In recent months, the hottest national topic is likely to be Xiaomi's first luxury coupe "SU 7" official sale, compared with other car manufacturers "spend money to buy heat" market publicity, "Xiaomi" brand has been its commercial promotion behavior, saving a large amount of publicity costs, no need to spend additional product publicity costs in social media channels. This is not only a certification of the strength of Xiaomi's brand products, but also a recognition of its potential to always have the potential of "punching the master to death".
On the evening of March 28, with the official release of Xiaomi's first product, the SU7 series, many netizens made a wish to "Lei Jun, the founder of Xiaomi": "#雷军能不能生产一下相机#", the entry even rushed to the first place in the hot search on Weibo.
So far, Xiaomi and Lei Jun have not replied to the "public voice" about "#雷军能不能生产一下相机#" on relevant media platforms. So, can Xiaomi produce cameras? Intelligent car manufacturing is different from manufacturing cameras (optical precipitation and technical barriers)
It takes less than 3 years to realize the landing of the automobile production line from scratch, and the current car will be sold in April 2024. Automobiles not only need to consider mechanical engineering technologies such as power systems, suspension systems, and braking systems, but also need to integrate cutting-edge technologies in various fields such as electronic engineering, software engineering, network communication, and artificial intelligence. In contrast, although the production of cameras also involves precision optics, mechanical manufacturing, and electronic technology, their technical complexity and system integration are relatively low. Secondly, in terms of industrial ecology, the automotive industry chain is longer, involving more upstream and downstream enterprises, including parts suppliers, raw material suppliers, R&D and design institutions, sales and service networks, etc. Although the camera industry also has its own specific supply chain system, it is relatively small in scale and has a short industrial chain.
In terms of capital investment, intelligent manufacturing vehicles require huge capital investment, including R&D expenses, production line construction, marketing, etc., and the return cycle is long. Although camera production also requires a certain amount of financial support, its capital threshold and operating costs are relatively low. In terms of market positioning, the car is not only a means of transportation, but also an important part of modern life, its market scale is huge, and consumers have higher requirements for brand, performance, safety and other aspects. Although the camera market has certain specializations and market segments, the overall market size is small, and the market competition is more fierce due to the impact of smartphone photography technology.
Seeing this, you may wonder that with Xiaomi's current technical reserves in the fields of smartphones, smart hardware and Internet services, combined with its strong multi-industry supply chain management and integration capabilities, this does not happen to mean that digital camera manufacturing is easier to enter the market and lower cost than automobiles. The first attempt to make a camera for the "Irregular Army" allows us to look back at 2016, a crucial year for Xiaomi, according to the relevant news and financial reports, Xiaomi Group's smartphone business in 2016 saw a significant decline in sales, compared with 2015, the annual shipments fell by 36% year-on-year. At the same time, market share fell to 8.9% from 15.1% in 2015. In order to change this market dilemma, Xiaomi began to "make up classes, slow down, and adjust", and emphasized the construction of offline channels, and began to lay offline channels - Xiaomi Home. In this year, Xiaomi launched an innovative design full-screen concept mobile phone - MIX, although the sales are not ideal, but it is pinned on Xiaomi's "dawn in the trough" hope, which means that Xiaomi's grasp of R&D and supply chain has been qualitatively improved, and Xiaomi's design and technical strength have won a certain recognition.
At the same time, the YI mirrorless camera M1 was launched on the Xiaomi Mall (produced by YI Technology under the Xiaomi ecological chain and put on the shelves of the Xiaomi Mall), although it cannot directly explain the product power of this mirrorless camera, but the "new digital product" launched in Xiaomi's critical year can also be considered for the attention of Xiaomi Group.
