Folding screens into the golden age
In the dark, light has two sides and does not always lead us in the right direction. To get out of the darkness and enter a new world, we need the guidance of the right light source.
In the past 2022, the global mobile phone market experienced its darkest moment, with shipments falling by 11.3% year-on-year, hitting a new low since 2013. In the first half of this year, the cold has not dissipated, and the continued negative growth has caused many institutions to lower their annual expectations.
In the declining mobile phone market, folding screens have become a "flashing point", with a growth rate of more than 60% last year, in sharp contrast to the negative growth of the industry. IDC report shows that in the second quarter of this year, the growth rate of China's folding screen mobile phone market shipments was as high as 173%. A clear signal is that the era of folding screens has come. A few days ago, the sale of Huawei's new flagship Mate X5 pushed the folding screen to a new climax.
On September 8, Huawei Mate X5 officially opened pre-orders, and it was sold out in a second under the condition of "first sale before release". On September 14, Huawei Mate X5 was fully put on sale, triggering a wave of snapping purchases. Online speed, offline popularity, and the price increase of 10,000 yuan in the secondary market have also made this new product dubbed "electronic Moutai" by netizens.
Do the things in March and April, and have your own answers in August and September. From design to hardware to experience, Huawei proves to the outside world that dare to be the first, and folding screens can also be uncompromising, achieving full marks in all-round use. If the folding screen is a beam of light in the downward cycle of mobile phones, as a pioneer and leader in the industry, Huawei's light source is leading the entire mobile phone industry into a new era of folding screens.
Folding screen, a beam of light in the downlink cycle of the mobile phone
The first commercial mobile phone was born in 1973, 50 years ago. The first feature phones met people's communication and basic entertainment needs. Then, smart phones, through the connection to the Internet, have become the most core terminals in communication, social networking, entertainment and other scenarios.
In the second decade of the 21st century, smart phones ushered in a period of rapid outbreak, and many domestic brands such as Huawei broke out of the siege and became an indispensable and important role in the global mobile phone market. However, the excess performance and aesthetic fatigue have made the current smart phone encounter a big hurdle in development, and the lack of innovation is difficult for consumers to pay. Research institute Counterpoint has pointed out that the mobile phone replacement cycle in 2022 is 43 months, reaching an all-time high.
In the face of the bottleneck encountered by straight smart phones, the emergence and development of folding screens has become a beam of light, bringing new directions, and further broadening the boundaries of smart phones, becoming a new opportunity point for industry development. As an upstream supplier, Zhao Jun, CEO of TCL Huaxing, once told Titanium Media App, "The global shipment of folding mobile phones is basically growing at several times a rate every year. We believe that folding mobile phones are the main innovation and growth point of product innovation and iteration in the field of smartphones. ”
Turn the clock hand back to 2018, and the folding screen enters the public's field of vision. A year later, Huawei, Samsung and other brands began mass production, which is also known as the first year of folding screens. By 2022, the top domestic mobile phone brands have basically joined the battle. According to incomplete statistics, a total of 14 new folding screen products were released in China last year.
From the morphological point of view, the folding screen is mainly divided into three modes: inner folding, external folding and upper and lower folding. Among them, the inner and outer folds benefit from the larger screen and are favored by high-end business people. The upper and lower folds are smaller and more pleasing to female users. At present, with the improvement of the supply chain, the price of folding screens has gradually declined, which has also given more users the opportunity to taste early.
Data will not lie, folding screens are becoming a "clear stream" in the mobile phone industry, growing against the trend in a declining market. In the first quarter of this year, the global smartphone market fell by 13% year-on-year, and the decline in the second quarter was still 10%. In contrast, global folding screen mobile phone sales in the first quarter increased by 64%.
According to data released by CINNO Research, the sales of folding screen mobile phones in the Chinese market in the first half of 2023 increased by 72% year-on-year, of which sales in the second quarter increased by 99% year-on-year, which has achieved positive year-on-year growth for eleven consecutive quarters and has become one of the few bright spots in the domestic smartphone market.
Not only that, Chnbrand (China Enterprise Product Research) also pointed out in the "2023 China Folding Screen Consumer Insight Report" that with the thinness and all-round of folding screen mobile phones, 90% of users in the folding screen use the folding screen as the main machine, and in the dual-machine party, the vast majority of users also use the folding screen as the main machine.
