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Produced by | Chaoqi Network "Yu See Column"
Science and technology are the primary productive forces. This is especially true in the 3C digital electronics track, where technology-intensive components such as chips are almost "just needed". However, Huawei, which has always been known for its core technology, has not shown a greater "sense of superiority" in the smart PC track that it has been cultivating for many years. Even compared with PC giants such as Lenovo, its market share is still in a very "backward" state.
According to the report "2023 Domestic Desktop, Notebook and Tablet Market Share Share" released by market research agency Canalys, in the past year, Lenovo still held the "top spot" in the domestic PC market with a market share of 38%, while Huawei was almost equal to HP with a market share of 10%.
Source: Canalys PC Analysis Forecast Data (Shipments)
Although Huawei's market share in China has surpassed Dell and ranked among the top 3 in the industry compared to 2022, the market share gap between it and Lenovo is still huge.
It is worth noting that from the perspective of brand power, although Lenovo is a PC computer brand, it has always been regarded as a "manufacturing" enterprise with its own brand by the industry because all core parts need to rely on external suppliers and the restrictions of its business model. Huawei, on the other hand, has always been regarded as a representative of technology companies because of its technological research and development capabilities.
In addition, Huawei's PC business has been aligning with new concepts such as smart PCs and AI PCs. It's just that why does a seemingly simple and crude "processing plant" compete with a "lofty" technology company in the competition on the PC track? Is this just because Huawei is a complete latecomer in the PC track? The answer is probably not that simple.
Limited to the local market, surpassing Lenovo is tantamount to "Arabian Nights"
Although Huawei "squeezed" into the top three in the local market. However, in the global market, Huawei is almost nowhere on the list of market shares of top brands. For example, according to the 2024 Q1 global PC sales data released by IDC not long ago, it can be seen that Lenovo, Sharp, and Dell are among the top three, with shares of 23%, 20.1%, and 15.5% respectively. Among the top 5 brands, Huawei is nowhere to be found.
Source: IDC report data
This also means that Huawei is not only in the domestic market, but also difficult to compete with Lenovo. In the international market, its market share is also far from Lenovo's.
According to analysis, the fundamental reason for Huawei's "ice and fire" in the international and domestic markets is, on the one hand, Huawei's so-called smart PCs are designed according to the office and home consumption habits of domestic consumers, so they may not be very attractive to consumers in overseas markets.
On the other hand, Huawei, as an enterprise that provides infrastructure such as base stations for mobile communication operators, has also deployed smart terminal equipment, so its brand influence in the PC track is far less than that of other global brands with higher rankings.
It is worth noting that as Huawei's smartphones are affected by factors such as chip supply, the global shipments of its mobile phone products have also declined, which will also lead to the lack of corresponding software and hardware ecology for its smart PCs, making it more difficult to open up the situation in the international market.
It can be seen that even if Huawei has achieved growth at a doubling rate in the domestic market, it is still far behind Lenovo Group, which is very successful in globalization. You must know that the current sales of Lenovo computers in China are only about 25% of its total global sales. Moreover, according to the statistics of third-party research institutions in 2023, the sales volume of China's PC market will only account for one-sixth of the world's.
This also means that even if Huawei ranks among the top three in China, or even rushes to the first place in the future, it may be difficult to break into the top camp in the global market. And before Huawei has achieved outstanding results in globalization, it is tantamount to talking about surpassing Lenovo at this time.
The halo of a technology company is on his head, but he is controlled by others in the smart PC track
Just as smartphone products have always been "stuck", the core components of Huawei's smart PC are still CPUs, graphics cards, memory modules, etc., and these components are all high-precision technology products, which are basically provided by overseas suppliers. When this kind of product goes to the market, it not only has extremely high requirements for technology research and development, but also requires a very precise production process to provide production capacity guarantee for it.
Therefore, in the process of developing smart PCs, Huawei will inevitably be limited by chip manufacturers such as Qualcomm, CPU manufacturers represented by Intel and AMD, and GPU manufacturers represented by NVIDIA. Even if the constraints of these chip companies are put aside, Huawei needs to rely on Microsoft's Windows system in terms of operating system, and it is controlled by others.
As a result, even if Huawei has developed a new concept of smart PC and AI PC, it can only participate in the PC market by using its original PC manufacturing technology and using products supplied by overseas chip companies and operating system companies.
Lenovo, on the other hand, has no such concerns. On the one hand, Lenovo's brand positioning is different from Huawei's, and it has already formed long-term and stable cooperative relations with upstream and downstream suppliers and customers. Moreover, Lenovo has always been "keeping to itself" and has no ambition to fully penetrate the upstream chip industry and downstream intelligent terminal equipment, so it will also make these upstream companies relax their vigilance and let it develop and grow.
Under the banner of smart PCs, Huawei has obviously always had the ambition to build an industry ecosystem such as smart software and hardware. Moreover, now under the pressure of the chip supply cut in the United States, it not only plans to "get involved" in chips, but also is developing and upgrading the HarmonyOS operating system for its mobile terminal devices with great fanfare.
Therefore, from the perspective of industry competition, the future development of Huawei's smart PCs will inevitably be suppressed by all aspects. In fact, a crisis similar to Huawei's "supply outage" on smartphones may also appear in its PC products.
For example, some media reported in recent days that the Biden administration further tightened export restrictions on Huawei on May 7, revoking the licenses of American chip companies Qualcomm and Intel Corp. to sell semiconductors to Huawei. According to anonymous sources, the latest measures of the US government against Huawei will affect the supply of chips for Huawei's mobile phones and laptops.
