The long-dormant mobile phone market has become excited again due to Huawei's full return.
On August 29, Huawei Mate 60 Pro suddenly announced that it was on sale, dropping a "bomb" in the industry. Just a few minutes later, the phone entered the "queue" state in the Huawei online store. Around the question of new chips and faster network speed 5G, countless digital bloggers worked overnight to snap up new machines to "unpack". All the hot searches and discussions are witnessing the attention and expectations carried by Huawei.
▲ (Huawei Mate 60 Pro is on sale offline, and the flagship store is crowded)
In particular, Huawei's move is more than half a month earlier than the rumored conference time synchronized with Apple. Many people jokingly called this a "cut-off" by Huawei to Apple.
But Huawei's "cut-off" is not only a small press conference, but more importantly, the lost ground that is about to be "recovered" from Apple.
According to Wall Street News from the supply chain, the Mate 60 Pro has been added to 15 million to 17 million units. Tianfeng International analyst Guo Mingxi also said in an interview with the media that Huawei's mobile phone shipments may reach 60 million units in 2024, and this is likely to allow Huawei to return to the throne of the domestic smartphone market share.
From 2020, for well-known reasons, Huawei chose to retreat passively, and its biggest beneficiary in the high-end mobile phone market is Apple - according to IDC data: in the first half of 2020, Huawei ranked first in China's high-end smartphone market share with a share of 44.1%, followed by Apple with 44%. Just one year later, in the fourth quarter of 2021, Apple won more than 70% of the domestic high-end mobile phone market.
However, while people are happy for Huawei's "raised eyebrows", they can't help but worry about the fate of glory and Xiaomi. In particular, the glory of "mentoring the same family" with Huawei has been quite similar to Huawei in terms of product layout, strategy and distribution system in recent years.
What Chinese people want to see more is naturally that domestic mobile phone brands will bloom with the return of Huawei. Instead of intensifying involution and room-sharing in the profit vortex as in the past two years, mobile phone manufacturers.
In the face of Huawei's comeback, are the honors ready?
Glory is raw
The news of Huawei's return has been circulating in the market for a long time this year. In early August, Honor Mobile CEO Zhao Ming gave a high-level answer in an interview with the media about how Honor is preparing to deal with Huawei.
He said: Huawei returns full of blood, and the happiest thing will be glory. He even paraphrased the famous phrase of his old superior, Ren Zhengfei, "China and the United States should still embrace at the peak and contribute to human society together" to describe today's glory and Huawei: "The best respect is to meet each other at the peak with the strongest products." ”
Zhao Ming's confidence in saying these words comes from the "breakthrough" progress that Glory has made in the past few months.
Since July, Glory's trend can be said to be extremely ferocious, once topped the domestic mobile phone market for four consecutive weeks. A lot of credit for this lies in the latest high-end folding screen Magic V2 released by Honor on July 12.
The price of the model starts at 8999 yuan, and the highest price is more than 10,000 yuan, which is higher than the iPhone 14 Pro Max. In the first sales report, Honor said: Magic V2 broke the sales record of the first sale day of all mobile phones over 4,000 yuan in 2023.
From the design point of view, this phone does have many highlights. First of all, it is only 231g in weight, which is currently the lightest folding screen flagship in the industry, smaller than the iPhone 14 Pro Max. Its self-developed chip performs better than the iPhone 14 Pro Max in a weak network environment. In addition, the Magic V2 is as thin as 9.90mm in closed form and 4.70mm thin in unfolded state, which also sets a record for the thinnest folding screen category.
For this folding screen, Zhao Ming is obviously very satisfied, and bluntly said that there will be no challenger within half a year. He said on Weibo that nearly 50% of the Honor Magic V2 users who have purchased and are lining up are from Apple.
Due to its outstanding sense of design, fashion and professionalism, the Magic V2 has been on sale so far, and according to market rumors, sales have exceeded 300,000 units.
On August 8, Zhao Ming said at a media conference: Magic V2 has exceeded the previous generation in about a week on the market, and it is expected that one month after the start of sales, it will exceed the life cycle sales of the previous generation flagship Magic Vs.
