How long have you not changed your phone? One year or two years?
According to the "Report on Switch users who win the smartphone market" released overseas by the survey agency
The average replacement cycle of Chinese users is 28 months, as for overseas consumers to change machines for a longer time, generally in 35-40 months, to know that from 2014 to 2019, young people in order to pursue the trend, can be changed more than once a year, Apple users from 6 to 11, Xiaomi users from Mi 6 to Mi 10, Huawei users from Mate 7 to Mate30, but now the new machine is still out, but many people around the mobile phones have stayed in the previous generation.
Starting from July 2021, with the release of Snapdragon 888plus, Android mobile phone manufacturers held a new product conference, and the process is the same, find a forced venue, do a forced PPT, introduce a new generation of processors, cameras and other hardware with forced grids, announce a forced Rabbit running score, ask a talk show star with a forced grid, of course, find a friend with a forced grid (Iphone) to be afraid, and finally, also announce a price that is not forced, of course The most compelling thing is the various self-created technology concepts mentioned during the conference, such as turbo cameras, superconducting hexagonal crystal graphene, reverse gravity double VC liquid cooling, three major TurboX technologies, well, at least from the name it does sound full of new technologies and black technology.
Of course, this is not the end, at the end of 2021, Snapdragon 8Gen1 was released, Android manufacturers came to another round of forced press conferences, Xiaomi 12, Glory Magic4 and a bunch of new flagship releases, but a large part of the people are tired of this frequency, simply do not bother to pay attention, the inner reaction of people who pay attention to the conference is mostly: Just this?
And the person who gets the new mobile phone will no longer be asked by him: What is the new mobile phone used? Of course, there is no colleague in the whole office together, with P40pro + hundred times zoom, to shoot the freshness of the opposite building, this kind of non-concern for the new mobile phone, but also direct feedback on the sales data of the terminal.
From 2014 to 2018, the upgrade of the national 3G to the national 4G, the mobile phone completed the transformation from a feature phone to a smart phone, and the sales of smart phones began to decline year by year after reaching a peak of 444 million in 2017, and the decline rate was further accelerated after 2020. Shipments for the full year of 2020 will be 330 million units, and 314 million units will be shipped in 2021.
According to the data released by the China Communications Institute in May this year: in the first quarter, the overall shipments of the domestic mobile phone market accumulated 69.346 million units, down 29.2% year-on-year, the listed company Xiaomi on May 19 announced the first quarter of the financial report revenue fell by 4.6% year-on-year, net profit fell by 52.9%, other unlisted manufacturers, although they can not see the financial report, but it is rumored that they have also lowered the order volume in the second and third quarters, it is expected that the entire mobile phone market, This year's annual shipments can reach 280 million, even if it is very successful, the entire mobile phone industry seems to be facing a cold winter, people have become completely unconcerned about mobile phones.
Why is this happening? Isn't the usage scenario of mobile phones as high as before?
Obviously, not really.
During this 3-year epidemic period, whether living or working, people's dependence on mobile phones has reached an unprecedented peak.
Whether it is home office at work, or the popularity of short videos and mobile games in entertainment, as well as scanning health codes, travel, payment, etc., the vast majority of people have reached the point where they can't work properly without mobile phones, if mobile phone manufacturers can make consumers feel that as long as they can fully upgrade the above scene experience, then I believe that there are still a considerable number of users willing to pay wallets for it, and a domestic brand mentioned when it released a new flagship last year that the reason why it dares to impact the high-end, The confidence comes from the insight into consumer demand, which can transform the innovation and upgrading of science and technology into the consumer experience of the product.
However, is this really the case?
First of all, the hardware, such as the upgrade of the mobile phone processor, from the Snapdragon 865 to the 865PLUS, and then to the 888, 888PLUS, 8Gen1, this is the upgrade of the four generations of flagships, but in many life scenarios, it is difficult to experience the gap between them.
Another example is the mobile phone camera, the rear camera from the microscope to the telescope, from the dual camera to the three camera, four shots, from the matrix revolution to the circle of the sky, and then to the four cylinders.
What about front shots? From bangs to pop-ups, to pills, to digging holes, every generation of mobile phones will tell you that these are the optimal solutions, the latest technology.
