Image source @ Visual China
Text | Koi Finance
A mobile phone used for four years, the camera is broken, the screen buttons fail, the back cover is separated... However, this year's young people are still waiting, waiting for the release of mobile phones that meet their expectations.
Netizens feedback on the reasons for not changing mobile phones, "poor" occupies the first place, often five or six thousand mobile phones, so that many people are prohibitive. Many rice noodles and fruit powder have also given up the new one every year, and netizens bluntly said that "others will not envy you because you" have "changed a new mobile phone". In other words, mobile phones are no longer a symbol of status, and young people have lost the motivation to change frequently.
Of course, the loss of attractiveness of mobile phones and the lack of innovation ability of mobile phone manufacturers also have a certain relationship, the replacement of mobile phones can be said to be cautious, so that many young people have lost the desire to replace mobile phones. According to data released by industry analysis company Counterpoint, the average replacement cycle of mobile phone users has exceeded 31 months; market research institute Strategy Analytics said that the average replacement cycle of Chinese users is 28 months.
This eventually led to a record low in weekly sales in the past decade, according to Lagoa Finance, the national smartphone sales fell to 4.15 million units in the 15th week of this year, which has returned to the sales data of 10 years ago.
Young people are not keen to change mobile phones, which also seems to be a signal to the mobile phone industry.
01 "Brand" to the left, "Quality" to the right
In just a few years, young people have been brainwashed by the trendy concepts of the Internet celebrity economy, live streaming with goods, short videos, and new consumption, and have lost the most basic judgment of things while advocating the "extravagant style". The arrival of the epidemic has given many young people a head start, so that the public has suddenly woken up, and the concept of consumption has gradually become rational and "measured", but the market has not been able to adapt to this change in time.
As a result, contradictions are gradually formed, and consumption is downgraded significantly.
The results of the first quarter of 2022 can be said to be quite dismal, and mobile phone shipments have fallen sharply, especially domestic mobile phones. According to the "Domestic Mobile Phone Market Operation Analysis Report" recently released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, in February 2022, the domestic market mobile phone shipments were 14.864 million units, down 31.7% year-on-year; among them, the domestic brand mobile phone shipments were 12.783 million units, down 34.7% year-on-year.
Of course, young people do not suddenly lose interest in mobile phones, but the performance in the past two years is particularly obvious, and the replacement cycle is gradually getting longer. According to the report of the research agency Konath, since the first decline in China's mobile phone shipments in 2017, it has fallen for 4 consecutive years; until 2021, shipments have increased by 1%.
For the mobile phone industry, the most obvious change in price is the "cost-effective" millet, in 2021 millet in the high-end route layout is quite a lot, a number of high-end flagship machines released continuously, such as Xiaomi's first folding screen flagship MIX FOLD, Xiaomi explores black technology MIX 4, digital series iteration of Xiaomi 12 series and so on. Xiaomi has caught up with VO in price, but the configuration is not eye-catching, and the expectation value of rice noodles has dropped significantly.
Although Xiaomi has spent a lot of effort to lay out the high-end, the pin crown is not among them, and the low-end model Redmi K40 stands out and wins with a cost-effective advantage. In fact, vo is the same, the entry into the high-end route is actually not smooth, especially the revenue growth rate has not been able to increase, sales are still dominated by low-end mobile phones. This can be explained that although the major manufacturers have "drifted", consumers do not buy it.
Benchmarking Apple has always been the positioning of millet, so that the price of millet's digital series has gone all the way up, but sales have fluctuated, among which xiaomi 10 has gotten rid of the label of "parity" at the dividing point, which is thousands of yuan different from xiaomi 9, but sales have exceeded 6 million units, and sales have risen sharply, perhaps this has given millet the confidence to increase prices, after all, the number of rice noodles is still quite considerable.
In essence, the reason why Xiaomi Mi 10 will be bought by consumers is because its product strength has been enhanced, which is still in line with Xiaomi's pursuit of cost performance. However, Xiaomi's brand influence can not continue to create momentum for its product quality, under the premise of global lack of core, the hardware configuration of mobile phones cannot be improved, but the price is soaring, which is difficult for users to pay only for the brand effect.
