Recently, a number of market research institutions have released the development of China's smartphone market in Q4 of 2023 and the whole year, and on the whole, the smartphone market has shown a recovery trend in the past year.
And through these reports and data, we can also find a lot of details and trends worth paying attention to in the smartphone market. And have a clearer picture of the market development next in 2024.
Let's take a closer look.
In the smartphone market in 2023, 5G+AI will promote high-end
First of all, let's look at the report released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, which shows that in December 2023, the domestic market shipped 28.275 million mobile phones, a year-on-year increase of 1.5%, and from January to December 2023, the overall shipment of mobile phones in the domestic market totaled 289 million units, a year-on-year increase of 6.5%.
According to IDC's report, China's smartphone market shipped about 73.63 million units in the fourth quarter of 2023, up 1.2% year-on-year, marking the first rebound after 10 consecutive quarters of year-on-year declines.
Among these mobile phones, 5G mobile phones have accounted for an absolute share of the proportion. For example, according to the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, in December 2023, 24.20 million 5G mobile phones were shipped, a year-on-year increase of 4.2%, accounting for 85.6% of the total shipments in the same period. For the whole of 2023, 5G mobile phone shipments reached 240 million units, a year-on-year increase of 11.9%, accounting for 82.8% of the total shipments in the same period.
In the five years since 5G was commercialized, the popularity of 5G smartphones has been staggering, and the excellent product experience has also allowed consumers to quickly accept 5G only mobile phones, and the arrival of the inclusive era of 5G mobile terminals has become an indisputable fact.
Domestic mobile phone market shipments and 5G mobile phone share
At the same time, in China's smartphone market, the blossoming and innovative development of domestic brand mobile phones have made them the absolute main body of the market. According to the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, in 2023, a total of 231 million domestic brand mobile phones were shipped, accounting for 79.9% of the mobile phone shipments in the same period, while a total of 406 new models were listed, accounting for 92.1% of the new mobile phone models listed in the same period.
Domestic brand mobile phone shipments and proportion
It can also be seen in IDC's ranking of China's smartphone market share in 2023 that except for Apple, which ranks first, the remaining four of the top five are all domestic brand phones, including Honor, OPPO, vivo and Xiaomi.
Domestic mobile phones are not only blooming, but also fierce competition with each other, and in the past year, high-end mobile phones have become one of the core battlefields of competition. According to IDC, the market share of the high-end market above $600 reached 27.4%, up 3.7 percentage points year-over-year, while the market space for $200-$600 products is narrowing.
In fact, hitting the high-end has always been the main theme of China's smartphone market in the past two years. The core factor affecting the development of the high-end mobile phone market is technological innovation. In particular, with the support of 5G, AI and other technologies, the smartphone market is about to enter the next growth cycle, in which the comprehensive product experience led by cutting-edge technological innovation will become a key factor in market competition.
So, what is "cutting-edge technological innovation"? I believe that from the development and evolution of smart phones over the past few years, everyone can also feel that only the innovation driven by chips that goes deep into the underlying technology of mobile phones can really be regarded as cutting-edge innovation that can bring the most direct benefits to the smartphone experience.
This means that smartphone brands, as downstream terminal manufacturers, must be more and more closely integrated with chip suppliers in the upstream of the industry, and the technological innovation and development of mobile phone SoC chip platform suppliers will play an increasingly important role in the development of smartphones in the future.
These Snapdragon flagship phones have witnessed how the underlying chip can empower the recovery of the industry
In fact, just looking at the current smartphone market, we can already strongly feel how the mobile platform chip brings a variety of powerful performance and experience to smartphones through technological innovation, which drives the transformation of smartphone experience from the bottom, defines the standard of mobile phone experience in the new era, and meets the needs of the market and consumers. This is the deep-seated reason why the mobile phone market has been able to gradually recover and move towards a new growth cycle in more than a year.
For most high-end flagship domestic mobile phones, the mobile platform here obviously refers to the latest third-generation Snapdragon 8 mobile platform.
At present, the flagship mobile phone is not just a pile of single function points such as volume configuration and volume performance, but pays more attention to the overall multi-faceted balance experience of the product, and pays more attention to the degree of convenience that the product brings to consumers in daily life and work application scenarios, in other words, the flagship mobile phone is developing in a more comprehensive and intelligent direction. And that's exactly what the third-generation Snapdragon 8 mobile platform can bring to flagship phones.
For example, in terms of today's very hot AI experience, with the blessing of the third-generation Snapdragon 8 mobile platform, today's smartphones are becoming smarter and smarter.
