#FMCG Eight Talks##618##Mobile Phone#This year's "June 18 Promotion" is undoubtedly the "most volatile year" in the mobile phone market. It is worth noting that this year's "6 • 18", in addition to the cruel price war in previous years, the battle over the mobile phone form of the folding screen has also begun to diverge. Horizontal and vertical folding screens, large and small folding screens and other folding forms are numerous, which type of subdivision can stand out from this track, and has also attracted market attention.
From straight plate to folded
It is probably not an exaggeration to describe the competition in the "June 18" market as "bloody". Even Apple, which has always been strong, has taken the initiative to choose "price diving" - data from head e-commerce platforms such as JD.com, Tmall, and Pinduoduo show that the 128GB version of the iPhone 13 has fallen from 5999 yuan to 4799 yuan, and the price has been reduced by 20%. This also makes this year's "June 18" flagship battle particularly fierce.
Faced with the bloody price war of straight plates, major mobile phone manufacturers have to look for a new blue ocean on the folding screen, and the price war has also burned to the market. At present, among the best-selling models of Jingdong folding screen mobile phones, the price of small folding mobile phones such as Samsung, Huawei, vivo, etc. has dropped to 5500 yuan or 6000 yuan; The price of left and right folding mobile phones such as Honor, OPPO, and Xiaomi has dropped to less than 8,000 yuan; The price of high-end folding mobile phones of Samsung and Huawei is about 15,000-21,000 yuan. Moto's 45,000 yuan small folding new products only went on sale on June 5, but the first sales of omni-channel exceeded 10,000 units, and on June 2, 5, 11-13, 5 days, 5 days to strongly land on the "6•18" folding screen sales TOP 1, becoming the biggest dark horse in this year's "6•18" mobile phones.
IDC released a quarterly mobile phone tracking report showing that in the first quarter of 2023, China's smartphone market shipped about 65.44 million units, down 11.8% year-on-year. However, shipments of folding screen products in China remained stable in the quarter, up 52.8% year-on-year.
"In the next 3-5 years, folding screen mobile phones will become the only category with rapid growth in the mobile phone industry, and the global growth of folding screen mobile phones is expected to reach 45 million units." Chen Jin, general manager of Lenovo's mobile phone business department in China, said in an interview with a reporter from Beijing Business Daily.
Data from multiple research institutions also verified Chen Jin's prediction, and DSCC estimates that global shipments of foldable smartphones will reach 19 million units in 2023, and 37 foldable mobile phones will be online. Counterpoint's numbers are more optimistic, predicting that the global folding screen mobile phone market will grow by 52% year-on-year to 22.7 million units in 2023.
The latest consumption data of JD.com and Suning.com "6•18" also shows that the sales of folding screen mobile phones have doubled. From 8 p.m. on May 31 to 24 p.m. on June 1, the transaction volume of Jingdong folding screen mobile phones increased by more than 200% year-on-year, and folding mobile phones have become one of the hot spots for mobile phone consumption. During the first round of Suning.com's "6•18" outbreak, the sales of folding screen mobile phones increased by 150% year-on-year. However, the two platforms did not disclose specific sales figures.
Although the folding screen is gradually accepted by consumers, the weight, hinge and screen reliability are still the difficulties that major folding screen mobile phone manufacturers need to break through. Like the cost of hinges is equivalent to the price of a low-end smart phone, the cost of the screen is generally higher, which requires enterprises to have a strong supply chain and independent research and development capabilities, and achieve a breakthrough in quantity, thereby reducing costs.
From large screen to small screen
The scale of folding screen mobile phone industry is growing rapidly, has become an important position for the head mobile phone manufacturers to scramble, after a period of time of large folding screen mobile phones, horizontal and vertical folding screens, large and small folding screens and other folding forms began to differentiate, which subdivision categories can stand out from this track, but also attracted market attention.
Industry observer Hong Shibin said that folding screen mobile phone manufacturers have sought breakthroughs in the "lightweight" of mobile phones. Small folding screens have multiple advantages such as mature technology, reduced thresholds, and improved user scene requirements, and their scale growth rate will far exceed that of large folding screen mobile phones in the future.
After Samsung, Huawei, and OPPO launched small folding products, recently, Lenovo's Motorola has also made frequent efforts in the folding screen mobile phone market, launching the latest generation of small folding products to seize the market segment.
"We believe that small folding screen mobile phones have reached the eve of a rapid outbreak." Chen Jin said that the sales of folding screen mobile phones have grown rapidly, and the global growth of folding screen mobile phones this year is expected to exceed 20 million units. In China, in recent years, folding screen mobile phones have increased by about 70% year-on-year every year, while the growth of small folding screen mobile phones has exceeded 100%, and the popularity of small folding screens will become a trend, and it is also one of the vanes for the development of folding screen mobile phone market.
"For small folding screen mobile phones, it is expected that by about 2025, the scale of more than 15 million to 20 million in the Chinese market will be exceeded, so it will not become an absolute mainstream, but it will become one of the main choices." Chen Jin said.
From product to ecology
Since the end of 2018, the global mobile phone market has begun the "folding process".
However, the folding screen market in the first three years was basically in the "warm-up period", but the real first outbreak node came from the first half of this year. Its main manifestations are: almost all TOP mobile phone brands have launched new folding screen products, product form and experience in the mature at the same time, many new use scenarios have emerged, folding screen mobile phone also from a product to a new ecological transformation.
A reporter from Beijing Business Daily found at the Lenovo Innovation Open Day that the moto razr 40 Ultra made the external screen "all screens", and its high-quality main camera brought a variety of new experiences such as dressing mirrors, dual-screen gang shooting, and DV mode.
"The biggest difference between folding screens and straight board machines is that folding screens have very powerful social currency attributes and fashion attributes. It's not just how fast the CPU, how much memory, how fast the charging speed, but also how you chat with each other and show your personality. What we want to build is a full ecology on the screen, and of course, there are many application scenarios. Chen Jin said.
Hong Shibin said that from straight board to folding, more importantly, the improvement of the actual experience behind it and the breakthrough of interaction methods can solve the pain points that cannot be solved by small screens, single screens, and straight screens in the past, such as mobile office, tablet mode and financial needs that business users focus on, which is a typical "unconsumed market", and the future ecological space is huge.
Beijing Business Daily reporter Tao Feng Wang Zhuli