It is certain that with the successive entry and product iteration of domestic manufacturers, the folding screen mobile phone market will usher in an outbreak in 2023. iResearch expects that domestic shipments of folding screen mobile phones will exceed 5.5 million units this year. There is no doubt that folding screens are heading for its golden age.
Dare to be the first, Huawei Mate X5 is once again far ahead
Compared with straight smartphones, the development of folding screens has only been five years. In the early stage of development, it is difficult to achieve everything, for the sake of performance to sacrifice the feel, in order to thin and have to sacrifice performance, compromise is the choice that most manufacturers have to make. With the "pioneering" of leading manufacturers such as Huawei and Samsung, the folding screen industry chain has gradually matured, and the threshold for entering the folding screen has become lower, and some manufacturers do not hesitate to use low prices to reduce the purchase threshold in order to attract users.
Can't the folding screen be as thin and versatile as the straight flagship machine? Faced with this dilemma, Huawei gave its own answer: Of course.
From "China Cool Alliance" to "Huami OV", in every era, Huawei is the protagonist in the center of the stage, and folding screens are no exception. As early as MWC in 2019, Huawei released its first folding screen mobile phone, Mate X. Later released seamless inner folding Huawei Mate X2, ultra-thin and thin outer folding Huawei Mate Xs 2, and small folding Huawei P50 Pocket, Huawei's innovation has overcome one problem after another of folding screens.
Chnbrand pointed out that for folding screen users, on the product side, waterproof and anti-fall, and thinness are more concerned. In terms of performance, consumers are paying more and more attention to the benefits of appearance and large-screen experience. A few days ago, Huawei Mate X5 was officially released, achieving a double breakthrough in technology and experience, not only far ahead in the folding screen category, but also completely superior compared with the straight board flagship.
The data shows that for users who have purchased and want to buy folding screens, reliability has always been their top priority, how to make the "fragile" folding screen more reliable, like a straight flagship can have the strongest performance and imaging capabilities, has become a problem that Huawei Mate X5 has been breaking through during the research and development process.
Usually, traditional crystallized or tempered glass only solves the problem of anti-fall. The self-developed basalt tempered Kunlun glass equipped with Huawei Mate X5 Collector's Edition is not only resistant to falls, but also resistant to scratches, and is far ahead in hardness. With the help of basalt tempering technology and second-generation Kunlun glass technology, Huawei Mate X5 Collector's Edition external screen has increased scratch resistance by 300% and drop resistance by 100%. Judging from the test video officially released by Huawei, after many frictions, ordinary mobile phone glass scratches fill the entire screen, while basalt tempered Kunlun glass has almost no scratches.
In terms of waterproofing, Huawei Mate X5 is equipped with IPX8 excellent water resistance, which is enough to easily cope with more life challenges. And this, only Huawei can do this among domestic manufacturers.
In addition to a more durable screen, Huawei Mate X5 also adopts XMAGE imaging system, 5060mAh large battery and other flagship configurations. The blessing of two-way Beidou satellite messaging, Lingxi communication, and HarmonyOS 4 makes Huawei Mate X5 the strongest folding screen mobile phone. In terms of communication, which has attracted much attention from the public, Huawei Mate X5 also lived up to expectations, bringing many breakthroughs in independent technology, and was known as the "gas fighting machine". Many bloggers and users conducted network speed tests and found that the network speed of Huawei Mate X5 is ridiculously fast, and the network experience even exceeds that of gigabit broadband.
Uncompromising, these three words are vividly expressed on the Huawei Mate X5. The impossibility of folding screen performance and thinness was also broken by Huawei Mate X5. There are long boards everywhere, and it is no exaggeration to say that Huawei Mate X5 brings users a truly all-round full score experience. From the opening of pre-orders to the full launch of sales, every time Huawei Mate X5 is on the shelves, it is a moment for everyone to fight for speed. The display machine of offline stores onlookers, thousands or even tens of thousands of yuan of secondary market markup, is also a recognition of this "gas fighting machine".