In recent years, the improvement of mobile phone performance is nothing more than these: the upgrade of the chip, the increase in the number of cameras, how to make the front camera look better, there is really nothing to talk about, just talk about how they adjusted the fire dragon into an ice dragon, how they changed the back panel of the mobile phone from plastic to glass, and how the color of the back plate changed from traditional black and white to high-end "Cangling Green", "Klein Blue" and so on; As a user, I feel that the changes under these technical bottlenecks can only be called fine-tuning, and it is difficult to innovate.
The wishful thinking of manufacturers is actively guiding consumers and tirelessly holding a new flagship conference, and if consumers repeatedly pay out of pocket, the sense of experience in exchange is very limited.
At present, the changes brought by 5G technology in the civilian field are far less than the wave from 3G to 4G in 2014, whether it is the signal coverage of the base station or the battery life support of the mobile phone battery, which makes the 5G mobile phone manufacturers have been looking forward to the replacement power greatly discounted, so that many people do not take the initiative to open the 5G switch in order to save power; There is no breakthrough innovation, just squeeze toothpaste on the parameters, two or three years of mobile phone can be completely used, so why change the mobile phone?
In addition to this, there is a more important reason, people's willingness to spend has begun to decline significantly.
From 2014 to 2018, the annual GDP growth rate of the mainland decreased from 7.4% to 6.7%, especially with the brakes of the currency shed reform, the growth rate of disposable income of the urban population declined significantly, consumption also began to weaken at that time, and the concept of consumption downgrade also began to appear, and the continuation of the new crown epidemic after 2020 made saving money and saving money become the concept of many people, although the epidemic in the mainland was properly controlled in 2021, people thought that the epidemic was completely defeated, and there was a short wave of retaliatory consumption.
However, since March this year, large-scale outbreaks in Shanghai and Jilin have repeatedly made people's originally relaxed nerves tense up again; On the one hand, there is the decline in income and the pressure of unemployment at any time, and on the other hand, the debt leverage accumulated in the previous period; Now people are more and more afraid to consume, in line with the principle of using it, since there is no huge progress in 2022 mobile phones and 2020, it is more difficult to persuade people to change the machine.
In fact, mobile phone manufacturers have been aware of this problem since 2020, and their strategy is very simple, that is, to do high-end and use high-end to attract people to change machines and upgrades.
The overall sales of mobile phones have declined, and small profits and high sales have become history, but if consumers are attracted with high-end, the profits of individual products have gone up, and they can still live well.
At the same time, in this period, in the mobile phone market, Huawei has been affected by the mobile phone business for well-known reasons, and this part of the market share has been vacated, giving other mobile phone brands an excellent window period to enter the high-end market, so almost all domestic mobile phone manufacturers have proposed a high-end development route, and have said that they must do high-end machines.
The core of high-end is: independent technology, especially on the most core chip on the mobile phone, a mobile phone will integrate many chips, respectively responsible for different functions, including S0C chip, baseband chip, storage chip, sensor chip, image chip and so on; Mobile phone manufacturers can bring users a better product experience through the tuning and optimization of self-developed chips and upgraded software, and the improvement of product experience can realize the improvement of brand value and support its high brand premium. This is where Apple, Google, Huawei, and Samsung, the four mobile phone manufacturers with independent SOC design capabilities, sell expensive.
Their high-end are away from the self-developed SOC chips, other mobile phone manufacturers can only rely on qualcomm and MediaTek such suppliers, Huawei's exploration of SOC, and finally blocked by the US empire, TSMC such a mature advanced process single wafer foundry has been banned from OEM for Huawei chips.
In the current environment, the soC integration and technical barriers are relatively high, the short time to achieve independent research and development is very difficult, the need for a long period of time to invest in funds and technology, as well as continuous product operation feedback, and even if you make a certain degree of breakthrough, before the entire SOC industry chain has not achieved autonomy, waiting for you may also be Huawei-style blocked.
But mobile phone brands want to truly achieve high-end, this road of independent research and development, must still go on, since now the self-developed SOC chip technology and environment are difficult, then start with other chips.
Just in the past few years, mobile phone photography is the most serious field of internal volume, almost all mobile phone manufacturers are competing in this field, mobile phone photography is also one of the very few areas that can make end users really feel the technological upgrade, so if you can make a breakthrough in the self-development of ISP chips, to a smaller extent, you can highlight your own technology, attract the attention of users, enhance the image of the brand, to a large extent, this self-research process, but also the accumulation of chip product chain perfection and the establishment of talent system, Xiaomi has developed its own ISP surging C series, OPPO has developed Mariana, and Vivo has developed its own V1 series image chip, which are successful explorations by domestic manufacturers.
