The main theme and three highlights of the smartphone industry in 2022

【Editor's note】In 2022, the semiconductor industry is still moving forward in challenges. In the post-epidemic era, the industry downturn, geopolitics and other factors still profoundly affect the global semiconductor industry chain and ecology. How will the global semiconductor industry develop in 2023? Where will the new challenges come from? In order to clarify these problems, "Jiwei" specially launched a retrospective series, inviting representative enterprises in the industry to make a detailed summary and combing of the development trend, hot topics and future prospects of the industrial chain around popular technologies and industries, aiming to provide a reference mirror for upstream and downstream enterprises that are forging ahead in the industry.

Looking back on 2022, inventory is undoubtedly a major challenge that haunts the entire smartphone industry. Affected by the lack of chips last year, mobile phone manufacturers have increased their stockpiling, but the repeated cooling of terminal demand has led to a continuous decline in shipments, and Apple and Android manufacturers are unable to escape multiple rounds of cutting orders.

Although many views hold conservative views on the industry prospects, it is undeniable that inventory, impact on high-end, folding screens, self-developed chips, software ecological construction, short messages, image technology upgrades, etc. have still become the bright keywords of the smartphone industry in 2022.

The main theme of the mobile phone industry in 2022: inventory

With the decline in terminal demand caused by global inflation, the epidemic and the lack of user replacement power, the replacement cycle has been lengthened, and the shipments of smartphone manufacturers have continued to decline, and the Apple and Android mobile phone camps have suffered from multiple cuts.

In April 2022, Apple analyst Guo Mingxi pointed out that the major domestic Android mobile phone brands have cut about 170 million orders this year, and in the past month alone, it once again pointed out that by the end of May, Chinese mainland mobile phone brand manufacturers have cut 270 million orders, that is, domestic Android brand mobile phones have cut about 100 million orders within a month. In addition, in order to ensure the sales of high-end line products, overseas Samsung, Apple and other manufacturers have also reduced the production of low-end series models.

Under the pressure of shipments and order cutting, inventory problems have undoubtedly become an unprecedented challenge in the downward cycle of the mobile phone industry, and have also become the main theme of the consumer electronics industry in 2022.

Behind the pressure, mainly due to the impact of the lack of core and materials in 2021, major mobile phone manufacturers have increased their stocking efforts, and the slump on the demand side has led to a sharp increase in the inventory pressure of terminal brands, which is transmitted to the supply chain of chips, lenses, camera modules and so on, which in turn makes their shipments decline to varying degrees.

Analysts believe that the current inventory clearance of manufacturers is nearing the end, and it is expected that the market will improve in the first half of this year, but because the entire smartphone market is still in the dilemma of lack of innovation, the increase in future shipments is still limited. Industry analysts also pointed out that the number of smartphone inventory days will peak in the first to second quarters of this year, or will continue to the third quarter.

The first year of folding screens is coming?

Although the consumer electronics industry, including smart phones, is still in a downturn, folding screen mobile phones are still "killing" in the downward market winter.

If the biggest innovation in the form of smartphones in recent years, it must be the folding screen. Since 2021, many large domestic manufacturers have entered the game and released new machines, and the popularity of folding screens has become increasingly high. With the improvement and improvement of key technologies such as folding panel yield and hinge, coupled with the maturity of the industrial chain, production costs have been continuously reduced, and product prices have been continuously reduced.

From the perspective of shipments, 2022 can indeed be called the first year of folding machines. Counterpoint Research, a market research agency, estimates that shipments of folding mobile phones are estimated to reach about 16 million units in 2022, a year-on-year increase of nearly 73%. Especially in the context of the decline in smartphone sales, the sales growth rate of domestic folding machines in the third quarter of 2022 was still as high as 114%, achieving a contrarian growth.

In fact, while stimulating the demand for replacement, folding screen is a powerful "pusher" for domestic brand manufacturers to high-end, in the smart phone performance overflow, lack of innovation node, folding machine with a new form and relatively high price, undoubtedly brand positioning and pricing to a new height.