Until the beginning of September, on the official flagship store of Jingdong and Honor Tmall, the Honor Magic V2 was shown to be out of stock. A director of Honor factory told "City Boundary" that the scheduled volume of Magic V2 is still in the capacity climbing period, and the supply of products exceeds demand.
In offline channels, many consumers have reported on social platforms that Honor Magic V2 can only be purchased at a higher price, and it must be activated on the spot after purchase to avoid scalpers reselling twice. Some users revealed that in order to prevent scalpers from reselling, some channel providers will even require users to leave the packaging box and come back to pick it up a month later.
Affected by the hot sale of Magic V2, on August 1, according to media reports, in the W26-W29 week (July 2 to July 23), the market share of honor shipments was 16.5%, 16.9%, 18.5%, and 19.5%, respectively, occupying the first place in China's smartphone market share for four consecutive weeks.
According to the "city boundary", the data is the monitoring data of BCI, a research institute in the industry, which will monitor the shipment changes of the domestic mobile phone market on a daily/weekly basis, and the main service manufacturers and channels will generally not be released to the C-end market.
With the foundation of the successful launch and hot sale of the new flagship machine, "challenging Apple" has once again been put on the agenda of glory and even many mobile phone manufacturers.
After all, many domestic consumers have begun to get tired of Apple's "squeeze toothpaste" innovation. "When you put the iPhone 11/12/13/14 together, it is only enhanced from appearance to function, and it does not bring breakthrough disruption and innovation to the industry." Zhao Ming said in an interview with the media.
According to a search of Zhao Ming's Weibo by "City Boundary", from July to August, Zhao Ming mentioned Apple seven times on Weibo. "The upcoming iPhone 15 will not change much in nature compared to the iPhone 14 to some extent." Zhao Ming said in MWC2023's speech.
Rush to the high-end life and death battle
From the beginning of this year, it can be seen from the release plans of mobile phone manufacturers, including Honor, that the mobile phone market, which has been dormant for two years, is brewing a new round of reshuffling and variables - of course, Huawei's return will be the biggest variable for all players, including Apple.
From the industry's various predictions, Huawei is likely to regain the throne of market share, and it is bound to squeeze the market share of other manufacturers. But in fact, it is difficult to say whether China's mobile phone counterparts have lost a competitor or an ally in the past three years of Huawei's "stealth".
From September 2020, after Huawei passively gave up its market share, Honor and Xiaomi once embarked on a road of "rushing to the high-end" in order to fill Huawei's vacancy. But this confrontation with Apple has not become easier due to Huawei's absence.
The fight will continue until around 2022, due to the overall downturn in the mobile phone market, major manufacturers have to return to the low-end machine market for internal roll.
According to Canalys data, annual global smartphone shipments will decline by 12% in 2022, of which the domestic mobile phone market will fall by 14%. Specific to several major manufacturers, the overall decline is even greater. Among them, the global shipments of vivo and OPPO fell by as much as 22%, and Xiaomi fell by 20%.
From the perspective of the entire market, in the face of a shrinking market environment, Apple's continued strong prices have made the road to high-end for domestic manufacturers difficult.
In order to stabilize the basic market and profit margin, several major manufacturers will pay more attention to destocking and maintaining sales in 2022. To this end, manufacturers have reluctantly transferred the configuration of many flagship machines to low-end machines.
For example, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8+ chip was previously used more on flagship machines and was widely used in mid-range machines in 2022. The Redmi K60 is equipped with a domestic 2K screen, the iQOO Neo7 racing version uses 120W fast charging technology, and the OnePlus Ace 2 features a curved screen + IMX890 main camera.
Under the fierce competition in the Red Sea market, manufacturers have played the "machine sea" tactic. In more than a year, Honor has successively launched 3 generations of digital machines including 60, 70 and 80, which are sold together in stores.
Similarly, the vivo S series, OPPO Reno series and the IQOO brand have all experienced two or even three generations of changes in a year, and the previous generation of new machines has just been on the market, and it will be sold at a reduced price - all of which make dealers complain.