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According to a friend who has worked at Xiaomi, Mr. Lei did consider making a mirrorless camera, but the supply chain and technology at that time did not support it (not traceable). Today, back to the topic of "camera production", I believe that with the experience and technology accumulated by Xiaomi Group in making mobile phones and cars (including the integration of supply chains), it will definitely be no problem to produce one or two cameras. However, it may not be of much significance to Xiaomi Group to make a consumer interchangeable lens digital mirrorless camera. The future is bright, but the market volume is limited
Relevant reports published by CIPA
Relevant reports published by CIPA
According to the relevant data of CIPA, the international camera and imaging equipment industry association of Japan, the global digital camera shipment sales in 2023 will be 714.3 billion yen (about 34 billion yuan), an increase of nearly 5% compared with 2022. In 2023 (cumulative January~December), the total shipment of digital cameras was 7720505 units, which was 96.4% compared to the previous year. Among them, the average unit price of each camera equipment is about 90,000 yen (equivalent to about 4,500 yuan), a record high. Although the total global camera shipments are declining compared with the previous year, the shipments of "facing China" have increased significantly compared with other regions, with the largest increase of 124.7% compared with the previous year, and the cumulative total annual shipments of "facing China" reached 1567709 units, with sales of about 179.9 billion yen (about 8.575 billion yuan). Although the overall digital camera market is collapsing, China's digital camera imports are rising. From the perspective of the digital camera industry, the Chinese market as a whole is on the rise, and there is good sales potential.
Related reports published by IDC
Xiaomi's official 2023 financial report but once combined with the sales of "one per person" smartphone, the global sales of digital cameras obviously cannot be "put on the table", according to the relevant financial reports released by Xiaomi Group, the total global sales of Xiaomi's smartphone business are about 157.5 billion yuan. In addition, according to the relevant data analysis of the international data analysis company IDC, Xiaomi Group will ship 145.9 million smartphones in 2023, ranking third in global mobile phone shipments, of which about 40 million units are in the Chinese market. Combined with the shipment volume of digital cameras "facing China" in 2023, Xiaomi's smartphone shipments in China exceed the shipments of digital cameras in China by 25 times.
Combined with the above data, it is not difficult to see that Japanese companies still dominate the consumer digital camera market, and the total global sales of consumer digital cameras are lower than the total sales of Xiaomi smartphones in China alone, and the overall consumer group of consumer digital cameras is still small. In terms of total sales and shipments, mobile phones and mobile images are still the mainstream of the market. There is no doubt that mobile imaging is a larger-scale and more promising market, and in this market, Chinese companies have been at the forefront of the world.
The domestic full-frame Kinefinity MAVO Edge 8K camera combination appears in the background (top left)
The development status of domestic digital cameras is complex and multifaceted. Although Japanese brands such as Canon, Sony, Nikon, etc. still dominate the global digital camera market, domestic digital camera brands have also made significant progress and breakthroughs in certain market segments and fields.
In the field of professional cameras, although smartphones have made great progress in photography, professional digital cameras still have advantages in image quality, focusing, video shooting, etc., especially in poor light conditions. The performance of domestic brands in this area needs to be improved, but in some specific markets, such as live cameras and digital cinema projectors, domestic brands have already shown competitiveness. For example, the live broadcast cameras launched by Yongnuo and Eyelight Technology directly have built-in Android systems to provide integrated shooting and streaming services. Kinefinity's 8K digital cinema projector and ZCAM's cameras have been used in CCTV live broadcasts and film shooting, and even witnessed the whole picture of the earth with the Shenzhou spacecraft.
Source: DJI's official website In addition, domestic brands have also achieved remarkable results in market segments such as action cameras, gimbal cameras, and panoramic cameras. DJI's drones, Action/Pocket series of compact video recorders, and handheld stabilizers are highly competitive in the global market, and the Instan360 also occupies an important position in the panoramic camera field.
Source: The official website of the Chinese manufacturer Changguangchenxin It is worth noting that domestic camera brands are also making continuous efforts in technology research and development and innovation. The domestic 8K image sensor and 152 million pixel medium format CMOS launched by Changguangchen show the potential of domestic sensor technology. On the consumer side of high-end cameras, DJI's partnership with Hasselblad (a wholly-owned acquisition of DJI) also shows that domestic brands are moving towards the high-end photography market (not limited to Hasselblad X2D, Ronin 4D and Zenmuse X9, Hasselblad color science is built into DJI products, etc.).
