On the evening of August 10, Xiaomi released a mobile phone, a stereo, two tablets, three TVs, and a dog named "Iron Egg".
The biggest highlight of the conference is the MIX4 series of mobile phones equipped with a screen camera; the most interesting Easter egg product is the "robot dog" iron egg that even Lei Jun does not know what to use; the most exciting thing is that Lei Jun finally talked about the rise, saying that he wanted to return all the money earned from selling Xiaomi 1 generation mobile phones ten years ago.
Xiaomi 1 generation mobile phones sold a total of 184,600 units, 370 million yuan. According to the net profit level of Xiaomi in the first quarter of 2021, this is the money earned by more than 20,000 employees of Xiaomi working for 5 and a half days.
The scalper in front of the screen was completely hi, looking for the Xiaomi account of ten years ago overnight. But Rebus turned sharply, saying that the financial staff complained bitterly, and now Xiaomi is a listed company, spending money should be cautious, so it changed to 1999 yuan of Xiaomi Mall vouchers. This is actually quite cost-effective, Lei zong this wave is still atmospheric.
There is a lot of content at the press conference, and there are many interesting bridges. For example, Lei Jun revealed that in September 2019, when Xiaomi's stock price fell below the issue price to more than 8 yuan, he was blocked in the office by an investor for an hour, and his shirt was wet. Later, it was revealed that "this investor is a certain M10 of Ali, Zhang Ying, the wife of Teacher Ma." As a result, Zhang Ying directly rushed to the Weibo hot search, and Lei Jun quickly responded in the circle of friends: Last night's speech had nothing to do with Zhang Ying, and the Internet was a rumor.
What Lei Jun wants to say most at the whole press conference is the MIX4 series mobile phone released again after three years.
Now the world's second largest mobile phone manufacturer, officially released a relatively mature experience of the flagship mobile phone of under-screen camera technology, does this indicate that mobile phone products have officially entered a new era, triggering a wave of replacement? Behind the full-screen technology overcoming, which listed companies are hidden, will it cause a new round of wealth carnival?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="16" >01, Xiaomi rushed to run</h1>
At present, Xiaomi is already the second largest shipment in the mobile phone industry in the world. At the press conference on August 10, Lei Jun emphasized this information point emphatically and proudly at the beginning.
In the second quarter of 2021, Xiaomi's global mobile phone sales surpassed Apple's, ranking second in the world for the first time; at the same time, Xiaomi's sales reached the top for the first time in Europe, surpassing Samsung and Apple.
At the first World Internet Conference in 2014, Xiaomi was the first in China and the third in the world. The host asked Xiaomi what its long-term strategy was like, and Lei Jun blurted out: In five to ten years, Xiaomi will become the world's first.
(Lei Jun)
At that time, the world's first was Still Apple, and Apple's senior vice president was also on the scene, responding very unceremoniously: It's easy to say, it's much more difficult to do. As soon as this sentence came out, the scene was full of laughter. Lei Jun then quoted Ma Yun to alleviate the embarrassment: What if it is realized?
Seven years later, Xiaomi successfully surpassed Apple in mobile phone sales in the second quarter of this year. Therefore, Lei Jun established Xiaomi's next goal at the press conference: to truly stand second in the world and to be the first in the world in three years.
It is obviously not easy to be the first in the world, high-end brands need to strengthen and improve profits, and the strategy of low-end volume also needs to continue to soar.
The xiaomi high-end promoted by the Xiaomi 10 series products has achieved good results, and the Xiaomi Mi 10 was expected to sell only 2 million units, and later sold 5.77 million units.
The latest sales data of Xiaomi 11 series is that as of May 21, 3 million units have been sold worldwide, and it has successfully won the first place in the sales of Android mobile phone series in the domestic price range of 4000-6000 yuan. However, Xiaomi 11 has been negative recently, and problems such as heating and WiFi module burning out have been complained about by users.
At the same time, Xiaomi also faces fierce competition from other mobile phone manufacturers. Therefore, the MIX4 series should be released before the iPhone 13 and the Honor Magic3. The price starting from 4999 yuan allows MIX4 to take over Xiaomi's high-end banner and add new chips to the Xiaomi flagship in the second half of the year.
(Xiaomi Mi MIX4)
After 48 hours, Xiaomi's competitor Glory will release magic3 at 7:30 on August 12, and MIX4 will let Xiaomi once again advance dozens of hours in advance to grab the launch of The Current Android's strongest chip Qualcomm Snapdragon 888+.
Originally, the industry expected that the Honor Magic3 would start the Snapdragon 888+, but now the MIX4 has made Xiaomi successful.
In fact, the significance of the first Snapdragon 888+ is not particularly large. Mix4 is equipped with the latest off-screen camera technology as scheduled, and then it can have a complete front-facing camera function without digging holes or bangs on the front screen, which is the biggest differentiated selling point.
This time the under-screen camera is different from the previous front camera solutions such as lifting, slide, and flip, and does not add too much physical burden to the phone. This is a screen technology that the mobile phone industry has focused on breaking through in recent years.
