Large models open up a new world of AI, Vision Pro leads spatial computing, smart trams surpass oil vehicles, Pinduoduo "new king" has been established, smart phones are innovating, new hardware is emerging one after another, HarmonyOS system is accelerating growth, and AI chips drive everything...... In 2023, there are too many major events in the tech industry.
As a new media focusing on "hard" technology, Lei Technology and its accounts continue to observe the technology industry, track industry trends, analyze cutting-edge technologies, experience innovative products, and provide readers with valuable content. At the end of the year, we launched the "Lei Technology Year" topic, in which the "2023 Please Answer" series will systematically sort out the companies, products, technologies and people worthy of recording in the technology industry, continue to output high-quality content, pay tribute to innovation, record the times, and think about the past to inspire the future.
In November 2020, Honor officially separated from Huawei and became an independent mobile phone manufacturer, and now three full years have passed, and Honor has successfully ranked among the top five in the domestic mobile phone market from the beginning of being questioned by the outside world, and has maintained its position in the top three for a long time. One of the most unexpected things for Xiaolei is that Honor, as a "new player" in the mobile phone market, has achieved quite good results in this market, and the gradual stabilization of the high-end road has also allowed Honor to rise steadily in the entire mobile phone market.
(Image source: Honor Official)
According to the latest data released by Counterpoint Research, Honor has managed to become one of the best-selling phones in October 2023 with the X50. It is no exaggeration to say that Honor can be said to be the most surprising and unexpected manufacturer in the entire 2023 mobile phone market.
Taking advantage of the fact that 2024 is not yet yet, today Xiao Lei will take you to review the glorious 2023.
The product line is clear, reasonable and stable
After several years of market baptism, Honor has clarified its own product positioning in the market and streamlined and modified it. In February 2023, Honor released the first flagship product of the year, the Honor Magic 5 series, which has achieved quite good results and performance with excellent product power and reasonable pricing, and also made a good start for Honor in 2023.
(Image source: Honor Official)
From the point of view of configuration parameters,GloryMagic5Series doesn't seem to have too many highlights,It's not like OPPO、vivo、Xiaomi has reached the ultimate level in terms of image,But the overall configuration is quite a bucket,In other words, it's definitely worthy of the performance of this price segment。
According to the data released by Honor at that time,Magic 5 series in5000Yuan segment of the first weekly sales increase compared with the previous generation220%,Although Glory did not officially announce its specific sales,But in terms of the current sales on major e-commerce platforms,GloryMagic 5The performance of the series can be said to be quite good。
The strong performance of the Magic 5 series has continued until mid-2023, and Honor has also launched three folding screen phones one after another while the iron is hot, which can be said to be the most "enthusiastic" folding screen mobile phone manufacturer in the mobile phone market this year. Although Honor has not launched a small folding screen with vertical folding for a long time, the launch of Honor Magic Vs2 marks the completion of the multi-level layout of Honor's horizontal folding screen product matrix, and together with Honor Magic V2 and Honor V Purse, an exclusive Honor folding screen ecology has been formed.
(Image source: Honor official website)
If you need a more high-end and bucket product, V2 is the best choice, Vs2 and V Purse are more suitable for those who like the large screen attributes brought by the folding screen, but do not want the body to be too heavy, and in terms of pricing, the three products also perfectly match different consumer groups, realizing the multi-price coverage of the folding screen.
According to a report by market research agency Counterpoint Research, Honor's share of the domestic folding screen mobile phone market has increased from 4% to 16%, and its ranking has risen from 6th to 3rd. Honor is the fastest growing of all folding screen mobile phone brands.
Of course, if Honor can launch a vertically folding screen mobile phone in 2024 and hit the price to the price range of 4000-5000 yuan, it will inevitably further increase Honor's share in the folding screen mobile phone market.
However, it is obviously not practical to rely on high-end mobile phones to do well in China, and mid-range and even low-end products are the real main force in the mobile phone market, and Honor naturally knows this. In this year, they have successively launched the gloryX50、Glory90series、Glory100Series and the main entry-level gloryPlay series,Among them, Xiaolei is impressed by the gloryX50,As a product with a starting price of 1299 yuan,Its performance in all aspects is perfectly in line with Xiaolei's impression and needs of the thousand-yuan machine,And it also has the ability to resist falling that many flagship products do not have,In the previous evaluation,Xiaolei also actually tested its anti-fall ability,The actual performance is indeed beyond expectations。
(Image source: Produced by Lei Technology)
Whether it is the Honor 90 series released at the beginning of the year or the 100 series just released, it has achieved perfection in the process of shooting people, especially "shooting well".
(Image source: Produced by Lei Technology)
Interestingly, OPPO and vivo have actually been working in this market for many years, and their Reno and S series have also gained very good sales and reputation, but the Honor Digital Series has grabbed part of the market from the two "masters", which shows that consumers recognize the Honor Digital Series, which can also highlight that Honor's control over the entire mobile phone market is quite in place.
According to official data, the number of special counters in the Chinese market has covered more than 40,000, the number of experience stores exceeds 2,000, and Mall stores account for 50%, and the complete after-sales chain stores can provide users with a better after-sales experience and enhance the brand stickiness of users. What's more, today's smartphone is no longer a simple digital product for users, it is more like a personal object for people, and people now prefer to touch it before buying, rather than placing an order online with just a piece of paper parameters.