The source network returns to this "Wish Lei Jun to make a camera", from the paper parameters to look at the Xiaomi ecological chain, this "mirrorless camera" that was reported with high hopes back then - Xiaoyi mirrorless camera M1, although a bit outdated, but also remarkable. Using an M43 format 20.16 million pixel front-illuminated sensor, the maximum continuous shooting speed is up to 5 shots per second, which can shoot up to 50 million pixel interpolated pictures and 4K 30 frames of ultra-high-definition video, using contrast contrast focusing, supporting face detection at 81 points, touch screen shooting, etc. However, this is not a "Xiaomi camera" in the real sense, this is not a "dangda product" that Xiaomi is fully committed to. Xiaomi enters the digital camera, or can it break the lens?
If Xiaomi really plans to start making a digital camera, how far can it go? Can it surpass Fujifilm and Panasonic home appliances in one fell swoop in a few years, and catch up with the global shipment volume of digital cameras of Canon, Nikon, Sony, and other brands? The answer is obviously no, and most of the image consumers who "wish Thor" on Weibo do not have a deep enough understanding of the industry barriers of digital cameras. In addition to the brand moat, optical lens design (high-precision optical glass manufacturing), lens coating process, etc., there are also self-designed CMOS hardware solutions, digital image processing, CMOS wafer production, software and hardware ecology, etc. (color science, color correction, etc.). Although Xiaomi has a lot of practical experience in the design of digital image processing chips, there is still a big gap between the imaging of mobile phone photography and the imaging of digital cameras.
From the perspective of plane imaging, the main camera sensor of most smartphones is mostly an inch outsole, and combined with the efficient and advantageous mobile phone image algorithm, it can indeed be on par with the imaging images of some digital cameras to a certain extent. However, in terms of overall planar imaging performance, digital cameras benefit from larger photosensitive CMOS pixel particles and larger imaging surfaces at the physical level, which must have higher imaging accuracy and better image quality than mobile phone photography. And also thanks to the larger CMOS sensor, the color depth of a single image of most flagship digital cameras is still not comparable to mobile phone photography.
From the perspective of video shooting, although domestic Android smartphones have successively iterated their video production capabilities in recent years, they are still unable to compare with the production capabilities of Apple mobile phones on the video side. Compared with domestic Android mobile phones, Apple has a significant advantage in hardware integration, Apple's customized sensors with its own design of the A series chip (domestic chips still have mountains to climb) and image algorithms (chip NPU performance call advantages), has been able to achieve a good streaming media mobile phone audio-visual perception, but horizontal comparison of digital cameras in the early shooting capabilities of video, smart phones are still stretched.
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Image source network Of course, Xiaomi can completely enter the digital camera with the idea of making mobile phones, since the key components (CMOS) cannot be produced independently, it can be like other image manufacturers, directly from Sony, Canon, Israel Jingyuan foundry company Tower Semiconductor order (it is rumored that Nikon's flagship CMOS is foundry here), and purchase the corresponding on-chip focus authorization, develop the existing digital image processor chip, with Xiaomi's latest "second-generation Leica color science" , adapt to the professional ProressRaw video recording format, etc., to achieve a digital camera on the market, but in the end it is of little significance.
For imaging products, lower prices mean entry-level products, but it doesn't mean that "it" is not a good enough image production tool. If Xiaomi enters the digital camera, relying on its amazing supply chain management and integration capabilities, of course, it is possible to bring down the price of "digital camera", but in this way, it can provide consumers with better image products in the short term? The fast Xiaomi digital camera can rely on the ideal image enthusiast to go up and down the mountain, but most professional image users have accumulated a large number of products of the same brand in their hands, and have been completely accustomed to the workflow that comes with the existing equipment, they will not change the long-standing image production habits because of the "Xiaomi digital camera", and professional image users are the constant maintenance group of image manufacturers. In the end, if you can't make a lens by yourself, you can rely on buying parts to build a machine to integrate the supply chain, and once you succeed, you can easily be copied by others, so it seems almost meaningless to subvert and disrupt the traditional image market. Looking back at everyone's demands, I want a domestic easy-to-use, cost-effective camera, and then I think about it, in fact, we have already used Xiaomi cameras.
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