Behind the hinge patent dispute between Xiaomi and Huawei, it is the folding screen mobile phone on the eve of the "outbreak".

Image source: Visual China

In 2023's "Double Twelve", it is no longer the low-price strategy of major e-commerce platforms in previous years that dominates the list of various social platforms, but the air battle between Xiaomi and Huawei, and the protagonist is no longer a straight board machine, but the core technology hinge in folding screen mobile phones. At this year's Huawei Pollen Annual Meeting, Yu Chengdong, Huawei's Executive Chairman, CEO of Device BG, and Chairman of Intelligent Vehicle Solution BU, said that Xiaomi's self-developed "keel hinge" technology is a plagiarism of Huawei's "double spinning water drop hinge" technology. Different from the previous executives choking each other on their personal Weibo accounts, this time Xiaomi officially issued a direct response to Yu Chengdong and put out various patent-related certificates. But to date, Huawei has not responded to this.

The other side of the competition of hinge patent technology from the industry to the field of public opinion is that the folding screen is entering the public eye from the toys of niche geeks. Not long ago, an entry about Apple's folding screen appeared on Weibo's hot search, although the source is not authoritative media, but a screenshot of external social media cited by online self-media, but it is still hot. When "Apple", the brand with the largest traffic in the global consumer electronics field, meets the folding screen, it naturally has a topicality.

Nowadays, the entry of folding screens has become the consensus of major mobile phone manufacturers. According to incomplete statistics from Blue Whale financial reporters, in 2023, major mainstream mobile phone manufacturers will release more than 20 folding screens, including horizontal folding screens and vertical folding screens. While the weight of the fuselage is generally decreasing, the price also continues to fall, among which the Honor V Purse has lowered the price of the horizontal folding screen mobile phone to 5999 yuan for the first time. Behind the changes is the continuous lowering of the threshold of hinge technology and the gradual improvement of the supply chain.

The hinge battle between Xiaomi and Huawei is the soul battle of the folding screen

In the marketing strategy of domestic mobile phone manufacturers, war of words and stepping on friends have become commonplace, and executives choke each other in the air often occur, but this is mainly concentrated in the straight board machine, like Huawei and Xiaomi's battle on the hinge technology of the folding screen is not very common. Previously, Yu Chengdong had said, "Friends do not respect our intellectual property rights very much, plagiarize Huawei, and directly turn Huawei's self-developed double-spin waterdrop hinge into the so-called keel hinge, and the keel does not exist." ”

Xiaomi responded to Yu Chengdong's remarks. According to Xiaomi, Xiaomi's self-developed "keel hinge" and Huawei's "double spin water drop hinge" are completely different in design ideas and mechanical structure. The mechanical structure of the "keel shaft" is designed as "3-stage rod group, 5 members, and 7 low pairs", while the "double-rotating droplet hinge" is "2-stage rod group, 3 members, and 4 low pairs". To put it simply, the design of the rod group and components will determine the depth of the creases, the number of folds and the weight of the fuselage, which is the "soul" of the folding screen and the core element that determines the performance of the folding screen.

It is undeniable that the reason why the current folding screen can develop rapidly is because of the emergence of teardrop-shaped hinges. Generally speaking, there are three main forms of hinge technology: U-shaped, bat-shaped and teardrop-shaped, although the U-shaped structure is simple but the creases are more obvious, the bat type is the optimization of the U-shape, but it cannot make the whole machine "slimming", and the droplet type can take into account the weight and crease shape, but at the same time the design is difficult and the cost is relatively high. According to public information, it was Samsung who first invented the teardrop-shaped hinge technology, as early as 2016, Samsung applied for a patent for the droplet hinge technology, but it has not been used in its own products. According to Zhou Shibo, an analyst at TrendForce interviewed by China Electronics News, the cost of ordinary hinges is about 1/4~1/5 of that of 'water drop' hinges. In order to ensure that Samsung can continue to seize the low-end market in the popularization of folding screen mobile phones and ensure that there are enough profits, the 'U' hinge is a good choice.

According to Huawei's official statement, the Mate X2 launched by Huawei in 2021 is the first time in the industry to truly achieve a seamless design that overcomes technical difficulties, and it is also the industry's unique dual-spin waterdrop hinge, which can ensure that bending marks are minimized. According to incomplete statistics from Blue Whale financial reporters, the folding screen mobile phones of current mobile phone manufacturers are derivative designs on the basis of the teardrop-shaped structure, but the specific mechanical structure and combination methods are different. Specifically, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5, Samsung W24 Flip, and Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 use a super-closed Seiko hinge, the OPPO Find N3 and OPPO Find N3 Flip use the Seiko pseudovertebral hinge, the Honor Magic V2 and Magic Vs2 use the Luban titanium hinge, and the vivo X Fold2 and vivo X Flip use high-strength carbon fiber hinges.

