2022, domestic mobile phones enter the year of "no summer"

The industry is most embarrassed.

Meizu, who has attracted a large number of fans with unique product temperament, is intended to be acquired by Geely. For itself in the market ranking, it has been reduced to "Others", and it may be a good home.

At the same time, Luo Yonghao, who had founded Hammer Technology, announced his withdrawal from the social platform and returning to the entrepreneurial field, but it was not a mobile phone industry that had "owed 600 million" -he had interrupted in 2021. "The era of mobile phones has passed" Essence

Indeed, in recent years, the smartphone industry has been cold. Since 2018, the shipments have continued to decline. Not only are small companies difficult, but the four "Rongmi OV" four people have also felt the chills in this midsummer.

According to Counterpoint data, compared with the same period of 2021, China's smartphone sales have decreased for 10 weeks since the sixth week of 2022.

At the same time, the extension of the replacement cycle means that the attractiveness of the new model to consumers has decreased. For mobile phone manufacturers who are trying to build a selling point, this is undoubtedly a cruel blow. How to stand in the cold winter of the industry has become a common problem for domestic manufacturers.

Goodbye

Meizu's commission revealed a fact: In the era of the existing stock of the industry, the "small and beautiful" mobile phone businessman can no longer find how much gasp for breathing.

In the compete, some familiar brands are gradually withdrawing from the stage. According to IDC data, in the first quarter of this year, the top five manufacturers in China's smartphone market were OPPO, Honor, VIVO, Apple, and Xiaomi, with a total market share of 86.2%, which increased compared to 82.6%last year, which means that this means The industry's Matthew effect is even more prominent, and the living space of niche mobile phones is becoming more and more forced.

Although Meizu is still released, the sales have long been declined. In 2016, Meizu shipments reached 22 million units, which was its highest light year. In 2018, the cliff -type decline began to become "Others". To this day, it has reached the point of "weak back to heaven".

The cruel reality is not only smashed on Meizu. In mid -May, the news of the black shark was abandoned by Tencent.

As a mobile phone brand with the first mobile phone category, Black Shark failed to escape the fate of "niche mobile phones". According to Canalys data, from the second quarter of 2018 to the first quarter of 2021, in the game mobile phone market segment, Black Shark has lagged behind IQOO, Redmi K series, and Realme X series, ranking fourth.

There is a hammer mobile phone with a "generation of Internet celebrity" Luo Yonghao's halo. The fan base has been harvested with unique product design, but it also moved to the end -after being belded by bytes in 2019, the hammer was incorporated into the internal education hardware team.

After the "no" one, after persisting in "small and beautiful" for several years, the sales volume only exceeded 10 million units in 2021. In the face of an increasingly fierce competitive environment, OnePlus no longer "reserved" and returned to OPPO and returned to OPPO Mother's embrace.

The gradual end of the "small and beautiful" mobile phone manufacturer is naturally due to poor operation, but it is inevitable that there is a serious scroll in the mobile phone stock market, and the global smartphone industry has entered the "cold wave".

According to IDC statistics, after the global mobile phone shipments reached 1.566 billion units in 2017, since 2018, it has declined year by year. In 2020, it has been affected by the epidemic in 2020. Continue.

The situation this year has not improved. According to the research agency Canalys, in the first quarter of 2022, global smartphone shipments were 310 million units, a year -on -year decrease of 11%.

The Chinese market has not been able to take it alone. The report of the China Institute of Xinong shows that in the first quarter of this year, the total number of mobile phone shipments in the domestic market was 69.346 million units, a year -on -year decrease of 29.2%. 30%.

At the same time, there are also news of cutting orders on the market. Guo Mingzheng, a well -known analyst at Tianfeng International, said that the major Android mobile phone manufacturers in China have reduced approximately 170 million orders, accounting for 20%of the 2022 shipment plan.

Obviously, even if the big brand has a stronger scale and technical advantages, it is also difficult to walk. The number of users that the mobile phone market can compete is almost at the top, and all players are facing the zero and competition of each other. In the future, the market will also be a pattern of giants standing, and it is difficult to have a drama that a niche brand counterattacks.

Innovation

In April, "Why don't young people want to change their mobile phones" and "How long have you not changed their mobile phones" and boarded the hot search. In the related voting of the machine change cycle, 59%of the people voted for "two to three years", and 21%of people chose "one year", which is basically the same as market data.

The research institution Strategy Analytics said that the average replacement cycle of Chinese users is 28 months, and Ethan Qi, deputy director of the research of the Counterpoint Research, said that the current average replacement cycle of users has exceeded 31 months, and the overall mobile phone industry is micro -innovation. Essence

This is the result of multiple reasons. The economic uncertainty brought by the epidemic affects consumer income and consumption confidence; the shortage of raw materials and price increases, driving the price of smartphones to rise, affecting consumers' willingness to buy The average price of global smartphones exceeded $ 300 in 2021, reaching the highest price since 2013. Another factor that is easy to perceive is that the mobile phone industry has fallen into an innovative bottleneck, and consumers "cannot find the reason for changing mobile phones."