Just like the Honor Magic 6 series just released not long ago, the MagicOS 8.0 system it carries focuses on human-computer interaction experience based on intent recognition, and it is the first step towards the era of AI mobile phones. For example, when you need to take a taxi, you only need to press and hold the text message content containing the address, and you can enter the taxi software to start taking a taxi. In the past, you needed to find the text message, then select the text containing the address, then copy, switch to the desktop to find and open the taxi app, paste the address bar, and a series of tedious operations, but now it only takes one step to complete.
In addition to any door, the Honor Magic 6 series is also equipped with a magic model with 7 billion parameters, bringing functions such as smart films, one-word map lookup, and one-drag schedule, all of which run locally on the device side, greatly improving the intelligent experience of flagship phones during our use.
AI not only improves the intelligent experience of daily application scenarios, but also integrates it into game scenes to bring smoother and better effects to games. For example, the iQOO 12 Pro, which was launched in early November, is able to achieve a super-scoring experience in games with the help of the third-generation Snapdragon 8 mobile platform.
Specifically, the iQOO 12 Pro's gaming super-score has three feature options: Original Quality, High Quality, and Ultra High Quality. Take "Genshin Impact" as an example, in the beautiful Luhua Pool in the game, use the game's own photo function to take a picture under different super-resolution options, compare the three photos, first of all, the difference in clarity is visible to the naked eye, when it is not super-divided, Keqing's headdress and epaulettes are blurred, and when the super-resolution is adjusted to ultra-high image quality, the texture of the character and accessories has been clearly visible.
When the game is running, this super-resolution effect is presented in real time, and the powerful AI computing power and AI characteristics of the third-generation Snapdragon 8 platform are actually behind this effect, which shows that AI has penetrated into all aspects of the smart terminal experience.
Not only that, iQOO 12 Pro also provides a game frame insertion function, this phone is equipped with a 144Hz high refresh rate screen, and the game frame insertion function can increase the frame rate of the game to the same as the screen refresh rate of 144fps, that is, the full screen refresh rate, so that the smoothness of the game can be extremely smooth, and every delicate character action can be presented.
Of course, in addition to AI-powered features, the 3rd Gen Snapdragon 8 platform can bring much more improvements to the gaming experience, such as its ability to run Unreal Engine 5 Lumen global illumination system at a fully interactive frame rate, such as the iQOO 12 Pro's ability to achieve full-map ray tracing on the game Dark Zone Breakout, bringing real-world lighting and shadow texture, further enhancing the immersive experience of the game.
In addition to gaming, imaging is also the core experience of today's smartphones, and in the past two years, the imaging capabilities of smartphones have developed by leaps and bounds, which is also inseparable from the innovation of the Snapdragon 8 mobile platform in imaging technology.
For example, the OPPO Find X7 Ultra phone, which was just released on January 8, is equipped with the third-generation Snapdragon 8 platform, integrates industry-leading midtone algorithms, and can accurately capture delicate light and shadow. For example, in the following photos of the OPPO Find X7 Ultra in the aspect ratio scene, the Find X7 Ultra accurately restores the relationship between light and shadow as seen by the human eye in reality, and the whole picture looks very natural and harmonious in both the highlight and dark light parts, which changes the stiff look and feel of the HDR effect of previous smartphones.
In addition, in terms of 5G / Wi-Fi connection experience, the third-generation Snapdragon 8 mobile platform can also bring the ultimate experience to major flagship mobile phones, taking the RedMagic 9 Pro series mobile phone released in November last year as an example, this mobile phone itself has jointly developed a wrap-around antenna design with Qualcomm to comprehensively improve 5G signal capabilities, and supports 5GHz Wi-Fi high and low frequency concurrency, faster transmission rates and effective anti-interference, with the cooperation of the third-generation Snapdragon 8 platform, the connection experience is on a higher level.
The same is true for the audio experience, such as the Redmi K70 Pro series phones launched in November, which can achieve a cinematic listening experience with the blessing of the third-generation Snapdragon 8 platform. At the same time, Redmi K70 Pro also supports Auracast audio broadcasting technology, which supports multiple pairs of headphones to be accessed, so you can listen to good music with friends.
The leading experiences brought by these Snapdragon flagship phones at all levels such as AI, gaming, imaging, connectivity, audio, etc., constitute our perception of flagship phones in the new era in the past year, and it is this comprehensive and ultimate experience that can be recognized by consumers and the market for the flagship phone experience, thereby driving new growth for the entire industry.
