Behind the "explosion" of folding screen mobile phones: a self-hi planned by mobile phone manufacturers
On October 19, 2023, OPPO launched a new generation of folding screen flagship Find N3. In an interview, Liu Zuohu, OPPO's chief product officer and founder of OnePlus, said, "The folding screen is growing rapidly, there will be differentiation, we just want to do the best folding, or flagship folding, do the best things."
Source: OPPO official website
In fact, not only OPPO, since the second half of 2023, Honor has also begun to increase the folding screen mobile phone business. On July 12, September 19 and October 12, Honor released Magic V2, Honor V Purse and Honor Magic Vs2 three folding screen mobile phones.
Many smartphone manufacturers are exploring the folding screen mobile phone business, of course, because they see the general trend of rising shipments of folding screen mobile phones, hoping to seize the market dividend as soon as possible.
However, it should be noted that with the birth of Royole Roupai in November 2018 as a starting point, folding screen mobile phones have gone through a five-year journey. Such a long time is enough for the iPhone to evolve from a relatively conceptual product to a mature iPhone 5, which will change the development direction of the entire mobile phone industry.
But what is quite perverse is that Apple, which is keen enough for new technologies and subverts the mobile phone industry with the iPhone, has not launched its own folding screen mobile phone products so far. This also seems to indicate that folding screen mobile phones are difficult to completely subvert the smartphone industry.
The dividend of the straight board disappeared, and mobile phone manufacturers rushed to land
The reason why many smartphone manufacturers pay more and more attention to folding screen mobile phones is largely because the market dividends of straight mobile phones are disappearing and the pressure of market competition is increasing.
Since 2017, due to the completion of sinking reach, the shipment of smartphones has been continuously reduced. With the advent of the epidemic, the global economy is under pressure, the frequency of consumer replacement has been further reduced, and the shipment of smartphones has accelerated its decline.
IDC data shows that in 2022, China's smartphone market shipped 286 million units, down 13.2% year-on-year, the largest decline in history. After ten years, the shipment scale of China's smartphone market has fallen back to less than 300 million again.
Source: IDC
In the context of the gradual decline of the market ceiling, even the head smartphone manufacturers are difficult to stand alone, and can only accept the fate of declining mobile phone shipments. In 2022, the shipments of the top five smartphone manufacturers in the Chinese market all fell year-on-year, of which OPPO shipped 48 million units in the Chinese market, down 28.2% year-on-year.
In sharp contrast to the shrinking market of traditional straight plates, the folding screen mobile phone track has shown great vitality. According to Canalys data, global shipments of folding screen mobile phones in 2018 were only 198,000 units, and in 2022, this number will grow to 14.2 million units, with a compound annual growth rate of 191.01%.
In this context, not only OPPO and Honor pay more and more attention to the folding screen mobile phone business, but the head Android mobile phone manufacturers have basically launched their own folding screen mobile phone products.
For example, in July, August and September 2023, Samsung, Xiaomi and Huawei launched Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5, Xiaomi MIX Fold 3, Huawei Mate X5 and other products. On October 19, OnePlus, as a "new force", also launched its first folding screen mobile phone OnePlus Open for overseas markets.
The grim reality behind the "explosion"
Because folding screen mobile phones have sufficient differentiation, as more and more consumers choose such products, many smartphone manufacturers' folding screen mobile phones also have a high degree of popularity.
In August 2023, Honor CEO Zhao Ming issued a statement saying that "Honor MagicV2 has been in short supply since its launch, so Honor's supply and manufacturing team has been working overtime, and the folding screen production line of Honor Intelligent Manufacturing Industrial Park has allocated all manufacturing resources to fully improve delivery capabilities."
Coincidentally, in an interview, Liu Zuohu also declared that "OPPO Find N3 one-hour bookings are 1.4 times that of OPPO Find N2, of which the proportion of collector's editions exceeds 30%."
However, it should be noted that major smartphone manufacturers did not disclose the specific sales data of their folding screen mobile phones, and only announced that year-on-year sales had increased and supply exceeded demand. Combined with the data of e-commerce platforms, these extremely popular folding screen mobile phones do not seem to have achieved bright sales data.
Source: Jingdong Mall
On the JD platform, products such as the Honor Magic V2, OPPO Find N2, Xiaomi MIX Fold 3 and vivo X Fold2 have 20,000, 20,000, 10,000 and 10,000 reviews respectively. In contrast, the flagship straight mobile phone JD.com reviews of the above-mentioned smartphone manufacturers are hundreds of thousands.