The hinge of the drop-shaped structure superimposed with different mechanical structure design methods also makes the weight of the fuselage and the folding thickness of the fuselage decrease, and gradually approaches the level of the straight plate machine.

For example, Honor was able to significantly reduce weight and thickness thanks to the mortise and tenon structure in the Luban hinge, which reduced the 92 parts to 4, replaced the traditional gears and springs with sliding components, and realized hinge multi-angle hovering. According to the public information of various mobile phone manufacturers, the weight of the Honor V Purse body is 214g, the weight of the Honor Magic Vs2 body is 227g, the weight of the Honor Magic V2 body is 231g, and the weight of the OPPOFind N3 is 239g. This is already on par with a regular straight smartphone.

In terms of thickness, except for a few models, most folding screen phones are still thicker than straight phones. The Honor Magic V2 is 9.9mm, the Magic Vs2 is 10.7mm, the Huawei Mate X3 and Huawei Mate X5 are both 11.08mm, the Oppo Find N3 is 11.7mm, the Vivo X Fold is 12.9mm, and the Samsung Z Fold is 513.4mm.

From strategic value to use value, the price of the dip down is the key

Looking back at the development of folding screen mobile phones in 2023, it is clear that they are on the road of "close to the people". From the perspective of mobile phone manufacturers, there may be some "last resort" situations when the folding screen is initially entered, and the launch of folding screen mobile phones at the stage of immature technological development is a strategic choice, which does not want to fall behind, but also wants to show its high-end strength, but the results are unsatisfactory.

In January 2019, Lin Bin, president of Xiaomi, announced on Weibo that "Xiaomi's dual-folding mobile phone is coming!" and announced that the engineering prototype should be the world's first dual-folding mobile phone, but it could not avoid problems such as obvious creases and fast power consumption, and the market response was mediocre. In 2019, Samsung launched the Galaxy Fold, a folding phone that used a slide rail and a dual hinge that caused its screen to fail to close, and in addition, design problems caused its screen to crack during use, so Samsung decided to delay the launch of the product.

With the rapid development of the two key technologies of hinge and screen, important changes are reflected in two aspects, one is that the function is gradually moving closer to the flagship machine, and the other is the gradual decline in price.

After this year's flagship Honor Magic V2 press conference, Honor CEO Zhao Ming said in an interview with the media, "This time, Honor's goal is not to compete with folding screen mobile phones, but to have a straight flagship mobile phone, which is iPhone14 and the future iPhone15." According to Zhao Ming's statement, Honor has applied all the technology accumulation it has done in two and a half years to folding screen mobile phones, such as the new Qinghai Lake battery technology, new hinge technology and breakthroughs in materials and processes.

On the other side, OPPO and Xiaomi focus on breakthroughs in imaging. The slogan shouted by OPPOFind N3 is "The new generation of imaging, but also the next generation of folding." OPPO senior vice president and chief product officer Liu Zuohu said,OPPO Find N3Equipped with640000000 pixels periscope telephoto,The new lens design makes it reach the image flagship level in imaging performance;Xiaomi MIXFold 3Equipped with a four-camera five-focal length image configuration,Equipped with a periscope telephoto。 Covering 15mm-115mm focal length, the main camera realizes double focal length expansion based on the ISZ function, and supports up to 50x digital zoom.

From the consumer's point of view, price is still the primary concern. In the horizontal folding screen, the starting price of OPPO Find N3 is 9999 yuan, the starting price of Xiaomi MIX Fold 3 is 8999 yuan, the starting price of Huawei Mate X5 is 12999 yuan, the glory Magic Vs2, the starting price is 6999 yuan, and the price of Honor V purse is 5999 yuan; According to data from iResearch, quoted by Hexun.com, the average selling price of folding screen mobile phones in the Chinese market in the first three quarters of 2021, 2022, and 2023 is 12,598, 9,238, and 8,846 yuan respectively, and the price drop is very obvious.

The mobile phone industry is highly dependent on the collaboration between the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain, and the decline in prices means that the supply chain is becoming more and more perfect. According to the International Business Daily interview with Xiong Yu, chief of the development section of Shanjin Optoelectronics Co., Ltd., in 2023, the decline in the price of the folding screen industry is due to the large-scale introduction of localized materials.

