Next year's Android flagship phone may increase in price significantly for these reasons

Mobile China

2024-05-23 15:01Published in Beijing

　　[CNMO Technology] said a data, many people may be surprised. In the domestic mobile phone market, what price model sells best? In general, the cheaper the product, the larger the audience, but in the third quarter of 2023, flagship models priced above 3,500 yuan accounted for 33% of shipments in the entire Chinese market, while entry-level models under 1,499 yuan accounted for only 19%, according to research agency Canalys. From this, we can conclude that there should be a lot more consumers of flagship phones than entry-level phones.

　　So how much should we prepare to buy a flagship phone? This mainly depends on the pricing strategy of each vendor. The four models of Apple's iPhone 15 series are obviously flagship-level products, and the release price of iPhone 15 starts at 5999 yuan, and now after the price reduction, it starts at 4599 yuan; Huawei is the most successful high-end among domestic manufacturers, and the starting price of its latest Huawei Mate60 series and Pura70 series has come to 5499 yuan, even higher than Apple; OPPO, vivo, and Xiaomi have different situations, but basically you can buy the starting version for about 4,000 yuan; Redmi, iQOO, realme and other manufacturers are lower, and preparing a fund of about 3000 yuan can basically solve the problem.

　　However, this is the current situation. According to the information learned by CNMO, the mobile phone market in 2025, or from the new wave of flagship launches after the Snapdragon summit at the end of the year, the threshold for ordinary consumers to buy Android flagship models may be significantly raised.

　　Mobile phone manufacturers are definitely hoping for price increases, but they won't toss consumers' wallets for no reason. At the end of the year, the price adjustment of this wave of new machines, the "pot" may not really be able to carry their backs.

Snapdragon is getting more and more expensive

　　Previously, some digital bloggers sorted out the price of the Snapdragon mobile platform after 2016, which showed that the price of Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 in 2016 was about 300 yuan, the price of Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 in 2017 was about 480 yuan, the price of Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 in 2018 was about 550 yuan, the price of Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 in 2019 was about 600 yuan, and the price of Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 in 2020 was about 1000 yuan. The price of Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 in 2021 is about 630 yuan, Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is about 1200 yuan, Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 in 2022 is about 1160 yuan, and Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in 2023 is about 1400 yuan.

　　Although there are some fluctuations, the price of the Snapdragon mobile platform as a whole is steadily rising, which also explains the reason for the increase in the price of Android phones in the past 10 years (the Xiaomi Mi 6 in 2016 starts at 2499 yuan, and the Xiaomi Mi 14 in 2023 starts at nearly 4000 yuan). And part of the reason for the possible price increase in 2025 is Qualcomm.

　　According to foreign media WCCFtech, a whistleblower revealed that the cost of Qualcomm Snapdragon's new generation mobile platform SM8750 (Snapdragon 8 Gen 4) is expected to surge by about 25%, which is mainly due to the advanced 3nm process adopted by TSMC. The chip will be powered by a new Oryon CPU and an upgraded neural processing unit, which heralds a significant performance boost. In benchmarks and application emulation, the Snapdragon X Elite with the same CPU has shown its strength, even surpassing Apple's M3 MacBook Air in terms of performance.

　　From the perspective of performance and craftsmanship, there seems to be a good reason for the price increase of Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, and mobile phone manufacturers should be able to get a certain understanding of the price increase, at most, it is to suffer the consumer's wallet.

Cheap storage is no more

　　In 2023, many mobile phone manufacturers have shouted the slogan of popularizing large memory and large storage. When the price war was at its most intense, a mobile phone with a 16GB+1TB+Snapdragon 7 series mobile platform + 1.5K high-quality screen could be sold for about 1,600 yuan. Some flagship models are starting to offer 24GB of RAM, and there is even news that manufacturers are preparing to launch 2TB phones, and even mid-range products such as Redmi Note and iQOO Neo can also be purchased in a 1TB version. Behind this is the collapse in the price of memory chips such as Samsung, Micron, and Hynix.

　　However, from May 2023, the purchase price of memory chips will begin to stop falling and rise. In mid-2023, CINNOResearch, a research agency, said: "Memory DRAM prices have entered a long-term loss recession among OEMs, and there is already a consensus that they will not fall again, and the three OEMs will work together to drive DRAM contract prices." "In January 2024, memory manufacturers such as Samsung Electronics and Micron will raise DRAM prices by 15%-20% in the first quarter of this year.

　　The price adjustment of upstream memory chips and memory chips has directly affected the product strategies of various mobile phone manufacturers. For example, last year's realme GT Neo5 SE, which rushed to the forefront in popularizing large storage, this year's realme GT Neo6 SE is no longer available in a 16GB+1TB version. The promotional price of the 1TB version of the model from other manufacturers in 618 is not as good as last year.

　　Not long ago, the whistleblower "Digital Chat Station" also hinted when breaking the latest news about the Xiaomi 15 series that due to memory chips, the Xiaomi 15 series that came out at the end of this year may not be able to keep the price of the previous generation. And Xiaomi 14The starting price is3999element,But the starting version only8GB running memory,The starting price of this generation of Xiaomi 15 series will most likely exceed 4000element,If the starting version is changed to 12GB running memory,The price increase may not be low。

Prepare early

　　In terms of manufacturers, Apple still starts with 128GB of storage, and the iPhone 15 needs to increase the price by thousands of yuan if you want to buy 256GB, which can completely flatten the cost. With the escalation of the ban, Qualcomm officials are not expected to receive any revenue from Huawei, and the price increase of the Snapdragon platform is difficult to affect Huawei, and Huawei users are less sensitive to price, so the problem is relatively small. At present, Android mobile phone manufacturers should be more affected by price increases, and perhaps they should find countermeasures.

　　It is undoubtedly a good way to increase the competitiveness of products, although the price has increased, but to make users feel that they are worth the money. In the past year, a number of mobile phone manufacturers have promoted hardware progress and AI technology on the machine at the same time. OPPO CEO Chen Mingyong once said that AI mobile phones will be the third stage of the mobile phone industry after feature phones and smartphones. It can be seen that this is a revolutionary technological upgrade, although it is still in the early stage, but it is the key to achieving a qualitative change in the product experience.

　　On the other hand, Xiaomi still does not seem to have given up on its plans to develop its own chips. Although it has not been officially announced, according to multiple sources, Xiaomi's self-developed chips have made progress again, and they may be adopted by mobile phones and tablets in 2025. It is also reported that the Xiaomi surging chip will be the first to appear on the Xiaomi car, replacing the Snapdragon 8295. Qualcomm and Xiaomi have a close partnership, and the latter is unlikely to abandon the Snapdragon platform altogether, but "can" and "can" are two different things. If the surging chip returns, Xiaomi can not only persuade users to accept the price increase through self-developed chips, but also pull the purchase price with upstream manufacturers.

Write at the end

　　According to Qualcomm, this year's Snapdragon Summit will be held in October, and it is expected that at the end of October or early November, the first Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 mobile platform model will be available, and the first launch is likely to be handed over to Xiaomi. In the first half of the year, Xiaomi users have already proven their purchasing power with the Xiaomi SU7, and at the end of the year, perhaps it will be the turn of the Xiaomi 15 to prove its high-end product power.

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