At this point, the Black Shark mobile phone is no longer able to return to the sky

On March 4, Luo Yuzhou, CEO of Black Shark Technology, posted a landscape picture on Weibo, accompanied by a line of text - "Spring River Water Heating Duck Prophet". But embarrassingly, the comments under this Weibo were occupied by salaried employees. It seems that the wage storm that broke out a few months ago, Black Shark still has not been able to calm down.

(Source: Weibo screenshot)

At the same time, a number of game mobile phones under Black Shark have gradually been removed from the official store and mainstream e-commerce channels. The Black Shark 5 Pro Chinese aerospace version used by Luo Yuzhou on Weibo is also in a state of non-purchase in the official flagship store of Black Shark JD.com. All indications are that the Black Shark will most likely not have any new phones launched.

(Source: Screenshot of JD.com)

However, recently, Black Shark 6 made an unexpected appearance on the second-hand trading platform. That is to say, Black Shark's new gaming phone has actually been planned, and may have reached the stage of close to mass production. However, under many negative factors, the probability of Black Shark 6 will not officially land on the market.

Black Shark 6 may be the "concept machine" that warmed up 3 months ago

According to the description of the idle fish seller, this Black Shark 6 should be an engineering machine, and the configuration information given includes 12+512GB storage, 120W fast charging and IMX686 main camera. In terms of appearance, according to the actual photos, the Black Shark 6 uses a center hole screen on the front and is equipped with three cameras on the back. Interestingly, there is also an exposed metal contact on the underside of the rear camera, which is supposed to be used to connect modular accessories. The system interface information shows that the system equipped with this phone is JOYUI 13 based on MIUI 13, which is the version updated on March 16, 2022.

(Source: Mobile App screenshot)

Prior to this, the revelation information related to Black Shark 6 has been circulated on the Internet. The well-known blogger @Digital Chat Station posted in February that the Black Shark 6 is equipped with a 2K single-hole flexible straight screen, Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip, 5000mAh battery, 120W fast charging, and IMX686 main camera. The Black Shark 6 also features symmetrical dual speakers with a large sound chamber, an active cooling and cooling system, and a ceramic body. Some of the information and the configuration provided by the idle fish seller can correspond to it.

(Source: Weibo screenshot)

It is also worth noting that Black Shark's official Weibo released a promotional video at the end of 2022, saying that it brought a concept mobile phone, and the main selling point was "extremely cold active refrigeration system". In this only 21-second video, Black Shark shows the back appearance of this phone, which is the same as the spy photo of Black Shark 6 on the idle fish. The video also shows that the concept machine achieves cooling and cooling by adding a cooling fan on the back.

(Source: Black Shark official)

At this point, we can basically be sure that the Black Shark 6 engineering machine that appeared in Xianyu is real, and it leaked into the second-hand market through some informal channel. And Black Shark 6 is indeed the next generation of game flagship products that Black Shark has basically planned and is ready to go on the market, even if it is not exactly the same mobile phone as the previous warmed concept machine, it also integrates the core selling point of active cooling and heat dissipation.

However, the mass production machine of the Black Shark 6, we should not see. @数码闲聊站在微博评论区直言不讳地说黑鲨 "the mobile phone business has been sent", and the first official Weibo of Black Shark Technology in 2023 was posted on January 1, with the content to celebrate New Year's Day; The second Weibo post was posted more than 40 days later, promoting the latest Black Shark heat dissipation clip. When asked by netizens whether Black Shark has gone out of business, the official micro reply was that "the peripheral business is not affected." That is to say, the official has acquiesced to the fact that the mobile phone business is suspended. The stillborn Black Shark 6 has become the swan song of Black Shark game mobile phones.

(Source: Weibo screenshot)

Feelings are priceless, but buying a machine is risky

If there is no accident, the Black Shark 6 will be the last mobile phone product of the Black Shark. For Black Shark fans, it's certainly commemorative. However, Xiaolei still has to remind everyone to pay attention to the risks of buying such products.

First of all, this mobile phone has not been officially released, let alone a regular product sold normally, and the product quality and after-sales guarantee are 0. Judging from the description of the idle fish seller, this phone is still in a bricked state, although it can enter the Fastboot mode, but there is no corresponding firmware package to flash. The second-hand price of the Black Shark 6 engineering machine is 3999 yuan, and the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 flagship can be bought through formal channels at this price, in contrast, this mobile phone really has no purchase value.

(Source: Idle Fish Seller)

Secondly, even if it is a mobile phone product normally released by Black Shark, Xiaolei still recommends that everyone buy with caution. At present, all Black Shark game mobile phones have been basically discontinued in major channels, even if some platforms can buy them, follow-up system maintenance and upgrades, after-sales service and other aspects are full of uncertainty.