The media has reported that Honor has closed more than 1,000 stores in 2022. This year, there is almost no hope for the goal of "challenging Apple".
However, although the mainstream product system of mobile phone manufacturers can only be helplessly "rolled" at the low end, at the level of high-end flagship self-research strategy, each company has never given up. Especially from 2023, the situation began to change as the economy picked up.
First of all, the high-end trend of the mobile phone market is becoming more and more irreversible - and among them, the high-end performance and price of domestic mobile phones have been especially recognized by consumers.
According to data released by Canalys, the average price of smartphones in China has exceeded $450 (about 3,200 yuan) in the second quarter of this year, and it is hoped that it will continue to climb in the next few quarters. IDC data shows that the market share of high-end mobile phones above $600 in China reached 23.1% in the second quarter, an increase of 3.1 percentage points compared with the same period in 2022.
Relevant people told the "city" that consumers' enthusiasm for entry-level models has gradually receded, and high-end machines that gather cutting-edge technology in the industry can stimulate the desire of core consumers to change machines.
From the media to the audience, it was also found that now brands hold press conferences, basically focusing only on introducing flagship machines, even if the entry model has a huge sales, even the basic disk of the manufacturer, it is always hastily brought over.
Whether from the perspective of brand building or the richer profits of high-end machines, the difficulties and dangers of "rushing to the high-end" must be overcome. At the Xiaomi press conference that just ended not long ago, Lei Jun said more bluntly: For Xiaomi, rushing to the high end will be a battle of life and death.
At the same time, after two years of accumulation and precipitation, domestic manufacturers have increasingly found a feeling at the level of high-end machine design. Everyone began to show big moves, and since March, the flagship high-end machine war of mobile phone manufacturers has been intensively launched.
Throughout March, major manufacturers have been non-stop, and the press conference has also chosen to be in a huge stadium, topping the specifications to the extreme, inviting thousands to tens of thousands of spectators at every turn.
On March 6, Honor's flagship Magic5, known in the industry as "the first to depart from Huawei's design language", was launched and equipped with self-developed chips.
Two weeks later, the OPPO Find X6 series featured the "strongest mobile phone on the surface". Subsequently, Huawei also released a new generation of imaging flagship Huawei P60 series and folding flagship Mate X3. In April, Xiaomi launched the Xiaomi 13 Ultra, which claims to be "stacked" to the extreme in the slogan of Lei Jun's "return to experience".
All this, especially the continuous increase in the proportion of high-end machine sales, has made the breaking of Apple's "one family" ecosystem, with the efforts of major mobile phone manufacturers, see the light again.
On August 7, Zhao Ming said in an interview: If the mobile phone industry only maintains micro-innovation and cannot break the existing situation, leaders will use ecological and brand advantages to gradually solidify the industry.
"When Magic5 doesn't come, you have to hold back all kinds of voices and questions. Be sure to give it enough time to develop so that it can have enough strength. Zhao Ming said.
Nirvana for three years, and then fight for apples
In fact, after Huawei's "retirement", in the past three years, domestic mobile phone manufacturers have gone very hard. And the journey of glory can be called particularly arduous. Against the halo of Huawei's "same door", glory is also walking in the shadow of Huawei.
In November 2020, for well-known reasons, Huawei decided to sell all of Honor's business assets and gave Honor a generous "dowry". After Honor's independence, its early R&D team came from Huawei, and inherited Huawei's supply chain and sales channels. But at the beginning of leaving Huawei, due to Honor's digital series and V series mainstream mid-to-high-end machines, it has been difficult to compete head-on with Huawei's P and Mate flagship series. This makes Glory's road to high-end naturally limited, and shipments are also declining.
In May 2021, at the launch of the Honor 50 series, Zhao Ming once revealed that after the independence of Honor, shipments plummeted from 16.7% to 3%, and only gradually recovered to 9.5%.
