"Finally grabbed it!" A user who bought a Huawei Mate X5 could not hide his excitement in his comments on the Internet. On September 8, Huawei's new flagship Mate X5 officially opened for pre-order, selling out in a second; On September 14, Huawei Mate X5 was fully put on sale, triggering a wave of snapping purchases. Netizens even sighed: Huawei Mate X5 has become an "electronic Moutai".
As a pioneer of folding screen mobile phones, Huawei took the lead in releasing the first folding screen mobile phone Huawei Mate X as early as 2019, and since then Huawei has continued to make breakthroughs and innovations in folding screen technology and form, and has successively released seamless inner folding Huawei Mate X2, ultra-thin and external folding Huawei Mate Xs 2, small folding Huawei P50 Pocket and other models. At this year's spring conference, Huawei released the thin and light folding large-screen Huawei Mate X3; In September, Huawei broke through again and directly launched the sale of Mate X5, which is a naming leap that makes consumers look forward to the major upgrade of Huawei's new generation of folding screen mobile phones in technology and experience.
According to the official website information, Huawei Mate X5 has many black technologies and innovative functions such as basalt tempered Kunlun glass, two-way Beidou satellite message, IPX8 waterproofing, etc., which are more versatile and reliable, subverting the public's new perception of the thin and all-round experience of folding screens.
Yu Chengdong, executive director of Huawei, CEO of Terminal BG, and CEO of Intelligent Vehicle Solution BU, said bluntly on Weibo: "The strongest folding screen mobile phone depends on Huawei."
In fact, with brand and product strength, Huawei's domestic share of folding screens has exceeded 50% for three consecutive years. This means that for every two folding screens sold in the market, one is Huawei. The latest data shows that in the first half of this year, Huawei still ranked in the top 1 market share.
Huawei has monopolized half of the folding screen market for three consecutive years
Since the launch of folding screen mobile phones in 2019, after years of brewing and exploration, it has passed the concept stage, at present, China's folding mobile phone market "a hundred flowers", major mobile phone brands have entered the game.
After entering the explosive growth stage, many institutions expect that the future market space of folding screen mobile phones is considerable. Counterpoint predicts that shipments of folding screen mobile phones in China will exceed 5 million units in 2023, and are expected to usher in an outbreak of 10 million units in 2024; In 2025, the size of China's folding screen market will reach 17 million units.
Folding mobile phones hide the ambition of mobile phone manufacturers to "rush high". However, in the folding track, Huawei is still unshakable. At the same time, thanks to the ultra-thin and light design of Huawei Mate X3, as well as Lingxi communication, waterproof, photography, screen, battery, wireless charging, hovering, Beidou satellite and other performance, the model became the single product sales champion in the second quarter of this year.
But the stable industry leader has not stopped Huawei. It is not difficult to find that Huawei has always engraved "innovation" in its DNA.
In 2019, the Mate X's eagle-wing outer folding design makes the fuselage seamless in the folded state; In 2020, Mate Xs added zirconium-based liquid metal to key parts of the hinge structure; In 2021, the dual-spin water drop hinge pioneered by Mate X2 uses carbon fiber composite materials and high-strength steel, making it stronger than automotive steel; In 2022, Huawei Mate Xs 2 opens the era of thin and light folding screens with a weight of 255G, and the experience is taken to a higher level; As the first model in the industry to make the weight of the folding large screen lighter than the straight mobile phone, the Mate X3 released by Huawei this year leads the folding screen into the era of "thin + all-round" with its thin and light appearance design and performance, imaging, reliability and other decathlon experience.
Use "all-round" strength to create a new benchmark for folding screen experience
Huawei has always been innovating itself on folding screen mobile phones and has always been at the forefront, this time Huawei Mate X5 continues to lead.
It is reported that in order to improve the reliability of higher new machines, the Mate X5 Collector's Edition is equipped with Huawei's self-developed Xuanwu tempered Kunlun glass outer screen, which increases the scratch resistance of the screen by 300%. By changing the glass formula and upgrading the composite ion strengthening technology, the glass network skeleton is strengthened, so that the hardness, optics, wear resistance and other properties of the outer screen are comprehensively upgraded, and the drop resistance is also increased by 100%. At the same time, the inner screen of the Mate X5 adopts a composite laminated structure design and incorporates the industry's unique impact-resistant non-Newtonian fluid materials, providing users with long-lasting protection for daily use.
In addition, Huawei Mate X5 also supports IPX8 level water resistance, which is quite rare in today's folding screen market, which is enough to prove Huawei's hard verification power in folding screen structure, sealing, and frame design.
In terms of signal performance, Huawei Mate X5 supports Lingxi communication, and will automatically select the antenna through AI algorithms. In terms of antenna design, Huawei integrates edge antennas through dual-mode tuning technology to strengthen signal strength and avoid the impact of holding on the signal when the phone is closed. The breakthrough of Huawei's underlying technology has brought more than expected surprises to the communication of Huawei Mate X5, and some bloggers tested the network speed of Huawei Mate X5, with a download speed of 1290.48Mbps and an upload speed of 157.31Mbps. In addition, the machine also supports two-way Beidou satellite communication function, which can still send messages to the outside world when there is no ground network signal and supports two-way transmission and reception at the same time.
