【Mobile China】On the evening of March 28, Redmi held a new product launch conference again, bringing the new model of Redmi Note 12 Turbo. Before the conference, Lu Weibing, general manager of the Redmi brand, warmed up on Weibo many times, and even threatened to change the market pattern of Chinese mainland mid-range mobile phones with the help of this new machine. Confidence and ambition are beyond words.
Lu Weibing, general manager of Redmi brand
Regarding the new Redmi Note 12 Turbo, its configuration is indeed very powerful, whether it is the new second-generation Snapdragon 7+ mobile platform, or the high-quality flexible OLED straight screen, or the classic battery life configuration of 5000 mAh + 67W fast charging, it is enough to make countless consumers pay attention to this product. However, in addition to strong cost performance and competitiveness, Redmi Note 12 Turbo This model also has a key point that has attracted a lot of discussion among netizens, that is, the 1TB storage version of "cabbage price".
Redmi Note 12 Turbo
Long before the release, Redmi announced that it will bring a 16GB+1TB large storage version on this new machine, which is comparable to the luxury configuration of a PC. However, perhaps many people did not expect that Redmi can bring this version of Note 12 Turbo to the price range of about 2500 yuan, which is very amazing. However, when we understand the recent news of the mobile phone industry and the memory chip industry, we can know that the price of 1TB storage mobile phones is not only expected, but also the trend.
The first year of the popularity of large storage
The smartphone market in 2022 is relatively sluggish, with less than 300 million smartphones sold in China that year, down sharply from the previous year. But even so, at the beginning of 2023, the competition between major manufacturers has not subsided, but has become more intense. Aside from the flagship mobile phones that have always been almost full, in the mid-range market, we can also see the emergence and rapid popularity of large storage models.
16GB＋1TB
At present, manufacturers such as OnePlus and Realme have shown strong competitiveness in the mid-range market. Part of this competitiveness comes from their efforts to popularize large storage models. Among them, OnePlus's OnePlus Ace 2 and OnePlus Ace 2V and other models are not only affordable, but also provide up to 16GB of running memory and 512GB of storage space, which was only available to flagship models last year. Realme also brought 1TB of storage space on the GT Neo5 model released not long ago.
OnePlus phone
It should be noted that these models of OnePlus and Realme are not flagships, and their terminal prices are roughly around 2,000 yuan to 3,000 yuan, which is also the main price range chosen by many consumers when buying mobile phones. Judging from the actions of manufacturers such as OnePlus and realme, as well as Redmi, which has just released a new machine, 2023 may become the first year of the popularity of large storage models.
The price of upstream manufacturers collapsed
Manufacturers choose to popularize large memory models in 2023, and there are no reasons behind it, and the collapse of product prices of upstream memory chip manufacturers is undoubtedly one of them. What we need to understand is that the situation and pattern of the memory chip industry has changed dramatically in the past period.
Once upon a time, the manufacture of memory chips was dominated by overseas manufacturers, and for various reasons, the retail price of various products was relatively expensive. However, with the rise of domestic storage manufacturers Yangtze River, the memory chip industry has undergone great changes, a new round of competition and elimination is underway in this market, and the price war between several major manufacturers can be described as in full swing. According to the official financial report, South Korean memory chip giant Hynix lost money again in 2022 after a decade, with a loss of 1.7 trillion won or about 9.3 billion yuan in a single quarter. Behind the losses was a 74.6% drop in net profit that year. Hynix officials said that the loss was due to sluggish demand for memory chips and plummeting prices.
Hynix financial data
Mobile phone flash memory chips are generally not sold to the retail market, and ordinary consumers do not have the ability to directly upgrade or replace mobile phone flash memory chips, but in the PC market, the price collapse of memory chips can make consumers very obviously perceived. In the first half of 2022, the price of a 500GB Kaixia (Toshiba) RC10 SSD is still around 350 yuan, and by the end of the year, a 1TB Kaixia RC20 (an upgraded version of the former) SSD has also dropped to this price.
In this case, the cost of mobile phone manufacturers purchasing flash memory chips for mobile phones will undoubtedly be greatly reduced, and they almost collectively choose to start popularizing large memory models in 2023, naturally partly because of cost pressure reduction, so in addition to high-end flagship mobile phones, we also hope to see the emergence of large storage versions on models in the lower price segment in the future.
Big storage is a necessity
In addition to price, the urgent needs of users are another important factor for vendors to accelerate the popularity and decentralization of large storage versions. Throughout the history of smartphones, we can develop that the leap in mobile phone storage needs is closely related to smartphones themselves. Now, in the era of 5G and the era of high-quality images for all people, consumers' demand for mobile phone storage will undoubtedly be greater.
In the past few years, imaging capabilities have been one of the key points of competition among manufacturers. In 2023, a two-megapixel sensor and a one-inch large-bottom sensor will appear in the smartphone industry at the same time. Moreover, thanks to the publicity of manufacturers and the improvement of people's living standards, images are increasingly valued by consumers and are gradually becoming one of the main functions of smart phones. But at the same time, the rise in image capabilities is undoubtedly putting forward greater requirements for the storage space of smartphones. Photos and videos are popping up mobile phone storage, which is gradually becoming the main reason for more users to change phones. The large storage model will undoubtedly be very attractive to them.
In addition, smart phone APP is also expanding rapidly, such as WeChat, QQ, etc., which I believe many people have experienced. However, we need to note that although we have entered the 5G era, the application scenarios of 5G have not been well developed. In the 4G era, short videos, video calls and online shopping have been well popularized through smartphones, forcing software vendors to increase the space occupied by mobile apps. In the 5G era, if a similar situation occurs, then the user's demand for mobile phone storage space is undoubtedly more urgent. Therefore, if you plan to not change for a long time, then 512GB or 1TB of large storage is a factor that must be considered when switching.
Write at the end
Of course, whether it is manufacturing costs or user demand, if you want to truly achieve the popularity of large storage models, you still need to take concrete actions from various mobile phone manufacturers. In fact, from a certain point of view, large storage is somewhat detrimental to the development of manufacturers, because it will obviously slow down the pace of user replacement. But in the end, we can see that Chinese mobile phone manufacturers did not choose this path, but put the needs and experience of users first.