In August 2021, Honor began to release its first high-end product, the Magic3 series, priced from 4599 yuan to 7999 yuan. In the following two years, Magic3, Magic4, Magic5 series and folding screen Magic V, Magic V2 and other products were released one after another. These series of products have different reflections in the market. Many users said that the "design language" of the early Honor products was too similar to Huawei.
However, the glory of gradually walking independently, with the further strengthening of research and development capabilities, and the gradual exploration of independent design language, began to open up the market step by step.
On June 25, 2021, the first sales of the Honor 50 series online exceeded 500 million in 1 minute, winning the double champion of mobile phone category sales and sales on the Tmall platform. On October 28, 2021, according to the Q3 quarterly China smartphone market report released by Counterpoint Research, Honor returned to the third place in the market with a 15% share.
In the first quarter of 2022, according to Canalys data, Honor's shipments increased significantly, ranking first in China with a market share of 20%. However, at that time, there was still a market view that the surge in glory shipments came from "machine sea tactics + channel pressing".
In the final analysis, being able to completely get rid of Huawei's design and distribution growth "routine" is the beginning of Honor being able to truly prove itself. Turning the clock hand to this year, Honor's road to "rushing to the high-end" has begun to gain something, and a large part of the foundation also comes from the huge and continuous R&D investment in the past few years.
According to Zhao Ming in an interview, in 2022, Honor's R&D investment will be close to 10% of the overall revenue, which is second only to Huawei (25%) and has surpassed Apple (6.6%).
On May 31 this year, Shanghai Honor Intelligent Technology Development Co., Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Honor, was formally established, and its business scope includes integrated circuit chip and product sales, integrated circuit design, etc. In the Honor Magic5 series released this year, Honor is equipped with a self-developed RF chip C1, which further enhances the signal capability.
It can be seen that we continue to make efforts at the high-end level to make Glory's product chain increasingly perfect. When Magic3 was released, its starting price was 4599 yuan; Magic3 Pro starts at 5999 yuan. By January 2022, when Honor's first large-folding screen flagship Magic V was released, the starting price had reached 9,999 yuan.
Especially in the field of folding screens, because it is currently an obvious incremental market in the entire industry, and Apple is a blank layout in between, folding screens have become a huge variable for the entire market this year.
According to the latest report released by Counterpoint Research, global shipments of foldable phones in the first quarter of 2023 were 2.5 million units, a year-on-year increase of 64%. During the same period, China's smartphone shipments fell by 8%, and foldable mobile phone shipments reached 1.08 million units, soaring 117% year-on-year.
Recently, in addition to the success of Magic V2, Honor also unveiled the first external folding screen mobile phone V Purse concept at the Consumer Electronics Show (IFA2023) in Berlin, Germany, which just ended on September 1. Zhao Ming revealed at the scene that in recent years, Honor's R&D investment in a folding screen has approached 1 billion yuan, and Honor Magic V2 has achieved 210 patented technological breakthroughs.
In addition, in order to further escape the "involution" in the future, Glory will also look overseas.
Data show that in the first half of 2023, Honor's shipments in Europe increased by more than 130%, shipments in the Middle East and Africa increased by more than 130%, and shipments in Latin America increased by more than 230%. Zhao Ming also disclosed that Honor's overseas sales in the first five months of 2023 exceeded the overseas sales in 2022, and overseas sales are expected to increase by more than 130% this year.
Of course, all mobile phone manufacturers will also face the major proposition after Huawei's comprehensive return. However, Huawei's return, the first thing that will affect may be the market share of Apple, the biggest "roadblocker" on the high-end road of mobile phone manufacturers. At the same time, Huawei will also bring more brand attention, reputation blessing, and most importantly, restart people's enthusiasm for replacing mobile phone manufacturers.
Moreover, just like the rise of Huawei mobile phones, in the final analysis, it comes from lasting self-research investment. And the glory of returning to the table also stems from the determination to continue to attack the high-end and specialized innovation. And now with Huawei's help, the opportunity has begun to return to the side of domestic mobile phones.
Author | Zeng Guang
Edit | Li Yuan
Operations | Liu Shan