The Pura 70 was directly put on the shelves, adding another fire to the popularity of Huawei's high-end machines. Industry insiders revealed to the "City Boundary" that the industry predicts that Huawei's global mobile phone shipments will reach about 60 million units in 2024, and the production capacity will be covered simultaneously. This number not only means that Huawei's mobile phones will regain lost ground from Apple, but also make Huawei likely to return to the first place in China's smartphone market share.
After covering it for more than half a month, in the anticipation of all parties, the Huawei Pura 70 series chose to "copy" the release strategy of last year's Mate 60 and directly put it on sale.
On April 15, after Huawei announced that the P series would be upgraded to the "Pura" series, the market expected that Huawei's new P series mobile phones would be unveiled soon. In the past three days, there has been news that users are actively participating in the "blind booking" at various Huawei terminal distribution outlets.
On the morning of April 18, Huawei Mall launched Huawei Pura 70 Ultra and Huawei Pura 70 Pro at 10:08. The Pura model roughly continues the P60 price system, which is divided into four models: Huawei Pura70, starting at 5499 yuan, Pura70 Pro starting at 6499 yuan, Pura70 Pro+Starting at 7999 yuan, Pura 70 Ultra, starting at 9999 yuan - Next, Pura 70 Standard Edition and Pura 70 Pro+ will go on sale on April 22.
After the new phone was launched, the "City Boundary" placed an order as soon as possible, but the Pura 70 Ultra and Pura 70 Pro phones were sold out within 1 minute.
At the same time, a Huawei distributor told City Boundary that her store had received some of the stock in advance on April 17. However, within an hour of the sale, only the Ultra version was left in stock.
At Huawei's flagship store in Shenzhen, users who snapped up buying formed a long queue in front of Huawei's store early.
A user who participated in the on-site rush purchase told "City Boundary" that the scene was crowded, and he still had to queue up with a number after entering the store. However, compared to last year's Huawei Mate 60, this time the stock is significantly more sufficient. Soon after entering the store, he successfully purchased a Huawei Pura 70 Pro and got a new one on the spot.
▲ (Photo provided by the interviewee)
Since April, when "Huawei P70" will come out on the street, it has been on Weibo hot search several times. According to the practice of previous years, as the most important flagship in the first half of the year, Huawei P series models are generally released in March.
As for the reason for the postponement of the release of Huawei Pura 70 this year, an industry insider told the "City Boundary" that on the one hand, it is to leave a longer sales cycle for Huawei's high-end small folding machine Pocket 2 released not long ago - both the P series and the Pocket series are mainly aimed at women. On the other hand, it is also related to Huawei's efforts to increase production capacity and increase stocking - after all, after the release of the Huawei Mate60 series last year, it was out of stock for a long time.
However, according to Jiemian News, dealers in Guangdong said that the first order of the Pura 70 series is much more sufficient than that of the Mate 60 series.
Although the Pura 70 is long overdue, the official name change for it also shows the high expectations for the new machine within Huawei. According to industry insiders, the Pura 70 is considered a killer feature for Huawei to regain its market position from the high-end market. After the launch of Huawei's Mate 60 series and Mate X5 series folding screens last year, Huawei's shipments in the high-end market have skyrocketed.
Industry insiders familiar with the mobile phone industry told "City Boundary" that the industry predicts that Huawei's global mobile phone shipments will reach about 60 million units in 2024, and the production capacity will be covered simultaneously.
This figure not only means that Huawei's mobile phones will take back the lost share from Apple, but also make Huawei likely to return to the first place in the market share of Chinese smartphones.
01, 1,000,000,000
The market has been waiting for the Huawei Pura 70 for a long time.
On April 11, Huawei launched a "HarmonyOS Ecosystem Spring Communication Meeting". The P70 mobile phone that was originally scheduled to be unveiled at the conference has not been seen, and the key pages have been left to cars, PCs and other products. But for more than a month, the topic of P series mobile phones has dominated the hot search list many times. Especially last year, the Huawei Mate60 series was not sold first, which also made the industry speculate that this time Huawei P70 will be raided again.
It is worth noting that last year's Huawei Mate 60 series was released at the end of August. Industry insiders previously told the "City Boundary" that even if Huawei P70 is postponed, it will most likely be launched in April. "If it is delayed for too long, it may disrupt the product rhythm of the Mate70 series in the second half of the year. ”
With the experience of the Mate 60 directly on the shelves, many users and "scalpers" are squatting in advance in the Huawei official store to prevent the P70 from suddenly being on the shelves and missing the first round of rush to buy opportunities.
On April 18, when the official sale was launched, a user told "City Boundary" that he had been squatting in the official mall since the morning and had not been able to grab the phone. According to a number of users, many of Huawei's official flagship stores were crowded with a large number of users in the morning. A Huawei dealer told the media: Pura 70 Pro has a premium of about 500 yuan.
02. The black technology in the new machine
With the Pura 70 officially unveiled the true face of Lushan, its related highlights and parameters were quickly exposed by the first batch of consumers who got the new machine.
As Huawei's flagship product, the P series has a history of 12 years and has always been known for its imaging performance. A few days ago, Huawei released a warm-up video of the P series mobile phones on its official WeChat, revealing that Huawei Pura 70 will be equipped with a super-concentrating imaging system, and the Pura 70 Ultra will use a super-concentrating telescopic main camera. As a highlight, Huawei said that the lens is freely retractable, 300,000 times of telescoping and worry-free, and has 2 meters of IP68 dust and water resistance.