In the years when the mobile phone industry was in the big waves, there were many mobile phone brands that left or were marginalized, and in recent years, there were HTC, Meitu, Hammer, Meizu and so on. However, some of these brands are still in the main company, and some have been acquired by other giants, even if the follow-up system maintenance is not in place, the basic after-sales rights and interests are still guaranteed.

At present, the two main businesses of Black Shark Technology's mobile phone and VR are almost suspended, and only the peripheral business is normally operated. Tencent abandoned the acquisition plan, major shareholder Xiaomi is bearish on the game mobile phone category, and the future of Black Shark Technology is not optimistic. At this time, for users, it may be the wisest choice to buy Black Shark products carefully.

Going against the current, Black Shark can't get out of the gaming mobile dilemma

As a well-known game mobile phone brand that was once all the rage, Black Shark's current situation is embarrassing. In just a few years, the black shark has experienced a process from rapid rise to rapid curtain call.

In November 2017, Razer, a well-known game peripheral company, released its first mobile phone, officially building the concept of "gaming mobile phone". As a sub-category of smartphones, gaming phones are characterized by a series of optimizations specifically for gaming scenarios, such as high refresh rate screens, physical game buttons, enhanced heat dissipation devices, and exclusive optimizations at the software level.

Black Shark Technology was founded in 2017, and the first game mobile product was released in April 2018. Looking at the timeline, Black Shark is not much behind Razer. Moreover, Black Shark has its own halo since its birth, Wu Shimin and Luo Yuzhou are former executives of Huawei, and the company's major shareholder is Xiaomi. Black Shark products in the supply chain, sales channels, customized systems and other aspects of Xiaomi fully supported, Black Shark game mobile phone Helo press conference, Lei Jun and Luo Yonghao appeared in the audience at the same time, becoming a topic of talk in the technology circle, the limelight is unique.

(Image source: screenshot of web page)

Regarding the logic of making game mobile phones, Wu Shimin, the founder of Black Shark, once said that the number of premium paid members of Tencent Games has reached tens of millions, and mobile games are a huge market with large scale and broad prospects. Moreover, in 2017, when Black Shark Technology was established, the smartphone industry went downhill after years of continuous growth, and overall sales declined. Xiaomi, the gold owner behind Black Shark, ushered in its darkest moment in 2016, with annual sales plummeting 36% year-on-year.

In this context, gaming mobile phones seem to have become a way to break the game, using differentiated selling points and better gaming experience to tap a market segment. Xiaomi's investment in Black Shark and providing all-round support probably recognizes this idea.

Black Shark's opponents have also appeared, and in April 2018, Nubia launched the Red Devil game mobile phone; In September of the same year, ASUS released the ROG gaming phone. The head brands have launched all kinds of mobile phone products under the banner of "e-sports", openly and secretly rubbing a wave of the popularity of game mobile phones, game mobile phones seem to be ushering in an outbreak.

(Source: ROG official)

Black Shark gaming mobile phones have had their own glory moments, IDC data shows that in 2019, game mobile phone sales increased by 50% year-on-year, reaching 1.6 million units, and Black Shark won half of the game mobile phone market share. However, since 2020, the sales growth of gaming mobile phones has stagnated. Major mobile phone brands have "decoupled" from the concept of game mobile phones, and for the decline of game mobile phones, Lu Weibing, head of the Redmi brand, explained in 2021:

Gaming mobile phones have not been on the market for so long, and last year there were 160-1.7 million units in China with such a plate. Players with small sales will sell tens of thousands of units after a product is launched, with a maximum of two or three hundred thousand units.

The mobile phone industry is an extremely scale effect industry, if there is no scale, your procurement cost can not come down. Existing players cannot support the scale and popularization of mobile games, which is the actual basic status quo of the industry that we see.

The mobile phone industry to such a mature stage today, may have to enter such a game to be able to complete the real existence of the pendant segment, otherwise I think it is impossible to exist, because it cannot support such a large scale.

From the consumer's point of view, with the advancement of chip and cooling technology, ordinary flagship mobile phones can already provide excellent experience when running high-load large-scale games. As for the exclusive features of game mobile phones such as high brush, enhanced heat dissipation, and software optimization, under the crazy involution of manufacturers, they have long been the standard on ordinary flagship mobile phones and even mid-range products.

On the one hand, game mobile phones are encircled, separating themselves from mainstream products, and it is difficult to break through in sales; On the other hand, what was once a scarce selling point is now unattractive to game users.

The new breakthrough path chosen by Black Shark Mobile is to bet on VR, but in a chaotic field full of uncertainty and difficult to make profits in the short term, huge investment can not bring definite benefits, after Tencent abandoned the acquisition, Black Shark Technology inevitably fell into the dilemma of layoffs and salary arrears and main business shutdown. The flow of Black Shark 6 engineering machines into the second-hand market is a manifestation of the collapse and disorder of Black Shark Technology's internal management.