When brand influence does not match the quality of its products, it is often intuitively reflected in the user's choice. In the mobile phone industry, there is a widespread phenomenon that the price of products only increases and does not rise in quality, which is one of the reasons why young people do not pay for new mobile phones. But at the same time, consumers still have hopes, waiting for the consumerism bubble to burst and usher in the spring of the mobile phone industry.
But the reality is often quite dramatic, high-end brand mobile phones suddenly reduced prices, domestic brand mobile phones continue to rise in price, which also contributed to the iPhone's latest digital series sales soared. Apple is still the most profitable consumer electronics manufacturer, with the iPhone accounting for only about 15% of the world's market share, but taking away nearly 70% of the industry's profits.
Compared with The domestic, major manufacturers have to be forced to cut production in order to ensure the balance between supply and demand, industry insider Guo Mingqi said that China's major Android mobile phone brands have cut about 170 million orders in the first quarter of this year, accounting for 20% of the original shipment plan in 2022. This is very different from the previous analysts' predictions, the market demand has hundreds of millions of floating, which is bound to make the mobile phone market shrink significantly, especially for non-head brands.
Under the trend of "volume falling and price rise", the frequency of young people changing mobile phones may bottom out, but the opportunity to rebound has not yet appeared.
02 "Failure" of the young market
The ebb and flow of new consumption is an inevitable trend, and in today's environment, the consumption habits of young people are rational and "measured". According to Baidu search data, the search popularity of savings and wealth management increased by 46%. In the survey, it also shows that nearly 60% of young people say that they tend to "only buy daily necessities" when consuming, and 40% of young people choose to "buy less and buy better".
For the smartphone industry, the development has been relatively mature, and the attractiveness to consumers is declining. Industry insiders analyze that the continuous progress of the processor makes the performance of the mobile phone stronger and stronger, at least the mobile phone will not become stuck in a year, and the user's use cycle depends on the life of the mobile phone, rather than the attractiveness of the new function to the user.
The audience of the mobile phone market is young people, and when young people are unable to take care of themselves, the decline of the mobile phone market seems to have traces. It is undeniable that the current consumption level of young people is generally reduced, and there is a double pressure of car loans and housing loans, especially young people after 80 and 90, with a high debt ratio.
A 2019 survey report showed that the number of real debt in China' young people, mainly post-80s and post-90s, is as high as 44.5%, that is, nearly half of young people are in debt. According to statistics, the per capita arrears of the post-80s on the mainland exceed 220,000, while the per capita arrears of the post-90s generation exceed 120,000 yuan.
At the same time, young people are also facing the crisis of unemployment and difficulty in re-employment, and judging from the recruitment information, they are currently in a state of more monks and fewer porridges. Zhaopin once posted a "record-breaking" poster, indicating that the number of job seekers in a single day exceeded 5 million, and the number of job seekers in a single day exceeded 16 million. And according to the weekly market report released by Zhaopin, the average competitive index of the top 10 hot industries in this year's spring recruitment is 17.73, compared with only 9.94 in the same period last year. That is to say, in the spring recruitment of 2022, the difficulty of applying for job seekers is doubled, and the number of competitors is twice that of last year.
This directly leads to young people becoming rational when consuming, and replacing mobile phones has also changed from pursuing a trendy trend to focusing on cost performance, which makes the VO who takes the marketing route extremely embarrassing. In particular, VIVO, in the 2022 Q1 global smartphone shipment report released by the market research agency Canalys, vivo ranked fifth with a market share of 8%, which is the most obvious brand of volatility. Among them, the decline in sales in February was the most obvious, and the data report of CINNO Research showed that vivo sales in February fell by 38.6% year-on-year, ranking from second to fourth.
It is worth noting that in the competition of major manufacturers, Samsung and Apple are still in a solid position, occupying 24% and 18% of the market share respectively. Apple also gained its highest first-quarter market share since 2013, and both the iPhone 13 series and the iPhone SE were popular with consumers.
