Wisdom Valley Trend (ID: zgtrend) | Wang Yanhe
01 Go forward, don't look back
The mobile phone industry has fallen into a long season.
Consumer research institutions have watched the cycle of mobile phone replacement increase from 18 months and 24 months to 40 months.
Users who have not changed their mobile phones in 4 years, there are many people.
The impact of demand and the lack of innovation are like middle-aged people with heart and no physical strength. The old mobile phone is all rubbed with pulp, and I am reluctant to change to a new one.
Major mobile phone manufacturers are experiencing this great transformation.
Since five years ago, when China's mobile phone market shipments just began to decline, domestic mobile phone brands have shouted "long-termism", to be a good friend of time, to transform, to innovate in science and technology, to launch a charge to the high-end market.
What is a high-end phone?
A phone that is powerful, high-quality, and branded, safe and reliable to use, and that sets it apart from others. The basic threshold of scarcity, simply understood, the price is higher than 4,000 yuan.
In the low-end machine market, the low-price tactic of cutting each other's throats is a dead end to the roll;
And the high-end machine has broad prospects, which is more important than the other, everyone can still clearly distinguish.
Especially in the era of the need to boost consumption, the impact on the high-end consumer market is often the smallest.
By 2022, China's high-end mobile phone sales will already account for 26% of the overall market. This gives mobile phone manufacturers a little confidence.
Liu Bo, Vice President of OPPO and President of China, revealed,
From January to May, China's overall mobile phone market sales fell by about 5%; But the output value of the entire Chinese mobile phone industry chain, that is, the GMV of mobile phones, increased by at least 0.5%.
Sales declined, but production value increased.
This shows that there is no shortage of consumers who are willing to pay for high-end mobile phones.
On June 30, Counterpoint Research, a global industry analysis organization, released the "White Paper on China's Smartphone High-end Market".
Today, China's high-end smartphone market has developed into the most active and diversified market in the world;
The number of new flagships released in 2022 exceeds 40, bringing together the latest achievements of the entire industry chain;
China is not only the manufacturing highland of global smartphones, but also the highland of technological innovation, leading the global smartphone technology and product innovation.
But at the same time, in the first quarter of this year, Apple accounted for 79.5% of China's high-end mobile phone market of more than 4,000 yuan, Huawei ranked second with 9.4%, and OPPO ranked third with 3.6%.
In the top three rankings, domestic mobile phones accounted for two places. But the gray screen is stressful.
Counterpoint estimates that in 2023, China's high-end mobile phones of more than 4,000 yuan should have a volume of more than 75 million.
If domestic mobile phones can break through in the high-end market, there are still chips to continue chasing deer.
Conversely, if you don't occupy it, the market will only be swallowed by outsiders.
Liu Zuohu, OPPO's chief product officer, said,
"If you think of this as an unbridgeable chasm, you're pessimism. But if you look optimistically, the potential is great.
Why is the high-end market so hard to shake? Or is the product not attractive enough to impress users.
We have a saying within us that "good products can go through cycles". At any time, whether the environment is good or bad, it is necessary to make a good product.
When you have this faith, we look at the changes in a more positive and right direction. ”
02 Domestic mobile phones, two major battlefields
In order to reverse the situation that Apple is the only one, China's mobile phone head brands have almost established a dual flagship strategy of "straight screen flagship + folding screen".
First increase the number of high-end mobile phones and collectively divide Apple's market.
This seems to have become a high-end, wordless tacit understanding of the industry as a whole.
Folding screen flagship
Folding screen mobile phones are a new battlefield opened up by the Android camp, focusing on differentiation.
Compared with the hard fight to make chips and do ecology, the folding screen mobile phone of 7,000 yuan at every turn can obviously seize the high-end market.
Few people know that OPPO already has a prototype of a folding screen inside in 2018.
They didn't say anything, which is a highly confidential part of the company.
Some people in the company do not understand, because folding screen prototypes have appeared on the market, and they have also watched Samsung be the first to rush down to eat crabs.
But OPPO has not released products, because after several products came out, they investigated and found:
More than 70% of consumers believe that the experience of folding screens is no different from straight plate machines.
This is clearly unreasonable.
