88% of the sales of folding screen mobile phones, and the annual shipment volume in 2021 alone is 7 million units, growing rapidly.
Looking at Huawei, when Huawei released the new folding screen mobile phone of Mate Xs 2 on April 28, the author's circle of friends has been swept by this news. As Huawei's fifth iteration of the folding screen mobile phone, the starting price of the new product is 9999 yuan (8GB + 256GB), which is nearly 18,000 yuan higher than the pricing of the previous generation of horizontal folding screen, and the purchase threshold is greatly reduced. At present, there is no deal on the Jingdong platform, and it is foreseeable that it will be another hot scene when it is released on May 6.
The heat of the folding screen, it seems that the manufacturers are getting together, the logic behind it is still that consumers have expectations for enough innovative electronic products, the price of VR smart wearable devices is often tens of thousands, there is still no lack of innovative companies to invest in it, there is no lack of capital pursuit, and there is no shortage of high-end players chasing.
Good products, there is always a market.
Manufacturers collectively exert efforts, folding screen mobile phone evolution history
A group of manufacturers collectively embraced the folding screen, and in the past two years ushered in an outbreak, several major mainstream brands nested up, then, when did the folding screen start to be hot?
In fact, folding screen mobile phones have been developed for many years, and its predecessor is flexible screen (flexible OLED), which has been developed for many years. As early as the 2013 CES conference, Samsung announced its Youm flexible OLED plan and proposed the concept of foldable mobile phones.
From the following GIF, you can see this flexible OLED panel, which already has the figure of the folding screen mobile phone now. After ten years of development, from the advent to the folding screen mobile phone that consumers have begun to widely accept, it took more than 5 years until 2018, when the domestic flexible screen manufacturer Royole Technology, before years of research and development of Samsung, took the lead in launching the first folding mobile phone - Soft FlexPai.
Video source: 2013 CES Conference Samsung live demonstration
Because of its small-scale mass production and limited popularity, although it has attracted some market attention since its release, it has not been widely favored by consumers, and there are still some problems that will occur in the early days of folding screen mobile phones, such as black screen, creases, battery life, size and weight.
However, the capital market has given royole technology the top attention, which shows the future potential of the folding screen mobile phone and the flexible screen track. According to public data, royole technology has carried out 8 rounds of financing in the past ten years from its inception to September 2021, obtaining equity investment of about 6.197 billion yuan and debt financing of about 3.653 billion yuan, which shows the favor of capital. Although Royole Technology has frequently exposed problems such as wage arrears this year, this does not prevent the heat of the folding screen market.
Until November of the same year (2018), Samsung launched the Infinity Flex Display folding screen solution, which is also the predecessor of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold, which caused another hot discussion in the market. In February 2019, Samsung officially released the folding screen model Galaxy Fold, becoming the first folding screen mobile phone to be sold and listed in the world in the true sense. Also starting from Samsung's mass-produced folding screen mobile phone, starting in 2019, folding screen mobile phones began to gather in the global market.
Image source: manufacturers new product launch
On February 24, 2019, at the MWC 2019 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (the world's most influential mobile communications exhibition), folding screen mobile phones showed an explosive trend, including Huawei folding screen mobile phone Mate X, TCL's three folding screen mobile phones, Nubia's first wearable flexible watch and other folding screen products were released, after which major brands have launched their own folding screen mobile phones. However, not long after the launch of the Samsung Galaxy Fold, it was recalled due to defects, and in November, it was revised and re-launched globally.
After the correction of the problem, Samsung, the scene is hot, the domestic sale is sold out in 5 minutes, the second sale is 5 minutes sold out, consumers are willing to try early.
Where is the folding screen "incense"?
At the new product launch on April 28, Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's terminal business and managing director of Huawei, said that "the folding screen is accelerating into the era of the main machine." Previously, Zhao Ming, CEO of Honor, also said that the various prerequisites for the folding screen to enter the era of the main machine have matured, and the market will be rapidly enlarged in 2022.
If we look at the logic of the iteration of the folding screen mobile phone, its development can be roughly divided into three stages:
The first stage: how to apply a large flexible screen to the mobile phone, you can fold the mobile phone;
The second stage: solve the relevant problems of the folding screen on the mobile phone, including display, thickness, lifespan, user experience, etc.;
The third stage: the folding screen from ultra-high-end machine to high-end, to the whole market (reduce costs, mainstream);
At Huawei's new product launch, there were many highlights of the new machine, and the problems that consumers criticized before were being solved one by one by the manufacturers, and the advantages of folding and shielding mobile phones also began to show. So, where is the fragrance of folding screen mobile phones?
Leaving aside the high-end product image, Sanlin believes that from 2017, mobile phones enter the era of full screen, and people hope to enjoy a larger screen in a limited fuselage, which may prove that the best-selling of the 8.3-inch iPad mini may prove that the handheld large screen is a potential demand.
It is true that from the launch of the first folding screen mobile phone in 2018 to the present, five years have passed, the folding screen mobile phone still needs to break through the point, and it is difficult to say that the folding screen mobile phone has been able to compete with ordinary smart phones in terms of user experience, including screen service life, anti-drop performance, battery life, application adaptation, etc.
The optimization of smart hardware products takes time, and the author believes that given a certain amount of time, folding screen mobile phones are likely to become mainstream.
It is reported that Google has begun to work on the development of android 12L operating system for folding screen mobile phones and tablet computers, with the development of the system completed and improved, the software ecology of folding screen mobile phones will gradually be comparable to conventional smart phones, everything is only a matter of time.
On the same day (April 28) when Huawei's new folding screen mobile phone was launched, Beijing issued a notice of unmanned manned demonstration application, and Baidu became the first approved enterprise. Baidu's self-driving travel service platform, Radish Run, officially opened the unmanned autonomous driving travel service, which means that the "unmanned behind the steering wheel" automatic driving service is opened for the first time in China's megacities.
I remember that when the Baidu driverless car project first started in 2013, the market also had no shortage of doubts, and now it seems that the value of time has been reflected.
For the future of folding screen mobile phones, the author believes that you can "wait for the flowers to bloom".