Author: Qi Qi
Editor: Liu Han
Image source: OPPO Weibo
Nearly seventy percent of the world's mobile phones are made in China, but domestic mobile phone brands only have nearly 40% of the global market. This may be the source of the complex emotions of domestic mobile phone manufacturers.
In the past ten years of the rapid development cycle of smart phones, some brands have disappeared, some brands have risen and surpassed, and the Chinese mobile phone market has experienced twists and turns, but at the same time there are continuous opportunities.
In 2022, which has been crushed by the wheel of history, domestic mobile phone manufacturers have also taken out a lifetime of study to deal with it. After all, in 2022, the mobile phone industry is cold. According to data from the Academy of Information and Communications Technology, "in November 2022, the domestic market shipped 23.238 million mobile phones, down 34.1% year-on-year; In the first 11 months of 2022, the total shipment of mobile phones in the domestic market totaled 244 million units, down 23.2% year-on-year.
In 2022, although the market is no longer as prosperous as it used to be, the domestic smartphone market is also showing a new trend, and it is likely to become a new starting point for Chinese mobile phone manufacturers in the future.
Battle high-end: 4000-5000 price band fierce competition
December of the past year is the peak period for new product releases by domestic mobile phone manufacturers. In 2022, the industry will hold ten press conferences in succession, and both the industry and consumers will feel overwhelmed.
The layman looks at the liveliness, and the insider sees the doorway. From the information revealed at the ten press conferences, it is not difficult to see that OPPO, Xiaomi, IQOO, Huawei and other manufacturers have successively released new machines, and the proportion of high-end models is relatively high. Among them, the high-end mobile phone track with a price band of 4000-5000 is fiercely competitive.
In terms of mid-range models, such as vivo's iQOOQ Neo7 racing version, the starting price (8GB+256GB version) is 2799 yuan. The Honor 80 GT focuses on game performance, and the starting price (12GB+256GB version) is 3299 yuan. The new machine of Xiaomi Group's "four consecutive shots" is also priced at about 3,000 yuan.
The competition for high-end models is much fiercer. OPPO released a new generation of folding screen mobile phone Find N2 series, of which the starting price of the vertical screen version (8GB+256GB version) is 5999 yuan; Xiaomi 13, the three-year answer to Xiaomi's high-end strategy, is priced at 3999 yuan, and Xiaomi 13 Pror is priced from 4999 yuan; The starting price of iQOO 11 (8GG+256GB version) is 3799 yuan, and the highest configuration of iQOO 11 Pro (16GB+512GB version) is priced at 5999 yuan;
Why is the competition for high-end models fierce? This is related to the "anxiety" of manufacturers in the past two years.
Image source: ViVO Weibo
Domestic mobile phone manufacturers that have finally broken free from the "price war" have fallen into another vortex in recent years - more and more "volume" in terms of mobile phone hardware, functions and design, and manufacturers participate in market competition through "stacking materials". As a result, the configuration of mobile phones is getting higher and higher, the cost is getting higher and higher, the price is not as "beautiful" as before, and consumers' willingness to buy is getting lower and lower. But the competitive price band has also risen a lot.
Profit luring is an important factor. The profit of high-end machines is much higher than that of low-end mobile phones, and it has long become an industry consensus. Apple, which has long obtained more than half or even eighty percent of the world's mobile phone profits, has always been a representative of high profits in the industry. However, in China, since Xiaomi, the "price butcher", entered the market, the overall profit margin of domestic mobile phones has been at a low level.
However, since 2018, domestic mobile phone manufacturers have chosen to tear off the "cost-effective" label, take the high-end route, and successively launch high-end models of more than 4,000 yuan. Even Xiaomi, which seized the market with a "low-price strategy", began to try to develop the high-end market three years ago. Behind these moves is naturally the manufacturer's yearning for high profit margins.
Then there are relatively low-end mobile phones, and high-end mobile phones are relatively less affected by the economic cycle. This is clearly perceived from the sales figures for 2022. Even in the "most difficult second quarter" of 2022, when smartphone sales in the Chinese market fell by 14% year-on-year, high-end smartphone sales fell by only 10%.