If hardware is the basis for the development of folding screen mobile phones, then the experience of software applications is the key to determining whether folding screen mobile phones can be popularized. Unlike other manufacturers, Huawei Mate X5 adopts the Hongmeng ecology and adapts the folding screen ecology on a large scale, such as: Douyin can directly display videos and comments at the same time on the large screen. The split-screen function has been further upgraded, which can realize the function of independent screenshot by region, and the pictures and text in the split-screen can be seamlessly dragged and dropped.
It is worth mentioning that the interactive experience of Huawei Mate X5 is also the current benchmark for folding screen experience, and Huawei Mate X5 is the industry's first folding screen mobile phone that supports air gesture operation on both internal and external screens. Air gestures are an emerging technology that enables users to operate their phones through gestures rather than touching the screen directly. The idea of this technology is to help users use mobile phones more conveniently, without directly touching the screen, and expand more scenarios.
In addition, Huawei Mate X5 also supports convenient control experience such as smart payment, that is, users do not need to open payment applications (such as Alipay, WeChat Pay) when paying, when the scanning gun is pointed at the screen, the mobile phone will automatically pop up the payment code and complete the payment, so as to achieve the effect of "buying things one step faster".
According to Guo Tianxiang, senior analyst at IDC China, "Huawei's folding screen has occupied the minds of Chinese consumers in advance, and consumers have a high degree of acceptance. Secondly, Huawei's folding screen products also have certain advantages in software optimization. ”
Boost the folding screen market to the "masses"
Although folding screen mobile phones are still a new thing, the current penetration rate in the entire smartphone market remains around 2%. According to Omdia, global shipments of folding screen smartphones will reach 61 million units by 2026, with a compound annual growth rate of 46.6% from 2021 to 2026, when the penetration rate of folding screen mobile phones will reach 3.6%.
In terms of the popularity of folding screen mobile phones, Huawei has played a great role in promoting the waves. According to TrendForce Consulting Research, Huawei is expected to ship about 2.5 million folding mobile phones this year.
"For many years, 'fruit fans' changed their first folding phone this year and bought Huawei's Mate X5", "I chose Huawei for the first folding phone for young people"... On social networks, there are not a few users who want to "taste" Huawei's folding screen products.
iResearch survey data shows that nearly half of domestic smartphone users first think of Huawei (46.2%) when referring to folding screen mobile phone brands; From the perspective of brand attention, among the people considering buying folding screen mobile phones, 85.7% of consumers pay attention to Huawei brand folding screen mobile phones; In the future mobile phone model replacement intention, more than ninety percent of folding screen users expressed intention to replace the folding machine, of which 52.3% of users said they wanted to replace the folding screen mobile phone using Huawei. It can be seen that in the folding screen market, Huawei has made folding products more popular.
High-end and atmospheric design, thin and reliable folding body, as well as all-round performance in image capabilities, communication endurance, large-screen ecology, etc., are undoubtedly important factors that trigger the majority of users to rush to buy, and behind the emergence of "phenomenal" products, it reflects Huawei's technological breakthroughs and brand influence in folding screen products.
In fact, in order to achieve ultra-thin, ultra-flat, and ultra-reliable at the same time, Huawei's R&D team has conducted in-depth research in the fields of industrial design, material science, interactive experience, and battery life fast charging, for which Huawei has also built a "super materials laboratory". It has a complete production and testing production line, including 9 categories of production equipment, 12 categories of monitoring equipment, through end-to-end innovative research on the composition and process of materials, and continues to bring industry-leading MIM materials.
Not only that, taking the hinge as an example, it is an important mechanical "joint" that supports the flexible screen, controls the rotation amplitude, and realizes the change of the shape of the mobile phone, and it is also the key to determining the completion of the folding screen mobile phone product. At present, the inner folding hinge can be divided into two designs according to the form, water drop and U-shaped, of which the "water drop" hinge technology is through the reasonable configuration of multiple components to achieve the optimization of the bending degree of the folding screen, which can realize the uniform transition of the screen from the arc to the screen. In July this year, Samsung also abandoned the traditional U-shaped hinge on the Galaxy Z Fold5 and upgraded to a waterdrop hinge, and Huawei really led the industry in folding screen technology.
The greater significance of the release of Huawei Mate X5 is that it continues to lead the innovation of folding screen mobile phones and promote the development of folding screen mobile phones to the public. Through subversive innovation, it stimulates consumers' desire to purchase and use, further drives the penetration of folding screen mobile phones to further accelerate, and forms a positive cycle.
As Yu Chengdong said before: "I hope that everyone can contribute and innovate in this field, and can make good products and good experiences." Huawei does not exclude any competition, but Huawei is confident to lead folding screen innovation and lead user experience. ”
Editor|Meng Jintao
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