2024 will be the beginning of the explosion of 5G+AI applications in smartphones
Considering the release of the Snapdragon 8 mobile platform and these products, the smartphone industry will still be driven from the bottom for a long time in 2024, and we believe that there is still a lot of room to be tapped into the potential of the Snapdragon 8 platform. The smartphone experience could also be further improved.
For example, as we mentioned earlier, the integrated development of 5G+AI is becoming the main theme of the times, and the same is true for the smartphone market, and the third-generation Snapdragon 8 mobile platform is precisely the leader of 5G+AI experience.
We have seen in the previous data of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology that the proportion of 5G mobile phones in China's smartphone market in 2023 has reached 82.8%, the speed of 5G popularization has exceeded expectations, and the expansion of 5G application scenarios has also achieved good results, such as Qualcomm previously realized 5G radio and television, 5G live broadcast and other applications jointly implemented by partners, I believe that with the evolution of the third-generation Snapdragon 8 mobile platform in 5G connection experience, 5G applications on smartphones will soon usher in a real explosion.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 mobile platform is powered by the Snapdragon X75, the world's first modem to support 5G Advanced-ready, with full-band support from 600MHz to 41GHz, and support for the world's first ten-carrier aggregation for mmWave bands, 10Gbps downlink speeds in Wi-Fi 7 and 5G, and mmWave mmWave hardware (QTM565) fused with Sub-6 hardware to deliver up to 20% more than the previous-generation X70 energy efficiency improvements.
In addition, Qualcomm's advanced modem and RF software suite can further improve sustained performance in user scenarios including elevators, subways, airports, parking lots, and gaming, while 5G PowerSave and Qualcomm RF energy efficiency suites extend battery life.
With such advanced 5G connectivity technology and features, we can expect the third-generation Snapdragon 8 flagship phones in 2024 to expand into a wider range of applications, such as closer and seamless collaboration with a large number of other smart devices, and the use of 5G and XR to generate more immersive gameplay on smartphones.
On the AI side, we have now entered a new era of artificial intelligence led by generative AI, and the third-generation Snapdragon 8 mobile platform is Qualcomm's first mobile platform built specifically for generative AI.
Specifically, on the third-generation Snapdragon 8 platform, Qualcomm brought the ninth-generation AI Engine (Qualcomm AI Engine) and made a positive innovation, Qualcomm upgraded the past Hexagon tensor accelerator to the Hexagon NPU, which can coordinate the entire platform. At the same time, the Hexagon NPU itself has been upgraded with a new microarchitecture that is 98% faster than the previous generation of inference and 40% more energy efficient.
At the same time, Qualcomm in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 has added a direct channel between the Hexagon NPU vector unit and the memory, which greatly enhances the processing efficiency of AI computing. The sensor hub has also been upgraded, with different modules such as memory, two tiny NPUs, Spectra DSP, dual ISPs, and more, to deliver efficient AI computing and processing anytime, anywhere.
With these powerful upgrades, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 can support a wide range of generative AI models, including Meta Llama 2, and has been able to run more than 10 billion large models with up to 20 tokens per second. By running these large, powerful models on the end-side of the device, users no longer need to rely entirely on the cloud.
The 7 billion parameter magic model and a series of convenient and easy-to-use features of the Honor Magic6 series mentioned earlier vividly illustrate how the third-generation Snapdragon 8 brings a smarter experience to smartphones through powerful on-device AI innovations.
The convergence of 5G + AI will bring the device-cloud collaborative generative AI experience to the next level for smartphones, where all private data will remain on the device side, and the sensitive computing related to it will also be carried out on the mobile phone, and when more AI computing power is needed, the computing power of the cloud will be used through 5G. In 2024, we believe that we will see a variety of generative AI applications and features from different mobile phone brands that will bring profound changes to the way we work, play, and live.
epilogue
Overall, the vigorous development of 5G+AI technology has brought us a new era of generative AI trend and the Internet of Everything, with new scenarios and new needs constantly emerging, and also pushing the smartphone industry towards a new round of development cycle, 2024 may be the beginning of a new stage for the entire industry.
At the same time, this "new stage" is specific to the application of each innovative technology and the improvement of each product experience, and behind this, it is inseparable from the support and cooperation provided by Qualcomm and Snapdragon mobile platforms in terms of products, software and hardware technologies.
As we've heard a lot of things in the past: "Any technology that's advanced enough is like magic." "With the joint help of 5G and AI, smartphones will also enter the era of "magical" general experience, in this era, I believe that Qualcomm will work with mobile phone manufacturers and the entire industry chain to make Chinese smartphones truly lead the world.
Source: IT House