But facts have proved that the excitement of previous years only allowed the folding screen to account for more than 1% of the overall mobile phone market.
If you continue to copy the experience of hard straight plate machines, then the folding screen may be like this.
What do consumers like about folding screens?
What is the difference between folding screen and large screen?
People who are willing to spend this money, why choose folding screens instead of apples?
Sadly, there are no answers to these questions.
When OPPO did research and development, the human factors research, interaction design, and consumer demand of the folding screen were a blank and there was no mature solution.
And because the folding screen market is small, those who engage in systems and software do not adapt to it separately;
OK, no one does it, then OPPO will do it itself.
Starting from the basics, study how people hold folding screen mobile phones, how to brush, how to play, which finger to use, and what angle. Redesign the interaction through scientific evaluation.
The biggest pain point of folding screens is creases. After 4 years of research and development, OPPO has formed a new folding structure scheme on the OPPO Find N hinge: Seiko quasi-vertebral hinge. The new hinge structure greatly optimizes the crease, and when folded, the inner screen is in the shape of a drop of water, making the screen fold more naturally and the crease more slight.
On the operating system, OPPO made a ColorOS system adapted to the large screen, and talked about adaptation with the head APP one by one.
It sounds rustic, but what is the "user-centric" product spirit? Here it is.
At the end of 2022, OPPO finally released the folding screen flagship Find N2.
In the first quarter of this year, OPPO folding screen sales increased by more than 300% year-on-year, with a share of 28.4%, it became the first in China's folding screen market.
It is expected that the cumulative sales of the Find N2 series will exceed 500,000 units in the first half of 2023.
The success of the folding screen is only a first test of OPPO, opening up a way forward in the high-end market.
After OPPO entered the first echelon, other domestic brands such as Honor and vivo are also constantly expanding their respective folding screen lineups.
It is expected that in 2023, China's shipments of folding screen mobile phones will exceed 5 million units. A more prosperous folding screen market is coming.
Image flagship
In 2016, domestic mobile phone manufacturers successively invented dual-camera, multi-camera mobile phones, and began to roll up image capabilities.
In this regard, Apple's "bath bomb" three shots are all later chasers.
Today, images have become the track that tests the comprehensive combat effectiveness of mobile phones.
Because the competition of mobile phone image capabilities has become an infinite war of hardware, algorithms, chips, and aesthetic capabilities.
In order to pursue the ultimate hardware performance, everyone launched a stack-type "arms race".
Almost all brand flagship machines are equipped with high-end devices such as 1-inch outsole, periscope telephoto lens, and hardware image stabilization.
Many people don't understand these professional terms at all, but these expensive parts are the "culprits" that make mobile phones expensive.
Hardware stacking, after all, has a limit.
On the one hand, mobile phones are mobile phones after all, only so big, they can't fit the camera's long guns, short cannons, and electronic components; On the other hand, if you roll up hardware like this, it is to work as a worker for hardware companies such as Samsung and Sony.
OPPO is very clear that the next battle of imaging will turn to "computational photography". In layman's terms, it is algorithms and AI that use computing to break through the shackles of hardware.
In March, OPPO released the image flagship Find X6, which is positioned to "bring moving images into a new era".
In terms of hardware, the three main cameras of ultra-light and shadow were defined for the first time, including ultra-luminous periscope telephoto, one-inch large bottom wide angle, and freeform ultra-wide angle. Each camera is a flagship, eliminating the traditional "main camera" concept
In terms of algorithm, advanced AI algorithms are used to replace the ISP algorithm that has dominated mobile phone photography in the past ten years, achieving qualitative image clarity and purity.
OPPO not only wants users to truly achieve "what you see is what you get", but also wants everyone to take a good photo with a sense of work.
Of course, a thousand words may not be comparable to this picture.
The most straightforward sensory impact and the most direct use experience break people's cognition of mobile phone photography.
Chen Mingyong, founder and CEO of OPPO, once said, "Taking this as the core cultural values and insisting on creating great products are the two magic weapons on which OPPO relies for success."
Starting from OPPO, domestic mobile phones are beating drums and want to further tear the breakthrough of the high-end market. They have made breakthroughs in imaging, folding screens and software experience, and are trying to invent new products and new forms of smart terminals.
