ZTE Ni Fei: This year's target terminal shipments of 150 million units, mobile phone shipments increased by 50%

Ni Fei, Senior Vice President of ZTE and President of ZTE Terminal Division.

The overall smartphone market continues to decline, which makes it more difficult for major brands to compete.

A few days ago, Ni Fei, senior vice president of ZTE and president of ZTE Terminal Division, still gave a very optimistic expectation in an interview with the surging news, and it is expected that the overall shipment volume of ZTE terminals in 2022 will be 150 million units, an increase of about 50% year-on-year, of which mobile phone business shipments are expected to increase by 50%, and the domestic mobile phone market will maintain 200% growth.

Ni Fei said that the strong growth of ZTE's consumer business in 2021 has become a strong growth point of the company's second growth curve, and it has the confidence to go further. According to the surging news reporter, the revenue of ZTE's consumer business in 2021 was 25.73 billion yuan, an increase of 59.2% year-on-year. Among them, the revenue of household terminals increased by more than 80% year-on-year; the revenue of mobile phone products increased by nearly 40% year-on-year, maintaining a good growth trend.

The terminal shipment volume of the challenge is 150 million units, and the proportion of self-developed chips has further increased

"We move forward with a pragmatic attitude, explore and look for opportunities in uncertainty, and strive to 'win in stability'." Ni Fei said that last year, due to many factors such as the shortage of chips in the world, the epidemic and weak consumption, it was not easy for the company to achieve such results, and this good situation continued until 2022.

ZTE terminal services include mobile phones, WIFI routers, set-top boxes, 5G CPE and other terminal products.

Ni Fei said that the goal for 2022 is to challenge terminal shipments of more than 150 million units, an increase of 50% year-on-year; of which mobile phone business shipments are expected to increase by 50%, and the domestic mobile phone market will maintain 200% growth.

In the field of mobile phone business, ZTE continues to insist on making efforts from the two directions of display and imaging, and under-screen camera mobile phones and computational photography are still the main selling points of the company's new year products.

Ni Fei also revealed that the new year will promote the construction of domestic offline channels, on the basis of building more than 6,000 sales points by the end of 2021, it is planned to exceed 10,000 sales positions in 2022.

"At present, our Wi-Fi router and set-top box products maintain a high-speed growth trend, and the 5G CPE market share ranks first in the world, so relying on the industry leader advantage of data connection products, we will accelerate the expansion of the ecological scale of smart tablets, wearables, smart screens, home data control centers and other products." In addition, we also attach great importance to the industry terminal business, helping the medical, automotive, electric power, coal mining, retail and other industries to change the first. Ni Fei said that the company will continue to strengthen the "1+2+N" intelligent lifestyle, build with a large terminal ecology, and cover the four core scenarios of sports and health, business travel, audio-visual entertainment, and family education.

Canalys' report shows that in the first quarter of 2022, global smartphone shipments reached 311.2 million units, down 11% year-on-year.

Ni Fei said that a specific development plan has been formulated in the new year. Among them, in the key underlying technology areas, ZTE Terminal will rely on the company's unique cloud, network, terminal, core comprehensive communication capabilities, and continue to increase investment in core technologies such as chips, algorithms, operating systems and network architectures. Among them, on the basis of 50% of the proportion of self-developed chips last year, the proportion of self-developed chips in the product is further improved.

Full screen is the most important direction of mobile phone innovation

"At present, the general environment is uncertain, we must look for certainty in uncertainty, the era of rapid growth of the mobile phone market has passed, and the competition in the stock market is more intense." But we also see two gratifying changes, a mobile phone brand takes turns to become bigger, indicating that there are many possibilities in this industry, followed by the rise of domestic mobile phone brands, the global leadership of domestic technological innovation. Ni Fei said that as long as the industry stops innovating, it will soon be eliminated.

ZTE is one of the first manufacturers to launch a full-screen mobile phone, and has been researching and developing under-screen photography and computational photography before. Off-screen camera does not need to "dig a hole" in the phone screen and is considered a truly full-screen mobile phone solution.

A few days ago, the famous Apple analyst Guo Mingxi posted on social networks that Apple may launch its first full-screen smartphone in 2024, of which the high-end version of the iPhone will be the first Apple device equipped with face ID and a front-facing camera under the screen.

"Full screen has always been one of the most important directions for mobile phone innovation of various manufacturers, and in the past attempts in the market, we have also found that the camera has become a major obstacle to 100% full screen. We have also gradually realized that only off-screen camera technology is the best solution for a full screen without defects. We also feel that the ultimate form of the future bar flagship mobile phone is a full-screen mobile phone, so we have also explored in this direction for a long time. Ni Fei said that he saw many friends following up, which made the track more and more clear, and jointly made the product experience better.

Ni Fei introduced that ZTE is about to release the ZTE Axon 40 Ultra, which is also the third generation of ZTE's off-screen camera phone, Ni Fei called it "the ultimate form of the straight board flagship", and said that the release of the Axon 40 Ultra will lead the off-screen camera technology to maturity.

At present, another technical direction of smartphones is the folding screen. However, ZTE has not launched folding screen products in the past two years. Ni Fei explained, "The company has no problems in technical reserves, and we can pay attention to our products and technical information in the future." But I personally feel that the folding screen mobile phone still has some problems that need to be solved, including thickness, crease, software adaptation, weight, etc., and we will launch a better folding screen solution in due course. ”