It should be pointed out that Xiaomi is not the first to start this technology, ZTE has released two under-screen camera mobile phones, and Xiaomi's under-screen camera technology has been iterated to the third generation, it is said that it spent 500 million research and development costs, and now it is basically mature to take it out.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="51" >02, off-screen camera has been developed for a long time</h1>
In today's cookie-cutter "stacking" of smart phones, under-screen camera technology can be said to be a rare technology that has not yet matured on the smart phone body, and it is also a threshold that must be solved to achieve a real full screen.
For users who hate "bang screen", "water drop screen", "digging screen" and everything else that destroys the complete screen design, this will be a rather comfortable technological progress. In today's mobile phone manufacturers are more and more "volume", this is still a selling point that can be taken.
Specifically, the off-screen technology is to hide the camera behind the glass panel, so a relatively transparent OLED panel is required. However, the yield of OLED mobile phone panels is relatively low, and special treatment needs to be done in the lens area, which will further reduce the yield.
In addition, the OLED panel is difficult to achieve full transparency, so it will definitely affect the amount of light entering the lens. The core condition that determines the camera performance of a mobile phone is the amount of light, so one of the focuses of the camera technology under the screen is to improve the light transmittance of the screen, supplemented by algorithms and software for adjustment.
The xiaomi mix4's solution this time is to use two different panels in the camera area and other areas, in which the panel pixels in the camera area are smaller than other areas, leaving more gaps between the pixels, and at the same time using wavy transparent leads in this area, so that light can better reach the lens. This is basically the same idea as the solution used by the existing under-screen camera phones on the market.
The following picture is the front camera shooting effect picture released at the conference, you can see that the whole picture is still not clear enough, there is a feeling of adding a soft light filter - but this is already the effect of adding an enhanced effect.
From "Liu Hai Screen", "Water Drop Screen", "Punching Screen" to "Lifting Screen", mobile phone manufacturers have hollowed out their minds, making the presence of the front camera on the mobile phone screen weaker and weaker.
Only Apple is a special presence in this regard, always maintaining its own "bangs". According to the latest news, the iPhone 13, which will be released in September, will still have "bangs", but the size will be reduced a little.
The reason is that Apple's face ID technology of mobile phones requires special modules to place structural components, which is difficult to achieve the full screen pursued by domestic mobile phone manufacturers. The two have taken different technical paths on this issue.
Before 2019, although Android mobile phone manufacturers are pursuing a real "full screen", the front camera is still not really hidden. In particular, the seemingly completely hidden "lifting screen" will bring a strange situation - when you are playing games and shopping on Taobao, the mobile phone camera is suddenly called by the background program, and it actually rises up to look at you. Later, this technology was slowly eliminated.
In 2019, OPPO released the off-screen camera technology for the first time, showing the engineering prototype, and then Xiaomi and Vivo have successively released prototypes, and OPPO has also released an upgraded version of the prototype.
However, these are only at the level of "concept machine", due to a series of technical reasons such as limited panel yield and limited lens light intake, the real full screen cannot be put into commercial use.
Until September 1, 2020, ZTE, which has long been not the head among mobile phone manufacturers, released the ZTE Axon 20 5G mobile phone, which is the first generation of mass-produced under-screen camera technology mobile phones. At that time, the A-share listed company Visionox was the panel supplier behind the phone.
In July 2021, ZTE released the second generation of off-screen camera phone Zxon 30, equipped with a large 16 million pixel front camera, supplemented by AI image quality enhancement technology, to improve the problem of underexposure and obvious noise.
However, as the first two generations of off-screen camera technology, although ZTE got up early, it was also criticized because the technology was not perfect enough.
Judging from the renderings of the front camera, even the second-generation Zxon 30 still has an "auto bokeh" effect.
After the press conference, the MIX4 released by the media showed that in the video, reading novels, playing games, maps and other application scenarios and normal screens can not see the difference, face unlocking is also very fast, but there are still defects in the front camera function, taking photos, videos have a hazy feeling.
To sum up, the current under-screen camera technology has been available, but not perfect, partly sacrificed the screen resolution and photo clarity, can only make up for part of the deficiency through algorithms and software, is a compromise solution.
For mobile phone manufacturers, this is a differentiated selling point that can trigger users to change machines. But how many users can be impressed by this technology is still unknown.
Lei Jun is also quite realistic, summed up at the press conference, 20 million pixels of the front camera, the photo effect is still not so perfect, especially like selfies users are still not recommended to buy. Many female users may be directly dissuaded by this sentence.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="97" >03, the player behind the under-screen camera technology</h1>
The realization of under-screen camera technology mainly relies on the breakthrough of panel technology, and it is difficult for mobile phone manufacturers to do it independently, and they need the support of upstream panel manufacturers.
First of all, let's talk about the hero behind the first generation of off-screen camera phones - Visionox.
In 1987, Deng Qingyun, a Chinese-American from Kodak Laboratories, invented organic luminescent display technology (OLED), known as the "father of OLED". Nine years later, Tsinghua University's OLED project team was established, based on which Visionox was established in 2001, mainly engaged in OLED independent research and development, production and sales.
Qiu Yong, the current president of Tsinghua University, is the main member who led the establishment of Visionox that year.