Finally, the chip "stuck neck" incident in 2021 caused Huawei to fall out of the first camp of domestic market shipments. The resulting market vacancy allows other domestic mobile phone manufacturers to see new opportunities. According to incomplete statistics, as of the first half of 2022, manufacturers including OPPO, vivo, Xiaomi, etc. have released a total of 51 new products, and many flagship stores start at more than 4,000 yuan.
On the whole, it is not an accident that high-end machines will be valued in 2022, but an inevitable result of the development of the industry to a certain extent. In the future, the focus of major manufacturers will no longer focus on thousand-yuan machines, but high-end models that can obtain higher profits.
Folding screen, manufacturers "roll" to a new height
Another type of high-end machine is a folding screen mobile phone. And this is also a rare rise in domestic mobile phone shipments in 2022.
Strategy Analytics data shows that in the third quarter of 2022, global shipments of folding screen smartphones climbed sharply, hitting a record high again. At the same time, China's single-quarter shipments of folding screen mobile phone products exceeded 1 million, a year-on-year increase of 246%, far exceeding the broader market and setting the largest single-quarter shipment in history.
The positive data has boosted some confidence in the sluggish mobile phone market. Relevant data shows that as of 2022, 7 mobile phone manufacturers and more than 20 folding screen mobile phones have entered the market. Huawei, Honor, Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo and other mobile phone manufacturers have received widespread attention from the industry every time they launch new products.
▲Image source: Huawei mobile phone Weibo
As one of the earliest manufacturers, Huawei has always been the main force in the research and development of folding screen technology. Taking Mate Xs 2 as an example, its improvement in weight, thickness, crease, fall resistance and other aspects is mainly due to the breakthrough of a number of key research and development technologies; Honor launched Magic V at the beginning of the year, and launched new products at the end of the year, which shows the strategic position of the folding screen within Honor; Looking at OPPO, when folding screen mobile phones are increasingly homogenized, OPPO Find N has won the favor of female users with a special size.
If these are "surface efforts", then hiding 95% of the underwater is the real "involution" direction of major manufacturers.
When the folding screen mobile phone came out in 2019, the price once exceeded 20,000 yuan. For a long time, "changing the screen 3500, the flesh hurts" once made folding screen early adopters suffer.
How to bring down the price is the breakthrough point that mobile phone manufacturers have been seeking for more than three years. At the beginning of November this year, Huawei launched the Pocket S, a folding screen mobile phone known as "affordable to the people", "128GB priced at 5988 yuan" caused an industry "earthquake". You know, the first folding screen mobile phone launched by Huawei mobile phones is priced at 18,000 yuan. Even if Huawei's previous five folding screen mobile phones are priced at the lowest from 8988 yuan.
From 18,000 yuan to less than 6,000 yuan, the price of folding screen mobile phones represented by Huawei has dropped significantly.
Li Zegang, chief analyst of Omdia, said that the price of small-screen folding products began to fall, and more products with new low prices will come out in 2023, and folding products will officially enter the upper volume price segment, bringing about an increase in market penetration.
In addition to the "volume" at the price level, at the technical level, the efforts of mobile phone manufacturers are obvious to all. Among them, the screen and the hinge are the two major technical difficulties of folding screens, and they are also the most important value enhancement links.
Taking the hinge as an example, Honor spent one year self-developed ultra-thin suspended water drop hinge technology, launched the industry's thinnest horizontal internal folding machine Honor Magic V, and even used a new self-developed "Luban 0 gear hinge" on the latest generation of folding flagship Honor Magic Vs; OPPO uses the mortise and tenon process and slide rail link to replace the previous rivet structure, which greatly reduces the number of parts used in the hinge;
Lower selling price and greater technical strength are behind the investment of manufacturers regardless of cost. For manufacturers, only after the formation of scale effect, this part of the investment is likely to see a return.
