Huawei returns to the top, Apple suffers a heavy setback, and the domestic mobile phone pattern will be reshaped?
Recently, a set of data has sparked heated discussions in the industry. IDC's latest quarterly report shows that Huawei's mobile phone shipments have rebounded sharply in the Chinese market, and it has re-entered the top five after two years, tied with Xiaomi. This is undoubtedly an important step taken by Huawei after being hit hard by the "chip embargo".
Counting through this report, it is not difficult to find that Huawei's mobile phone shipments increased by 76.1% year-on-year, which can be described as a rapid growth. The reason for this is inseparable from the excellent performance of Huawei's new P60 series and Mate X3 folding screen series. The data shows that in the high-end market above $600, Huawei is second only to Apple.
Such an achievement is really hard-won. Looking back on the past three years, Huawei has suffered a lot of blows. In May 2019, the U.S. Department of Commerce added Huawei to the "Entity List," prohibiting U.S. companies from selling chips and other products to it. Since then, Google has also announced that it will stop providing Android technical support for Huawei phones.
In the face of many obstacles, Huawei was in a difficult situation for a while. It is understood that before being sanctioned, Huawei's mobile phone market share in the domestic market was as high as 38%, which can be said to be far ahead. However, in 2021, this figure is only 8%, which shows the magnitude of the decline.
Just when the outside world generally thought that Huawei's mobile phone would be in decline, it made a comeback again. In 2022, Huawei released its first independent operating system, the HarmonyOS mobile phone, and launched a number of new products this year, successfully reversing the decline.
Industry insiders, Huawei's re-emergence is largely due to its independent innovation capabilities in chips, operating systems and other fields. It is precisely with these "domestic substitutions" that Huawei has been able to survive and develop after being sanctioned.
Huawei's counterattack is far from over. At the moment, there is still uncertainty about when its 5G phones will be re-launched. There were reports that Huawei would launch its first 5G phone in October, but Huawei later denied it, calling it "fake news".
Huawei's rotating chairman, Xu Zhijun, has made it clear that to see Huawei's 5G mobile phones, it needs to be approved by the U.S. Department of Commerce. This means that there is still a long way to go for the recovery of Huawei's 5G mobile phones.
Huawei's rise has also had an impact on other domestic mobile phone brands. Data shows that during Huawei's downturn, Xiaomi snatched about 50 million lost Huawei users. But now that Huawei is back in the top five, it remains to be seen whether these users will "return".
It is worth noting that Xiaomi mobile phones fell by 17.5% year-on-year in the Chinese market in the second quarter, in stark contrast to Huawei. This may indicate that Xiaomi will face severe challenges from Huawei in the future.
Looking back at the development of Huawei's mobile phones, it is not difficult to find that this company has been working tirelessly to achieve autonomy and control. As early as 2012, Huawei began to develop the HarmonyOS operating system, which can be described as ambitious.
At the time, the HarmonyOS system was originally conceived for IoT devices, not mobile phones. However, with the imposition of sanctions on Huawei by the United States, the positioning of the HarmonyOS system has changed and has become a "life-saving straw" for Huawei mobile phones.
In 2022, Huawei finally launched the Mate 50 series, the first mobile phone equipped with the HarmonyOS system. Compared with the Android system, the HarmonyOS system has unique advantages in distributed technology and cross-terminal experience.
For example, users can seamlessly switch between different devices to achieve multi-screen collaboration; For another example, the HarmonyOS system is more adaptable to hardware and can maximize hardware performance.
The HarmonyOS system also has some shortcomings. For example, the number of ecological applications is limited, and the cost of adapting to old users is high. But in the long run, as long as Huawei invests, these problems will eventually be solved.
After years of hard work, Huawei has finally made breakthroughs in chip design and process technology. Its latest Kirin 9000 chip, the performance is already quite good, and there is only a line of separation from Apple's A-series chips.
With an independent and controllable operating system and chips, Huawei mobile phones can survive after being sanctioned. From this perspective, Huawei's re-emergence is largely due to its unremitting investment in core technologies over the years.
Despite the rebound in Huawei's mobile phone shipments, there are still many uncertainties about its future. First of all, there is still a long way to go for the recovery of 5G mobile phones.
On the one hand, there is a lot of uncertainty about when Huawei's 5G phones will be re-launched, and it needs to be approved by the U.S. government. On the other hand, even if 5G mobile phones are re-launched, their competition in the domestic market will be extremely severe.
In the past few years when Huawei has been "contained", the domestic mobile phone market has long been reshuffled and reorganized. Data shows that in the first half of 2023, OPPO, vivo, Honor and Apple will firmly occupy the top four with a market share of 17.7%, 17.2%, 16.4% and 15.3% respectively.
These mobile phone manufacturers have eaten up a large share of the domestic market during Huawei's absence. Now that Huawei's 5G mobile phones are going to fight back, they will undoubtedly encounter fierce counterattacks from them.
As the "boss" of the domestic high-end mobile phone market, Apple's position will also be squeezed by Huawei. Judging from the current situation, Huawei is second only to Apple in the high-end market above $600, ranking it, which shows that its strength should not be underestimated.
Once Huawei's 5G mobile phone is back on the market, its competitiveness in the high-end market will be further enhanced. At that time, Apple's leading position in the domestic high-end market will also be severely challenged.
China's smartphone market is undergoing profound changes. In the past few years, this market has been relatively stable due to the lack of Huawei, a "heavyweight".
But now, with the comeback of Huawei and the rise of other brands, the future mobile phone war will become confusing and the intensity will be unprecedentedly high.
For consumers, vicious competition between brands is certainly not beneficial. But from another perspective, it is precisely because of this that consumers have more and better choices.
Only through continuous innovation can mobile phone manufacturers survive in this fierce competition. We have reason to believe that the future of mobile phone products will become more intelligent and more humane.