At present, the manufacturers that can produce foldable flexible OLED panels are Samsung Display, BOE, TCL Huaxing Optoelectronics, Visionox, Shenzhen Tianma and Royole Technology. In the first three quarters of 2023, the company's flexible AMOLED shipments exceeded 80 million pieces, and in the fourth quarter, affected by the continued high demand for terminal brands, the demand for flexible AMOLED is expected to maintain growth, and the company's annual shipment target of 120 million pieces is steadily achieved. According to data from CINNO Research, in the first half of 2023, Samsung Display accounted for 46% of the shipment share of the global smartphone flexible OLED panel market, BOE accounted for 23%, and LG Display (LGD) accounted for 10%, ranking among the top three, Samsung Display and LG Display's share are shrinking, and BOE's share is increasing. In addition, according to Sohu Technology, Visionox said that as of 2023, Guangzhou Guoxian (Visionox) has a total of 15 mass production lines, and it is expected that all 21 mass production lines will be put into operation by the end of the year, and the production capacity of flexible screens can reach 55 million pieces per year.

Technological breakthroughs and commercialization are not synchronized, and folding screens can't make money yet

As mentioned above, the folding screen in 2023 has made some progress and breakthroughs in terms of appearance and camera performance, and the price has also decreased to a certain extent, but it has not yet reached the level of "close to the people".

Behind the high selling price is the high cost of research and development. According to the International Business Daily, Li Nan, then vice president of Meizu, once said that the cost of an ordinary 5G mobile phone parts is about 3,000 yuan, and after upgrading to a folding screen, the screen needs an additional about 1,400 yuan, plus other components such as batteries, and the cost of parts for a folding screen mobile phone is expected to be 5,000 yuan. In addition, the cost of screen molding, structural parts mold, hinge design and software research and development is evenly distributed to about 15,000 yuan per mobile phone, and the profit of a folding screen is negligible.

According to public information, the cost of a single OPPO Find N hinge reached 800 yuan, and the cost of vivo X Fold hinge once exceeded 1200 yuan, which is basically the same as the cost of a mobile phone screen. If you look at the industry as a whole, the cost of a teardrop hinge is four times that of a U-shaped hinge.

In a media interview after the OPPO Find N3 meeting, Liu Zuohu, senior vice president and chief product officer of OPPO, said frankly, "Today's folding screen has not yet completely become a mass product, but it is slowly being accepted by more and more users." "OPPO's positioning is to be the most high-end folding screen,It is for this reason that the design of the product、The cost of materials exceeds the imagination of ordinary audiences,As for the starting price of 9999 yuan,Liu Zuohu thinks,It's still low。

In fact, the speed of technological breakthroughs and commercialization is not synchronized, and the same is true for folding screens. When talking about which folding screen product can achieve breakeven commercially, Liu Zuohu did not give a direct answer, but said that through continuous iteration, the product will be better from generation to generation, and the business effect will be better from generation to generation, but the specific sales data is not convenient to disclose.

Zhao Ming also said at the media communication conference after the Honor Magic V2, "The development process of this mobile phone is to first have a prototype of the technology, and then do the development of a commercial machine, and enter the product development process." In this development process, product development cannot fail, because entering the product development process, a folding screen requires an investment of 1 billion yuan, but as a prototype development for technical verification, there is no limit to the imagination. ”

Back to the overall data of the folding screen industry, according to IDC data, although the shipment of folding screen mobile phones in 2022 increased by 118% year-on-year, from the perspective of the market share of smartphones, it is only 1.2%, and it is still a niche product.

Not only that, once there is a problem with the folding screen phone, its repair cost will also be prohibitive for many people. Take Xiaomi MIX Fold3 as an example,The special form of the folding screen leads to the high maintenance cost of its inner screen and motherboard,According to the data of Xiaomi's official website,The cost of out-of-warranty materials is as high as 3650 yuan,Plus 40 yuan labor cost;The maintenance cost of the motherboard also reaches 2470 yuan after adding labor。 In addition to Xiaomi, the repair price of the inner screen of vivo X Fold2 has also reached 5080 yuan, and the price of the inner screen of OPPO Find N2 is also 3900 yuan.

Whether it is R&D costs or maintenance costs, although the folding screen has not yet completed the transformation from "electronic Moutai" to products that can "fly into the homes of ordinary people". Zhao Ming believes that everything is a process from quantitative change to qualitative change, we hope that one day Apple will also make folding screens, then Apple will change from a leader to a follower, from the entire industry, it is what everyone is happy to see, and Glory's goal is to make the folding screen track bigger and become the main track.

According to IDC, China's folding screen mobile phone market will ship nearly 1,000 units in 2024, a year-on-year increase of 53.2%, and a compound growth rate of 37.5% in 2027. With the decline in the cost of major parts such as hinges and screens, the sales price of folding screen mobile phones is expected to continue to fall, of which horizontal folding products are expected to drop to the price range of RMB 4,000-5,000, while more vertical folding products will enter the price range of RMB 3,000-4,000.

For the folding screen, some people feel that they have ushered in their own "iPhone moment", some people feel that it is a bargaining chip for business marketing, and any new product cannot fully gain the recognition of users in the short term, but it is certain that the technology is advancing, the cost is decreasing, and the folding screen will always be popularized to more consumers one day.