A person from Huawei's mobile phone supply chain told the media: The Pura camera has a large technical upgrade. Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst at Tianfeng International Securities, revealed that the Pura 70 Ultra's wave-plastic hybrid lens will cost 4-5 times that of the 7P lens (a high-end mobile phone lens, which is used in the iPhone 13) due to the use of molded glass.
Consumers who took a look at the new device also found that the Pura 70 is equipped with the new HarmonyOS 4.2 system. In addition, Huawei did not miss the AI express, and the Pura 70 is equipped with a large Pangu model, and all systems support new functions such as AI air operation, AI elimination, and AI cloud enhancement.
Since the launch of the Mate 60, 5G communication has been an important highlight of Huawei's flagship phones. According to market news, the Pura 70 series is equipped with Kirin chips, has 5G capabilities, and supports satellite communication at the same time. This also means that Huawei's 5G communication has announced its return in a full range of high-end machines.
Judging from the enthusiastic feedback from the market, the Huawei Pura 70 should continue the craze when the Mate 60 was launched.
▲ (On April 18, in Huawei's flagship store on Nanjing Road, Shanghai, the Pura70 mobile phone attracted customers to experience)
Considering that since the release of the Huawei Mate60 series last year, Huawei has returned to the top five in the Chinese smartphone market. According to media reports, in the first two weeks of 2024, Huawei has won the first place in shipments in China's mobile phone market. Next, the launch of Huawei Pura70 will pin further hopes on Huawei to regain the high-end market.
According to Canalys data, China's smartphone shipments in 2023 will be 273 million units, of which Apple, which ranks first in the market, will ship 51.8 million units.
According to industry insiders familiar with the mobile phone industry, the industry predicts that Huawei's global mobile phone shipments will reach about 60 million units in 2024, and the production capacity will be covered simultaneously. This year, people can start to expect Huawei to surpass Apple's position.
The launch of Pura 70 will contribute to a significant increase. Ming-Chi Kuo predicts that Huawei's Pura 70 series shipments are expected to grow significantly to 10 million to 15 million units in 2024. For comparison, the P60 series launched by Huawei in 2023 will sell 400–5 million units.
Combined with the release of a new generation of Mate 70 series in the second half of the year, Huawei is likely to return to the top spot in the market this year if the shipment target is successfully completed.
03. The high-end machine is fully pressed
Although Huawei has been "hanging" all the way since the launch of the Mate 60 in the second half of last year, considering the staggered situation in today's mobile phone market, Huawei's lead has not come easily.
Entering 2024, although the global mobile phone market has ushered in further recovery momentum, the competition between major manufacturers has become more intense. Canalys analyst Zhu Jiatao told "City Boundary" that the global market is expected to achieve 3% to 4% growth this year, and the domestic market is expected to rise slightly year-on-year.
To some extent, Apple's lack of innovation has given companies more hope to catch up. "Now the share of the top five manufacturers is very close, and basically none of them have been really left behind. Apple's global shipments this year have fallen significantly month-on-month and year-on-year, and are declining in China, North America, and Europe. ”
Zhu Jiatao said that the reason for Apple's sharp decline in the first quarter of this year is related to the increase in inventory in the fourth quarter of last year. In addition to Huawei's return, other manufacturers are also using differentiated products such as folding screens to hit Apple's price segment.
In order to quickly regain the market that was encroached upon by Apple, Huawei's offensive in the field of high-end machines can be described as step-by-step and aggressive.
Although last year, due to the well-known core technology production capacity, Huawei was unable to release the supply of the Mate 60 series. However, the situation has recently improved. The data shows that as of February this year, the total sales of the Huawei Mate60 series standard version and Pro models exceeded 17 million units - of which the Huawei Mate60 Pro single model has been activated more than 12 million. In addition, the sales of the Mate X5 folding screen, which is positioned at a higher end, have also reached 4 million units.
Recently, according to the activation volume of mobile phones in China in the first quarter of 2024 released by market research institute BCI, Huawei's activation volume increased by 81% year-on-year to 10.584 million units, accounting for 15.5%, ranking third and surpassing Apple, second only to vivo (including iQOO) and Honor. As Huawei's biggest rival in the high-end market, Apple's activation volume fell 20% year-on-year to 10.569 million units in the quarter.
In addition, Huawei also uses high-end folding screens, in addition to straight board machines, to distinguish a niche positioning and more lucrative market segment. According to market statistics, the current sales volume of up to 4 million units of Huawei Mate X5 has a starting price of 12999 yuan. The Huawei Pocket 2 small fold released not long ago has a starting price of 7499 yuan, and the starting price of the art custom version starts at 9999 yuan.
In March this year, according to data from DSCC, a well-known display supply chain research institution, thanks to the excellent performance of Huawei Mate X5 and Huawei Pocket 2, Huawei surpassed Samsung in the first quarter of 2024 and became the first place in the global folding screen market share, with shipments increasing by 105% compared with the same period last year, and the market share exceeded 40% - this is also the first time that Huawei's folding screen market share has surpassed Samsung.
Driven by the simultaneous sales of multiple models, Huawei's terminal revenue has soared. Not long ago, Huawei released its 2023 annual report, which shows that the sales revenue of Huawei's terminal business in 2023 will be 251.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 17.3%, ushering in positive growth for the first time in nearly three years.
Next, with the launch of Huawei Pura 70 and the iteration of Huawei Mate70 series in the second half of the year, Huawei is bound to accelerate its recovery of lost ground in the high-end market.
（作者 | 曾广，编辑 | 李原）