In fact, not only the gap between the sales of folding screen mobile phones and straight flagship of the head smartphone manufacturers is too large, but from a macro point of view, the shipment of folding screen mobile phones is also very different compared with the overall smartphone industry.
Canalys data shows that in 2022, the global shipment of folding screen mobile phones will be 14.2 million units. During the same period, global smartphone shipments were 1.193 billion units. According to this data, in 2022, the penetration rate of global folding screen mobile phones will only be 1.19%.
From this point of view, most folding screen mobile phones are in short supply, perhaps not because there is a massive demand in the market, but because the supply of smart phone manufacturers is limited, and even a small number of consumers are difficult to meet the needs, creating the illusion of a boiling market.
Folding screen mobile phone sad "popularization off"
At this stage, the reason why smartphone manufacturers do not supply the market with massive folding screen mobile phones, prompting more consumers to buy such products, is not that they do not want to, but because they are limited by the ability of the supply chain, and they simply cannot do it.
Previously, metal powder injection molding product manufacturers and solution providers Jingyan Technology said in a survey that the assembly yield of folding screen hinges is related to the complexity of the design of the hinge itself, and the good ones on the market have a yield level of more than 70%, a few are 80%, and the general yield level is 50-60%, and the difference is only 40-50%.
Such a low yield will not only affect product shipments, but also increase the cost burden of smartphone manufacturers. In April 2020, Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's consumer business, said that "even if Mate Xs sells 16,999 yuan, it is still a loss, and it has lost 60-70 million US dollars so far."
Coincidentally, in September 2023, when interviewed by the media, when asked whether Honor Magic V2 had recovered its costs, Honor CEO Zhao Ming also said, "Now it is definitely not recovered, it is still far from it, not a hundred million, we invested 1 billion in Honor Magic V2." ”
The reality of continuous losses of smartphone manufacturers determines the high price and maintenance price of folding screen mobile phones. Taking OPPO's latest Find N3 as an example, the 12GB+512GB version of the product costs 9999 yuan, and the price of the collector's version is as high as 12999 yuan.
Source: OPPO official website
Since Find N3 has not yet been released, OPPO has not disclosed the price of spare parts for the product, combined with Find N2 data, the price of spare parts for Find N3 may not be very low. According to official information, the outer warranty guidance prices of Find N2's inner screen components, inner screen single screen and motherboard (16G 512G) are 3900 yuan, 1999 yuan and 4300 yuan respectively. For the price of a motherboard, you can even buy a well-configured straight board flagship.
Source: OPPO
Of course, because of the two large screens, the folding screen mobile phone does have a certain bargaining power, but the problem is that the high-end price does not bring high-end configuration synchronously. At present, most folding screen mobile phones have certain shortcomings in performance compared with straight mobile phones of the same price.
Take Find N3 as an example, this phone is equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen2 mobile platform. It is indeed the flagship processor of the Android mobile phone industry in the past year, however, Qualcomm will hold the 2023 Snapdragon Summit on October 25 to launch a new generation of flagship mobile platform Snapdragon 8 Gen3. This also means that the performance configuration of Find N3 will lag behind the straight board flagship that came out at the same time by a whole generation.
In addition, due to the internal size of the fuselage, Find N3 is only equipped with a 4805mAh battery, facing two screens, the endurance is worrying, only support 67W charging, do not support wireless charging, charging is not convenient enough.
All in all, although more and more smartphone manufacturers are launching folding screen mobile phones, and from the publicity level, folding screen mobile phones are also in short supply. However, combined with the macro data of the market, five years after the birth of the folding screen, the penetration rate is only about 1%, which is still a niche product.
This is mainly because the current straight board smartphone industry is extremely involuted, consumers only need to pay a few thousand yuan, you can buy a straight board flagship mobile phone with balanced performance in all aspects, higher price, limited supply, and short configuration of folding screen mobile phones, does not have the core competitiveness in the absolute sense.
Considering the high cost of the hinge and inner screen of folding screen mobile phones, it is difficult to have a comparative advantage in the short term compared with straight mobile phones, and mass consumers have no reason to buy such products.
From this point of view, folding screen mobile phones are becoming increasingly "hot", perhaps just wishful thinking of mobile phone manufacturers.