It is worth noting that the all-round performance of Huawei Mate X5 has also changed the trend of the previous iPhone on social platforms. After Huawei Mate X5 opened the pre-order, some netizens met Jackie Chan in the Huawei store to play with Huawei's latest display of the machine, according to netizens broke the news, Jackie Chan this time is to go to the store to buy Huawei's new Huawei Mate X5 mobile phone, but unfortunately the store is temporarily out of stock. A few days ago, Chen He, Zhang Zhilin, Yang Jue and many other stars have "shown off" the Huawei Mate X5 that they have snatched hard to grab on Weibo and other platforms, making many netizens envious. With full performance, Huawei Mate X5 is accelerating the popularization of folding screens, allowing more straight mobile phone users to understand, accept and love folding screens.
The golden age of folding screens has arrived
As the only mobile phone manufacturer on the market with three folding forms, Huawei has led the folding screen from generation to generation, with a domestic share of more than half for three consecutive years, ranking highest in user awareness and satisfaction. In the first half of this year, Huawei still ranked the top 1 in the domestic folding screen market share. The Huawei Mate X3, released in March, won the domestic folding mobile phone single-quarter sales champion in the second quarter of 2023 as soon as it was launched.
Image source: iResearch
iResearch pointed out that nearly half of smartphone users first think of Huawei when mentioning folding screen mobile phone brands, and in the overall recognition of folding screen mobile phone brands, 84.1% of smartphone users have heard of Huawei's folding screen mobile phone series. In the overall brand recognition, Huawei is more than 60%.
Chnbrand also gave the same conclusion, nearly 80% of users are satisfied with the current Huawei folding screen mobile phone, ahead of other brands. The effect of word-of-mouth on market results of folding screen mobile phones is gradually amplified, and NPS (Net Promoter Score) performance is positively correlated with market and brand growth. Huawei has the highest customer recommendation by virtue of its first-mover advantage and product advantages.
Continuous leadership is not accidental, every 1% improvement, there is 100% effort behind it. Four years and eight products, forward-looking layout, is the first step for Huawei's folding screen to lead. When almost all mobile phone brands are still rolling fast charging and rolling parameters, Huawei has seen the new direction of smartphone iteration one step ahead, increased research and development in screen, hinge and other technologies, and took the lead in launching folding screen mobile phones.
However, the first to eat crab will not necessarily succeed, the direction is right, in order to really taste the deliciousness of crab. Accurate insight into users is the second step for Huawei folding screens to be far ahead. According to a survey by Chnbrand, senior middle class, cutting-edge elites and upstarts in small cities are the core consumers of folding screens, who have high requirements for the quality of mobile phones, pursue the ultimate technology core, and are low price sensitive.
This also means that the all-round folding screen is the correct incremental direction. The compromise low price that does not seek innovation will only make the folding screen market small. It can be seen that when friends lowered the threshold of large discounts to 8,000 yuan, Huawei has been sticking to 10,000 yuan and doing a more high-end experience. Sales data also proves that product power is far more important than low price.
In the first half of this year, Huawei's R&D expenditure was 82.604 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4.4%. The technology precipitation brought about by continuous high R&D investment is the last step for Huawei folding screens to be far ahead. Xuanwu tempered Kunlun glass, Beidou satellite message, IPX8 waterproof, periscope telephoto and Hongmeng ecology, Huawei Mate X5 is the interpretation of all-rounder.
In the past, the folding screen was only considered a supplement to the high-end flagship machine, and it was difficult to become the main machine. Now, with the release of Huawei Mate X5, the folding screen experience has gone to another level. The success of Huawei Mate X5 not only illuminated a new direction for the folding screen industry, but also became a new beginning for the smartphone industry.
In the future, folding screens will also accelerate to become the choice of more mass users. iResearch pointed out that in the future mobile phone model replacement intention, more than ninety percent of folding screen users expressed their intention to continue to use folding machines, of which 52.3% of users who intended to replace mobile phones said they wanted to use Huawei's folding screen mobile phones.
Both want and want, not "greed", but the self-confidence of "daring to be the first in the world". Every time you get ahead, it's not just a slogan. With the exponential evolution of Huawei Mate X5, a new golden era of folding screens is in sight. (This article was first published on Titanium Media App)