Honor's continuous increase in market share in the face of the contrarian trend is naturally inseparable from Honor's accurate market layout adjustment. It is believed that with the continuous cultivation of the offline market of Honor, its market share will be further expanded, but for young consumer groups, the online market can not be ignored, judging from the market move of Honor this year, it is not ruled out that it will launch a new online model series in the future.
went overseas and made a lot of money
In addition to achieving good results in the domestic market, Honor's overseas performance is also perfect, according to relevant statistics, in the first three quarters of this year, Honor's overseas mobile phone shipments increased by more than 300% year-on-year, and it is expected to achieve 17 billion yuan of exports this year. And what is particularly interesting is that Glory's product play in foreign countries is completely different from that in China, all the products launched are for the high-end market, Glory CEO Zhao Minglayer said that the European mobile phone market still no longer needs low-end brands, only in the high-end market to make a name for itself, in order to grab some consumers from the hands of Samsung Apple, which is also Honor's overseas strategy all along.
In fact, in overseas markets such as Europe and the United States, consumers also pay more attention to product innovation and quality. In this way, we can ensure that Honor's overseas high-end market image will not be affected.
(Image source: Honor official website)
Judging from the current data, it took only ten months for Honor to achieve 3-7 times growth in France, Italy, Spain, and Romania, and successfully entered the ranks of mainstream mobile phone brands. Honor's success has not only brought more profits and revenues to itself, but also improved the image of domestic mobile phones in overseas markets in disguise, making more and more consumers realize that they have more than Apple and Samsung to choose from, and accumulate more energy for the next stage of the journey of domestic mobile phones.
In the second half of this year, Honor announced a high-profile return to the Indian market, although the Indian market is a market with great potential for Honor, but everyone knows that Honor's entry into the Indian market is also facing a test. Judging from India's market ranking in the second quarter of 2023, in addition to Samsung, the top five in the market are all domestic mobile phone manufacturers, such as vivo, Xiaomi, realme, and OPPO. In overseas markets such as India, it will lose the halo effect in the domestic market, and it will test the actual product competitiveness.
The future of Honor is more than just mobile phones
The focus of each mobile phone manufacturer in China is somewhat different, for example, Huawei Xiaomi can not only bring high-quality mobile phone products, but also reach the industry-leading level in terms of ecological achievements, and a good reputation makes countless consumers think of Huawei Xiaomi when buying its peripheral products, which is a kind of brand reputation;
Glory is obviously a slightly "special" manufacturer, it has achieved a good balance in making excellent products and establishing an ecosystem, although it is not as perfect and rich as Huawei Xiaomi, but it has also constructed a complete and sufficient ecology, such as laptops, smart watches, TWS earphones, tablet computers and other products, the glory ecology is still readily available.
(Image source: Honor Official)
At last month's Honor 100 series press conference, Honor CEO Zhao Ming also said that the new Magic 8.0 operating system can achieve a new experience of human-computer interaction through powerful platform-level AI capabilities, which is similar to the previous version of MagicOS 7.0 Ring of Trust (MagicRing) to break the system and system, The boundaries between devices and devices are in the same direction, and technical solutions are created with user experience first, rather than creating a function that is not practical or commonly used in order to demonstrate the AI computing power of hardware.
Zhao Ming also said that Honor has always adhered to two principles for the current hot AI and large model technology:
First, Honor believes that the device-side large model is an upgrade of the evolution and development of platform-level AI. At present, the large model of many mobile phone manufacturers is still based on compressing the network large model to the mobile phone, which is actually wrong for the mobile phone industry.
Second, Honor has built platform-level AI capabilities, which can not only optimize taking photos or Wensheng pictures, but also empower various modules of the mobile phone, increase the smoothness of the experience, and make various application scheduling more accurate, using AI to enable all dimensions of the Honor mobile phone.
Behind the upcoming arbitrary doors and smart films on MagicOS 8.0, it is based on platform-level AI. At the same time, in order to achieve more accurate intent recognition, Honor and Qualcomm have overcome the problem of balancing performance and power consumption, and independently developed the device-side 7B "magic model", which takes the "human-centric" platform-level AI capabilities to a further level and brings more accurate intent recognition and intelligent experience.
At present, the innovation direction of various brands in the mobile phone industry is convergent, and they are focusing on the fields of image, battery, display, underlying operating system, large model, chip, etc., and they are also continuing to increase the high-end smartphone market, but in fact, each company has different strategies and priorities according to its own brand characteristics and user conditions. Obviously, Honor wants to be perfect, although this means that Honor may not be able to achieve the top or leading level in some fields, but for most consumers, this kind of all-round development of enterprises and products is more worth looking forward to.
Write at the end
The smartphone industry has gone through the most difficult and darkest era, although the shipment volume is still more than 20% lower than the peak of the mobile phone market, but the overall is still showing a positive "attitude", Xiaolei believes that in 2024, the mobile phone market will usher in a recovery, who can come out on top in the market, who will be able to achieve "twice the result with half the effort" in the next three to five years, and from the performance of Honor in the past two years, Honor is very likely to become the most eye-catching mobile phone manufacturer in 2024.
2023 is a year of steady progress for Honor, in the past year, Honor first stabilized its own mobile phone sales, became the leading mobile phone manufacturer in China, and then further expanded its influence in the high-end mobile phone market, which also paved the way for Honor's upcoming achievements in 2024.
CES (Las Vegas International Consumer Electronics Show) 2024 is about to be grandly opened, and Lei Technology will send a reporting team led by "One Tianming" to Las Vegas, Nevada, USA CES 2024 on-site reporting, so stay tuned.