At present, the biggest improvement of the brand image of the self-developed chip should be the blue factory vivo, mainly because of the past image of the vivo, "factory sister special machine", "IQ machine", all kinds of small fresh meat endorsements, offline all rely on the shopping guide to drink, cut leeks; Technology and self-development is not its strength, but in the past two years, vivo's X series has established the positioning of the image flagship, starting from X70 to join the self-developed VI chip, the photography ability has suddenly jumped to the head of the Android camp, and this year's new X80 has become a benchmark for friends and businessmen used to compare the level of photography in major reviews, and the market response is also very good.
At the beginning of May, in the price segment of 3500-5000 yuan, the proportion of domestic mobile phone sales ranked first, in addition to strengthening independent research and development, the high-end market, in the mid-end market, as well as the downline market, in order to awaken the consumer's desire to change the machine, seize the share, the mobile phone brand manufacturers, also began to adjust the product strategy, came up with more sincerity.
For example, the 2000-3000 price segment was previously widely criticized as an "IQ machine", either the processor pulls the crotch, or the image function can only scan the code, or the plastic material looks cheap, only the Xiaomi system, vivo's online IQ series, there is still a good hardware stack in this segment, most of the other brands of mid-range machines are relatively chicken ribs, it can be said that it is completely forcing consumers to add money to the high-end and exist.
However, starting this year, the competition in the 2000-3000 range began to red sea, according to the recently released "Domestic Mobile Phone Sales Data Report", 2022 Q1, 250--99 US dollars price of mobile phone sales increased by 50.8% compared with 2020.
Under the consumption downgrade brought about by the epidemic, there are many users in the range of two to three thousand, which is regarded by mobile phone manufacturers as the same important strategy as the impact of high-end, the heap of Redmi K50 is more ferocious than in previous years, batteries, fast charging, 2K screens are all added, and even the optical image stabilization is also supplemented; Vivo has also upgraded the hardware configuration of the quasi-flagship SOC, dual speakers, and linear motors on the S series of the "IQ machine" and "factory sister machine" that has been criticized the most in the past, and the vivo is currently at the top of the list with 28.2%, followed by Glory, OPPO, and Xiaomi with 20.3%, 20%, and 18.9% respectively.
Among them, the largest proportion of single-model sales is not the Redmi K series known for its cost performance, but vivo's S12 series, which can't help but make people sigh, from 2018, because of the endorsement of Cai Xukun, "the machine you are too beautiful", to now 2022, whether it is the high-end machine X series, but also in the mid-range machine S series of the real - machine you are too beautiful, in just four years, vivo has unconsciously achieved the upgrade of the brand image, the changes in the mobile phone market in the past four years are so shocked, Huawei from the first to forced to withdraw, Xiaomi returned to the high-end market, Glory from sub-brands to sell themselves, every change contains huge changes and opportunities.
In order to solve the self-manufacturing of SOCs, Huawei began to lay out on the vehicle SOCs with low production process requirements; Xiaomi, as always, represents the first launch, hardware, and speed; Glory also returns from the new life; Vivo, while strengthening independent research and development, began to highlight the cost performance.
At present, the limitation of technical bottlenecks and the decline in people's consumption capacity under the epidemic, the impact of 5G on consumer terminals is also very limited, the mobile phone industry has indeed encountered bottlenecks, but this is not the reason for mobile phone manufacturers to mess up and not think of making progress, the breakthrough of technical bottlenecks, the recovery of consumption after economic recovery, all contain unlimited opportunities.
In 2009, the US subprime mortgage crisis spread around the world, the mobile phone industry is also a monopoly in Nokia and the Symbian system is not open to the outside world, the entire mobile phone industry is like a pool of stagnant water, but it is precisely in such an environment that Apple launched the iPhone through independent innovation, and completely changed the mobile phone industry and the entire world.
The current industry dilemma, the absolute monopoly of the iphone on the high-end market, and how similar it was in 2009, in such a dilemma, domestic mobile phone manufacturers can only become the game-breaker if they continue to innovate and explore.
We are very pleased to see that in dealing with the high-end battle led by Apple and dealing with the mid-range red sea brought about by consumption downgrade
The efforts of domestic mobile phones in this regard have never slackened.
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