But as the popularity of new mobile phones gradually declines, young people's consumption habits are becoming rational, according to April statistics, Jingdong's self-operated iPhone sales in 13 months were only 295,200 units, while march data was 535,400 units, down nearly 50%, of which the previously popular iPhone 13 Pro Max fell the most obviously, with sales of only 52,200 units in April.
In general, in the case of the economic downturn, the consumption tendencies of young people are changing, and the choice of mobile phones is more cautious, no longer blindly pursuing fashion. Young people's minds are gradually clear, and while the consumerist bubble is bursting, the mobile phone once again returns to its own value and is chosen by the public as a tool.
03 Stop paying for "innovation"
The speed of the mobile phone market is amazing, the conference continues, On May 6, iQOO Neo6 SE conference; on May 11, Sony XperialV... In May, OPPOReno8 series, Honor 70 series, RedmiNote11T series, vivo S15 series and so on flocked to the scene. Every year, mobile phone manufacturers are piled up to issue new machines, even if the epidemic situation, has not delayed the update progress of major manufacturers, but compared with the initial update range of smart phone development, the current new machine has fallen into a bottleneck period.
Taking the iPhone's digital series as an example, every September, various predictions for new machines flock to the scene, and it is clear that the public's expectations are extremely high. In particular, the conjecture of configuration and appearance shows that the public urgently needs innovation and change, so as to mobilize the user's enthusiasm for purchase. But contrary to expectations, "fruit powder" in the disappointment again and again, accept the reality that there will not be much change.
I think that year, the advent of the iPhone 4 can be said to have caused a great sensation, leaving a strong mark in the history of mobile phone development. Subsequently, the emergence of the "nail household" iPhone 6 pushed the development of mobile phones to a climax, when domestic manufacturers were struggling, blindly following the trend of imitation and making domestic mobile phones criticized. However, since the advent of the iPhone X, Apple has begun to "squeeze toothpaste" updates, the screen of the iPhone 12 has even returned to the straight side, it is clear that Apple and the entire mobile phone market are in step with each other, have entered a bottleneck period, and if you want all breakthroughs, you will inevitably need innovation.
As the smartphone industry matures and the competitiveness between brands continues to increase, innovation has become a magic weapon to win.
At this time, the folding screen stepped into the high-end market, from the beginning of the not optimistic, to today's future trend, according to CINNO Research forecast, in 2022 the global market folding screen smartphone sales are expected to reach 15.69 million units, an increase of 107% year-on-year. Global folding screen smartphone sales are expected to reach 57.4 million units in 2025, with an average annual CAGR of 66%. Samsung, which has been in the game for three years, has been updated to the third generation, and by the end of 2021, it has monopolized 83.47% of the global folding screen mobile phone market. Obviously, Samsung has seized the opportunity of this market, and with the continuous expansion of the market size, the folding screen may have the opportunity to become the mainstream.
In addition, there has been no new action in the mobile phone market recently, but the price has been rising, which makes it difficult for consumers to pay for the so-called "innovation" of merchants, after all, only the price growth, but can not see the essence of innovation.
Mobile phone innovation seems to touch the current ceiling, screens and cameras have become the focus of research of major manufacturers, while the research and development of chips is quite limited, in the global lack of core environment, chips are not only difficult to find, but also quite a lot of problems. For example, Qualcomm released snapdragon 888 and Snapdragon 8G1 in terms of power consumption performance is not ideal, equipped with these two chips of the mobile phone appear a large number of burning motherboard, mobile phone heat, analysis of its main reason or Samsung's 5nm process and 4nm process and not passed, Taiwan media digitimes pointed out that Samsung's 5nm process in terms of technical performance than TSMC's 5nm process is too far behind.
Therefore, smartphones have been silent for too long, and fresh blood is urgently needed to stimulate the development of the market. However, there has been no new breakthrough in domestic chip research and development, and the situation of domestic manufacturers in the global smartphone market can be said to be very passive, and it has always lacked the right to speak. For the development of the domestic mobile phone market, technological innovation is obviously fundamental, and it is also the key to regaining the young market.