It will also be a long and protracted battle.
And opportunity always favors those who really understand the consumer and are willing to polish good products carefully.
03 Return to reality, emotional resonance
On the last day of June, OPPO's flagship store in Guangzhou officially opened, with a crowd and long queues.
This store is opened in Guangzhou Grandview Mall, in an area of more than 660 square meters, and is positioned as an OPPO benchmark store;
The entire store adheres to OPPO's concept of "humanistic design", more than 50% of the store uses wood grain materials full of natural elements, blended with metal, and the colors close to the daily sky - warm gold and champagne silver tones, while retaining the sense of technology, creating a warm atmosphere.
OPPO fully demonstrates the true color of detail maniac, from the overall layout to home design, to the arc of the long table where the products are placed, and the implicit design of the mobile phone cable box, all of which fill the ergonomic details to create an invisible but comfortable shopping experience.
Discerning people can see at a glance that this store costs a lot.
But with stores like this, OPPO intends to upgrade 300 across the country this year.
At first hearing, many people may not understand this operation.
Compared to the real knife and gun of technological innovation, opening a store does not seem to be a sexy story.
And from a global perspective, electronic brands such as Samsung, Sony, and Bose are reducing the scale of offline stores.
Three years of the pandemic, consumers have accelerated their migration online; E-commerce activities with strong price cuts also make the party call it really fragrant.
Microsoft is powerful enough, with a market value of $2.5 trillion and the originator of flagship stores around the world, suddenly announced in 2020: permanently close global retail stores and turn to online sales.
In the matter of opening stores, only Chinese manufacturers and Apple have insisted on it.
Because the physical product, the real experience, is ultimately in the offline space.
When you are detached from reality, you lose control of the product and cut the most direct communication experience with the consumer.
Among Chinese mobile phone manufacturers, OPPO is the most able to open stores.
In 2016, Bloomberg published an article titled "Why Apple Lost to Two Unknown Local Brands in China." One of them is OPPO.
Foreign reporters came to China to see that the streets were full of blue-green factories.
From big cities to small counties, OPPO has built a huge network of stores. It is not unusual to see three OPPO green labels on one street.
But if we say that in the past, OPPO opened a large number of stores in order to complete the establishment of channels, market education, and brand penetration;
So today, OPPO upgraded its flagship store to show its "humanism", show its own technological aesthetics, and further boost market confidence.
OPPO's new flagship store has 40% space for non-sales attributes.
You can see in the store that the whole lighting color is closer to the color of daylight and skylight, creating a comfortable feeling of technology and nature, and the unity of nature and man.
Walking through the product table, you can see the ultra-image exhibition area and art gallery, immersed in the photography masterpiece, which creates the beauty of technology and art without boundaries.
The store is no longer full of promoters chasing you, but experience consultants with a wide range of hobbies and different characteristics; There are also regular photography art co-creation, hand-drawn DIY, user communication, science and technology O school and other activities.
A flagship store should be a technology brand, the largest product.
You not only have to sell your mobile phone in the store, but also sell your services and ideas to bring consumers closer.
Liu Bo, Vice President and President of OPPO China, said:
"Continuous improvement of products, services and experiences with users as the center is OPPO's long-term commitment to consumers."
"In the future, the proportion of online is very large, but we judge that users still need to have more contact and communication with brands, whether online or offline, they need a larger scope, wider and closer contact."
04 Epilogue
In 2023, there needs to be a sense of crisis and some ambition.
Mobile phones, or the entire consumer electronics industry, have competed to the point where they are today, and the pattern has solidified.
I know that everyone loves to listen to the stories of the counter-attackers and cheer for "overtaking in corners".
But we must admit that most of the scientific and technological achievements such as AI, operating systems, and screens need to be precipitated for a long time.
There will always be ups and downs in the cycle, recovery will always come, and the high-quality development model has become the main proposition of the times.
This is both an inflection point for the mobile phone industry and a new normal for China.
OPPO's choice is to go back to the masses.
It is patient to do original innovation, to understand consumer needs, to take all greatness and advantages to the extreme, to invent new products.
Whether OPPO can take the lead in evolving and become Apple's challenger, we can wait and see.