In addition, according to Reuters, Bloomberg and other media reports, some sources said that in the past year or so, the Biden administration has rarely approved new license applications for Huawei. And Huawei is no longer among Qualcomm's top 10 customers, nor is it on Intel's top customer list. In addition, Qualcomm has recently said that its business with Huawei is already limited and will soon be reduced to zero.
It can be seen that Huawei's deployment of intelligent PCs is not only affected by the competitive landscape, but also by some uncertainties such as the international economic, political, and trade environment. Under the influence of various factors, the growth of Huawei's smart PC business may be unsustainable.
The price is extremely high, and the after-sales service is not in place, and Huawei smart PC is accused of harvesting IQ tax
Apple's "boutique strategy" of releasing a handful of new products every year and opening the conference high is regarded as a benchmark by many technology companies. However, Huawei's layout of smart PCs, which are accused of "Apple leftovers", has gone the opposite way and seems to be trying to win by volume.
For example, at Huawei's summer all-scenario new product launch conference in mid-May 2023, Huawei launched more than a dozen terminal products in one go, among which PC products such as the MateBook X Pro 2023 became the protagonists of the conference. It is understood that the MateBook X Pro 2023 uses aviation-grade magnesium alloy materials, reduces the weight of the fuselage by 30%, and is positioned as a smart PC.
For smart PCs, Huawei has its own understanding that after the PC era is gone, there will be only one PC in the future, and that is smart PCs. The so-called smart PC is a tool that can transform the computer from a "productivity tool" attribute tool in the past to an intelligent tool that supports multiple scenarios, multiple tasks, and multiple working states, so as to make it an ecological collaboration platform that adapts to multiple scenarios.
As the saying goes: if the skin does not exist, the hair will be attached. In recent years, it is an indisputable fact that the global PC market has been in a downward cycle. According to a report released by Counterpoint, global PC (personal computer) shipments in the first quarter of 2024 increased by 3% year-on-year to about 57.3 million units. Prior to this, global PC shipments had declined year-on-year for eight consecutive quarters. In addition, the agency also said that the shipment growth in the first quarter of 2024 was also achieved on the basis of a relatively low base for the same period in 2022.
Therefore, the growth of Huawei's smart PC at this time, although there is a trend of bucking the trend, may only be temporary. You must know that under the "gimmick" of Huawei's smart PC and the high-end price of positioning, the positioning, quality, user experience and even after-sales service of its products have made consumers place high hopes.
Therefore, in addition to facing the competitive pressure of the market, Huawei smart PCs also need to meet the diversified "consumption tastes" of consumers under the trend of consumption upgrading. But in fact, its high-end products can hardly be said to be high-end, and even have been repeatedly complained.
For example, on the Black Cat complaint platform, complaints about Huawei's smart PC products are not uncommon. Taking the MateBook X Pro 2020 as an example, there is a lot of consumer feedback that the quality of its computer is serious. Among them, there are consumer feedback that its motherboard is burned out for no reason and cannot be repaired during normal use.
Some consumers said that the design defects of their notebook products and the CPU burned out, and the MateBook X Pro 2020 purchased at a price of nearly 10,000 yuan, although it has been purchased for three years, the cumulative use time is less than 50 days. However, there was after-sales feedback that the CPU burned out and needed to be repaired, and the maintenance cost was nearly 6,000 yuan. For this reason, Huawei also aroused strong dissatisfaction with the consumer, and even bluntly said that Huawei was "catching a leek and cutting it to death, specifically pit the Chinese".
Source: Screenshot of the Black Cat complaint platform
It is worth noting that in recent years, Huawei has continued to increase the promotion of its AI concept of PC products, and has sparked a discussion among netizens about "Huawei's smart PC with a very high price is to harvest the IQ tax".
Although the definition of AI PC is different from one manufacturer to another, the configuration is also varied. However, the consensus in the industry is that compared with traditional PCs, AIPC must be equipped with dedicated chips or AI modules to support localized operation of large language models with tens of billions of parameters. However, this new concept is still a bit "unclear and unclear", so the market is still more skeptical than positive about Huawei's AI PC.
epilogue
Comparing Apple's development trajectory, it can be seen that although Huawei's "smart PC" banner seems to be an inevitable move to make up for the shortcomings of its smart hardware ecosystem, it also has some "picking up people's teeth".
The hot concept of AI PC is also not Huawei's patent. In fact, the "first brother in the industry" Lenovo did not miss this opportunity that has not yet been confirmed, but from the first upgrade of "Lenovo 1+1", to the second upgrade of Tianxi "Internet computer", it has been upgraded to Lenovo AI PC series (including ThinkPad and YOGA, Xiaoxin and other models). This is also regarded as the third generational upgrade of Lenovo PC in more than 30 years.
Compared with Huawei's belated deployment of PCs but trying to occupy the conceptual high ground, AI PCs may be beyond the significance of AI PCs to Huawei for Lenovo Group, which has truly achieved globalization.
When smart PCs develop in the direction of becoming more and more high-tech and high-end, will Huawei, which has been limited at the technical level, continue to be "stuck" in chips and core technologies? I'm afraid this topic is still a cliché.
It is expected that the "tragedy" that happened to Huawei smartphones and the Honor brand in the past will not be repeated in Huawei's smart PC business in the future. In this way, Huawei is also "qualified" to wrestle with Lenovo Group, and it is possible to successfully win back a game.