However, industry insiders believe that unless the price of folding machines is close to that of traditional straight-screen mobile phones, or a better ecological interactive experience between software and hardware is realized, there should be no obvious breakthrough in sales in the short term, and the main shipments are still concentrated in Samsung; In addition, when the appearance and function have not been significantly updated, the competition of folding machines of various manufacturers will also focus on the price level, that is, the price decline will continue.

Domestic manufacturers self-developed chips are not stopping

As mentioned above, when the global chip shortage and the lack of industry innovation, in order to get rid of the dilemma of chips subject to people, further realize the localization of some chips, and in order to highlight the differentiated advantages in the homogeneous competition in the stock market, domestic smartphone manufacturers have also overcome difficulties on the road of self-developed chips in recent years.

If we talk about high-profile events in the smartphone industry in 2022, OPPO officially announced that the second self-developed chip must be on the list. At the end of the year, OPPO officially released the flagship Bluetooth audio SoC chip MariSilicon Y, taking a key step in the field of Bluetooth audio. Just in 2021, it just released the first self-developed NPU chip MariSilicon ®️ X, mainly for the field of computational imaging, using AI technology to solve traditional mobile phone imaging problems.

Similar to OPPO's time, vivo's self-developed chip journey also began in 2021. It first launched the first professional image chip vivo V1, and then launched V1+ and V2 chips in 2022, upgrading the image processing unit in turn.

In addition, Xiaomi surging chips, Huawei HiSilicon Kirin chips, etc. have been changed for several generations and have successfully achieved commercial use.

From the current major manufacturers' chip self-research field, most of them are concentrated in imaging, battery management, Bluetooth and other fields, on the one hand, highlighting their determination to create brand differentiation competition, on the other hand, it is also a means for brands to enter the high-end market, "self-research" is one of the good selling points, with self-research capabilities for manufacturers, not only can the core technology firmly in their hands, but also reduce production costs to a certain extent. More importantly, this may also be the domestic mobile phone manufacturers are paving the way for the next stage of promoting self-developed SoCs.

The short message function entered the mobile phone, and Huawei and Apple successively laid out

In addition to folding screens and self-developed chips, the short message function is also an innovative breakthrough function in the smartphone industry in 2022.

At the end of July 2022, the results of Beidou-3 short message communication service were officially released. China North Industries Group Co., Ltd., China Mobile Communications Group Co., Ltd., China Electronics Technology Group Co., Ltd. and domestic mobile phone manufacturers have jointly completed the development of the first domestic mobile phone Beidou short message communication RF baseband integrated chip, realizing the satellite communication capability of Volkswagen's smart phone.

Beidou short message enters the mobile phone in chip mode, which can realize the "No. 1 dual network" design of the public mobile phone with "no card replacement, no number change, and no addition of peripherals", effectively solving the problem of "not in the service area".

In September of the same year, the Huawei Mate 50 series equipped with the short message function was released, which is also known as the world's first public smartphone that supports Beidou satellite messages. The advantage of this feature is that it allows users to send messages and their current location even when they don't have a cell phone signal.

In addition, Apple has also laid out in this field for a long time, it is reported that satellite communication is one of the test items before the mass production of iPhone 14, iPhone 14 satellite communication can provide emergency text message/voice services.

At the same time, with the penetration of the Beidou-3 short message function, companies and concept stocks related to the industrial chain have also benefited considerably, including Zhenyou Technology, Huali Chuangtong, China Satcom, China Satellite, Dahua Intelligence, Bird Co., Ltd., United Strong, Acousto-Optoelectronic Science and other Beidou navigation-related concept stocks have risen and stopped.

Industry insiders pointed out that for ordinary consumers, the short message function is less useful in daily life, and only reflects its role in extreme emergency situations, but despite this, large manufacturers such as Huawei and Apple are still actively layout, which is undoubtedly an upgrade of practical functions for the mobile phone industry with weak innovation, of course, it is also a challenge in terms of cost. And not only consumer electronics, this function also has prominent applications in fishery production, maritime rescue, power protection and other fields.