The feedback from the market did not disappoint manufacturers. According to Counterpoint's global folding screen smartphone market forecast report for the third quarter of 2022, global folding screen smartphone shipments in fiscal 2023 are expected to increase by 52% year-on-year to 22.7 million units. In fiscal 2022, global shipments of folding screen mobile phones will reach 14.9 million units.
Constantly improving data, it is no wonder that mobile phone manufacturers will bet heavily on folding screens.
Fight for the bottom and fight the ecological battle with the operating system as the core
Is the innovative experience of higher-end models and prices and folding screens the ultimate form of PK for mobile phone manufacturers? The answer is no.
"If the folding screen mobile phone is low-priced, it may be in." Xiao Liu, a post-00s who has just entered the workplace, said, "There is actually no strong demand for mobile phones. The difference between a straight screen or a folding screen is not much, and it is of course a plus to improve work efficiency, and it is easy to use. ”
"Easy to use" is becoming the most simple demand of mobile phones for consumers. And to be "easy to use", it involves the lowest operating system. In the mobile phone operating system, the closed nature of iOS initially allowed Apple products to achieve interoperability and interconnection; Android is more open, but at the same time, the slower the system is used, it has also become a common slot for consumers.
Although each has its own advantages and disadvantages, the two have remained divided into two worlds for many years. This situation was not broken until the launch of Huawei's Hongmeng system in 2021. Although the market believes that the launch of Hongmeng is Huawei's last resort to deal with the "stuck neck", it has been proved that since the launch of Hongmeng, domestic mobile phone manufacturers have paid more and more attention to the operating system.
▲Image source: Huawei mobile phone Weibo
OPPO launched the ColorOS operating system as early as 2013, but it was not widely recognized due to insufficient attention to the operating system in the industry. The intelligent cross-terminal system Pantanal, which was launched last year, allowed the industry to see OPPO's strength at the operating system level.
Also in the operating system is the landing of glory. Last year, the Honor MagicOS operating system was officially launched, and the "one-click three-link" cross-screen and cross-service made this operating system look cool. The latest folding screen mobile phone launched at the end of the year is equipped with this new system, which makes consumers have a deeper perception and evaluation of the operating system.
Although they are the same operating system, the positioning of Honor and OPPO is not the same. The former cross-terminal and cross-service, the goal is to "tie" users to their own ecology; Pantanal is a sub-operating system of ColorOS, with the goal of serving ColorOS. Regardless of how the operating system is laid out, their ultimate goal is on the "ecosystem".
In terms of mobile phone ecology, like high profit margins, Apple's ecology brings immeasurable value to Apple, and domestic mobile phone manufacturers have begun to invest heavily based on this. In time, their operating system may become a new hope for the domestic mobile phone industry.
In addition, in the era of China's Internet of Things, mobile terminals have long been an important entrance. The Internet of Things can widely connect all kinds of devices and be used in various scenarios, whether it is cars, homes, daily offices, etc., once connected, it represents that the mobile phone ecosystem has greater possibilities.
This also means that if major mobile phone manufacturers want to obtain ecological value, then the "entry ticket" of the operating system has become just needed.
Epilogue:
In 2022, the domestic mobile phone industry has already rolled out of a new realm, and this PK has moved away from the initial price and sinking of the industry, but a comprehensive strength competition at the level of research and development, technology, ecology, strategy and so on.
As the "fruit" of comprehensive strength, major manufacturers are bound to release it in 2023, and it may be more worth looking forward to looking at the mobile phone market in 2023 from this perspective.
Resources:
(1) Computer News: 2022 mobile phone market annual inventory: cold wind, dark fragrance
(2) Lei Technology: In 2022, mobile phone manufacturers will fight in the Red Sea
(3) ZOL Zhongguancun Online: 2022 mobile phone ZDC report: consumption downgrade and high-end rise coexist, folding screen or become the biggest opportunity
(4) CAICT: CAICT released the analysis report of the domestic mobile phone market in November 2022
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