In 2018, Visionox landed on the capital market through backdoor Black Bull Food. After the listing, Visionox's revenue increased from 1.778 billion yuan in 2018 to 3.434 billion yuan in 2020, doubling in two years, and its net profit increased from 0.31 billion yuan in 2018 to 204 million yuan in 2020.
However, in the latest performance, in the first quarter of 2021, in the case of revenue increased by 49.29% year-on-year to 615 million yuan, the net profit of Visionox decreased by 72.82% year-on-year, with a loss of 530 million yuan, which was obviously cyclical. Compared with the "normal" losses reported in the past quarter, this year's losses are absolutely the largest.
Industry insiders revealed that after the release of ZTE's under-screen camera mobile phone, the supply and sales situation are not stable, which is related to the unsatisfactory supply of Visionox panels.
Lei Jun said at the press conference that the OLED panel of MIX4 also has the problem of low yield, which belongs to a technical commonality.
According to industry insiders, the panel of Xiaomi MIX4 is supplied by Huaxing Optoelectronics, which is a subsidiary of TCL Technology, an A-share listed company.
TCL Technology is relatively low-key to this cooperation, only in the 2020 annual report said, "small size flexible OLED key layout under-screen camera, folding screen, LTPO and other differentiated technologies and already have a competitive advantage, in 2021 will continue to mass-produce goods." In the 2021 semi-annual report, he said, "Through differentiated technology reserves such as folding, off-screen camera, and LTPO, we will accelerate product development and customer cooperation in the high-end market, and the shipment volume will more than double year-on-year." ”
(TCL Huaxing Optoelectronics Booth, OLED Mobile Phone Folding Screen) (TCL Huaxing Optoelectronics Booth, OLED Mobile Phone Folding Screen)
As one of the world's semiconductor display leaders, the volume of TCL Technology is obviously not an order of magnitude with Visionox - there are 7 production lines built and under construction, of which 4 are large-size panel production lines, 2 small-size panel production lines, 1 medium-sized, and it is expected to reach 9 production lines in 2024. Visionox currently has a total of 3 AMOLED panel production lines.
Lei Jun mentioned a detail at the press conference: the screen of the camera phone under the screen, because the pixels in the camera area are arranged differently, it is necessary to seamlessly stitch the two screens together, the yield is very low, and the cost is 2 times that of the ordinary screen.
Can TCL technology make more money?
Analysts told the market that it is difficult for under-screen camera phones to become mainstream in the short term, if the sales of MIX4 are calculated at 3 million units, the price of each panel is estimated at $80 (Apple's flexible screen panel last year was about $40), and the sales revenue that can be brought to TCL Technology is only about 1.5 billion yuan, compared with TCL Technology's own revenue scale of 76.8 billion yuan, it can only be regarded as a small splash.
Judging from the data it has just released in the 2021 interim report, TCL Technology's revenue from January to June was 74.373 billion yuan, almost equivalent to the annual revenue of 2020, and the performance increased sharply, and the net profit of 9.252 billion yuan was far more than the net profit of 5.065 billion yuan last year.
Behind this is the strong price of panels since 2020, mainly due to the tight supply of raw materials and the withdrawal of South Korean production capacity, but mainly the large-size panels used in TVs have contributed mostly.
In addition to Huaxing Optoelectronics and Visionox, boe, the leader of domestic panels, will naturally not miss this outlet.
Just the day before Xiaomi's launch on August 9, BOE announced the launch of a new generation of flexible OLED true 400PPI FDC (FDC, Full Display with Camera) camera technology.
Different from the "one-drive multi-pixel" pixel circuit design on the market, BOE adopts a one-drive one-pixel circuit design, and there is no difference between the FDC camera area and the surrounding screen display, and there is no thin line display on the edge of the camera area.
And BOE revealed that this technology has been applied to first-line mobile phone manufacturers. In the end, which manufacturer needs to be revealed in the new machine released in the second half of the year.
From the perspective of the upstream supply chain, large panel manufacturers have cooperated with mobile phone manufacturers to develop more mature off-screen camera technology. From the perspective of mobile phone products, mobile phones equipped with off-screen cameras will become active products actively tried by mobile phone manufacturers in the future.
However, the cost problem caused by the lower yield still needs to be digested and solved with time, which is also doomed to the under-screen camera technology at present, more likely to be installed on the flagship mobile phone with a higher premium.
As for the topic of "whether the under-screen camera technology can trigger a new round of replacement tide", the city has received more conservative answers when asking the views of industry insiders.
Tao Xujun, an expert who understands think tanks and director of Nomura Comprehensive Research, believes that it is difficult for a single technology to promote the tide of machine changes, unless it can bring a completely different experience than before. The experience improvement brought by the under-screen camera technology is limited, and it is difficult to bring about the tide of replacement, but it is still possible to bring some models of sales fever.
This means that mastering the off-screen camera technology will not allow their performance to soar in a short period of time, and it is more likely to stay in place and prepare for future competition. But if you don't master this technology, you run the risk of falling behind.
(Author 丨 Lin Xiahuai Li Shuguang Editor 丨 Li Fengran)