Text: Xiao Yu
Since January 9, 2007, Jobs released the first generation of iPhones, which has since opened the prelude to smart phones. Now, 15 years later, the world has developed into the era of smart machines. At the same time, many excellent smartphone brands have also been born. On August 1, Canalys released the data on global smartphone shipments for the second quarter of 2022.
From the perspective of brands, Samsung smartphones continue to lead the world, with shipments of 61.8 million units and a market share of 21%. Apple ranked second, with smartphone shipments reaching 49.5 million units, accounting for 17%. Xiaomi shipped 39.6 million units, ranking third, followed by OPPO and Vivo with 27.3 million units and 25.4 million units, respectively, ranking among the top five in the market.
Overall, global smartphone shipments in the second quarter of 2022 were 291 million units, down 7% year-on-year. It is reported that this is already the fourth consecutive quarter of year-on-year decline in global smartphone shipments. Looking at the mainland market, shipments of Chinese mainland smartphone market in the second quarter of 2022 also fell by 10% year-on-year to only 67.4 million units.
From the perspective of the entire first half of the year, from January to June 2022, the overall shipment of mobile phones in the domestic market totaled 136 million units, down 21.7% year-on-year. It is reported that in the past 1-5 months, domestic mobile phone shipments fell by 17.7%, 31.7%, 40.5%, 34.2% and 9.4% respectively year-on-year. In June alone, it grew by 9.2% year-on-year. Also this year, domestic mobile phone shipments have increased positively for the first time.
Behind the data, the essence is that the mobile phone cannot be sold. In fact, many consumers have reported that they have not changed their mobile phones for a year or two or more. From "new must be changed" to "not changed for many years", consumers' enthusiasm for new mobile phones has dropped significantly.
Why can't the phone sell?
The impact of adverse economic conditions such as the pandemic
Bearing the brunt of the epidemic, it has a lot to do with the outbreak of the epidemic. This goes back to 20220, where data shows that global smartphone shipments were 1.24 billion units in 2020, down 8.8% compared to 2019. By 2021, although the mobile phone market has ushered in a recovery, it is not as good as before the epidemic, and the total annual shipment of global smartphones is 1.35 billion units, an increase of 7% year-on-year.
By this year, the pandemic and geopolitical tensions have adversely affected the smartphone market. At the same time, unfavorable economic conditions have intensified, and inflation problems have plagued many countries around the world. It is reported that since the outbreak of the epidemic in 2020, the inflation rate of countries around the world has begun to climb, and the global inflation rate will reach about 4.3% in 2021.
Since entering 2022, inflation rates in major economies have continued to rise. According to data released by the World Bank, global inflation reached 7.8% in April, and inflation in emerging market and developing economies reached 9.4%. In addition, the IMF report shows that as many as 112 countries in the world have inflation rates above 6%.
According to the classification of inflation rates in economics, the inflation rate is between 6% and 9%, which is a serious inflation. This shows that the world has been plunged into severe inflation this year. Eventually, it will certainly be reflected on the supply side, and it is not surprising that shipments of smartphones and other non-essentials have declined.
Moreover, the most realistic is nothing less than the problem of funding. Under the influence of the epidemic in the past two years, inflation has continued, many people's incomes have declined, and the frequency of replacing mobile phones has naturally decreased. It can be seen that the epidemic has become a major reason affecting market consumption. Of course, the mobile phone market is not the only one affected by this. The entire large consumer goods industry, except for a few categories, has encountered certain challenges to a greater or lesser extent. Obviously, the development of the smartphone industry is not only that.
Mobile phone prices are too high
I believe that many people have found that now the price of mobile phones is rising, if you want to buy a slightly durable mobile phone, it is often five or six thousand or even tens of thousands of yuan, coupled with the decline in income brought by the epidemic overlap, but also let people who want to change mobile phones be dissuaded by the price. Apple made a clever choice at this point. During this year's 618, Apple made a rare price reduction promotion for Apple's mobile phones.
It is reported that this is a promotion specifically for the Chinese market. Many people have lamented on social platforms that "more than 4,000 iPhones 13 are cheaper than many Android emperors." According to e-commerce platforms such as JD.com, Tmall and Pinduoduo, the version of iPhone13 with 128GB of memory has a minimum price of 4799 yuan.
In addition, if you buy on some online platforms, you can also enjoy promotional activities such as installments and interest-free and free charging heads. This also allowed Apple to sell nearly 7 million iPhones in 618 this year, ranking first. Through the means of price reduction promotion, Apple has also become the biggest winner in the field of high-end mobile phones. Coupled with Huawei's forced withdrawal from the mobile phone 5G market, Apple has also successfully seized the high-end market.
The degree of innovation of mobile phones is not high, and the differentiation is not obvious
However, even if Apple takes the lead in price reduction promotions, it is difficult to reverse the overall downward trend of the mobile phone industry. One of the problems is that exists in all smartphones, including Apple. That is, the difference between mobile phones is not obvious, and I believe that many people have found that smart phones are basically the same.
Take the Apple mobile phone, Apple iPhone 12, iPhone 13, if you look at them side by side, the gap is not obvious, the only difference in appearance that can be seen is the camera module, and the bangs have become smaller. In addition to other internal performance inventions, there is not much difference.
Even high-end machines such as Apple are still like this, and the field of Android machines is roughly the same. In fact, most manufacturers nowadays often do not make any breakthroughs, they launch new mobile phones, and the iteration speed of mobile phone updates is getting faster and faster. The functions of mobile phones are the same, and they do not give consumers a bright feeling in key areas, and it seems that there is no need to change mobile phones.
In addition, in fact, it is also related to the stronger performance of mobile phones now, as long as it is a mobile phone of several thousand yuan, under normal circumstances, it is used for two or three years, basically no problem, and consumers will naturally not change their mobile phones frequently. In short, in the matter of increasing the sales volume of mobile phones, mobile phone manufacturers have a long way to go, and if they want to increase mobile phone sales, perhaps only mobile phones really have a new breakthrough, such as the turn of functional machines to smart machines, which may arouse people's interest.