In the era of functional phones, mobile phones have a variety of forms such as flipping, slider, and rotation cover. After that, the application of the capacitor touch screen unifies the screen to the straight board, and the mobile phone finds the most suitable screen design. However, the high degree of maturity of industrial design has made innovation points more and more difficult to find. The product moves to homogeneity -performance, screen display effect, and imaging effects have become the competition point for mobile phone manufacturers to compete.

However, the hardware configuration update and performance upgrade are not the upper limit.

For smartphones, the chip is a "brain", and the Qualcomm chip, which is the most reliable of Android phones, has frequently spit out "squeezing toothpaste update" in recent years, and performance development has been constrained by process processes and power consumption control.

In 2021, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 chip is generally adopted by Android flagships. The heating was severe and was named "Fire Dragon". The Snapdragon 8 Gen1 chip launched at the end of 2021 has built -in octa -core Kryo CPU. The process process has been increased from 5nm to 4nm. However, according to GeekBeach's test results, its CPU single -core performance is not as good as Apple's 2019 A13, and the heat problem has not been resolved.

In terms of images, high -pixels, large -sized sensors, and multi -camera combinations with computing images. Each manufacturer competes for the strength of the imaging strength. The blessing of image chips and AI algorithms is just icing on the cake, which is difficult to achieve quality change.

Change the larger ZTE, bet on the "Ultimate Form of the Flagship of Straight" under the screen camera. Although it iterative three generations, the naked eye can only see the existence of the camera at a specific light and angle. Consumers who are accustomed to.

Although the press conference is frequent, consumers are still boring, because the mobile phone is optimized from hardware to the system, and it has not brought revolutionary changes in actual experience. As a consumer product just needed, the scale of the industry is still huge, but it is not waiting for the next generation of technological revolution. The room for rise is almost at the top. Various manufacturers have to think about how to save themselves.

Difficult to find a savior

Homogenesis is serious, the core chip of self -developed core chips is difficult, and there is not much chance of trying and error in the fierce market competition. It is not a long -term stitching. This may explain why Android manufacturers are embarrassed on the folding screen - Under the anxiety of the inner volume, any possible iterative revolution cannot be easily let go.

In 2018, Rouyu released the Flexpai Pie of the Folding screen. Samsung and Huawei entered the game in 2019 and officially opened the commercialization of folding screen phones. Starting last year, various brands have launched new products, and the folding screen ushered in a centralized release period.

Thanks to the product optimization and price decrease, the volume of folding screens has ushered in a small outbreak. According to the DSCC data of the consulting agency, in the first quarter of 2022, the total shipments of the global folding screen smart machines were 2.22 million 571%, of which Samsung brand ranked first. Even so, compared with the mainstream models of ten million or hundreds of millions, folding screen sales can only be regarded as drizzle.

Even after many iterations, the maturity of the folding screen still needs to be improved. For example, the crease is still lying in the middle of the screen; because it is a folding shape and the hinge occupies a lot of space, the internal space of the folding screen phone is gold, squeezing the image structure, battery space, and in terms of imaging effects, battery life, heat dissipation, etc. Often not as good as mainstream models.

The folding screen represents the bold attempts of Android manufacturers for the possibility of the future. As a breakthrough product form, it can bring a certain sense of freshness, but whether it can bear the role of "savior", it takes a long time to verify.

At the same time, it also represents one of the trials of Android manufacturers in high -end. While the sales of mobile phones have declined, the high -end increase in single -machine profits has become another "savior" for mobile phone manufacturers to ask for help.

Data from Counterpoint show that in 2021, the total global smartphone revenue was US $ 448 billion, Apple ranked first in revenue for $ 196 billion, accounting for 44%of the total revenue of all smartphone brands. It has a profit of about 75%-80%of the global mobile phone market.

After Huawei stunned, in the overall ranking of global high -end mobile phones (more than $ 400) in 2021, Apple achieved an absolute leading position with a proportion of 60%. Samsung occupied the second place with a 17%share. 5%and 4%of the share ranked third to fifth. Obviously, Huawei's high -end market share was swallowed by Apple.

The high end of the high -end has become an inevitable trend. In recent years, it has adopted self -developed chips, folding screens, high -end joint joints, streamlined product lines and other actions. Domestic manufacturers can not be described as hard work, but high -end can not be successfully stacked. If core hardware such as chips lack autonomy of autonomy The current situation of power and supply chain is not changed, and the product power of domestic mobile phones is difficult to achieve much breakthrough after all.

Apple, Samsung, and former Huawei can support the brand premium to sit and sit on the high -end. To a large extent, because the three have self -developed SOC (system -level chips), Apple uses its own core chips and operating systems Core parts such as chips and screens have autonomy. Huawei can fight against Apple and Samsung Division because the self -developed Kirin chip and homogeneous Qualcomm chip have differentiated. For example, the Kirin 980 chip equipped with Huawei P30 in 2019 has tied Qualcomm's contemporary product Xiao Xiaoxiao Xiaoxiao. Dragon 855, the iterative iteration also maintains competitiveness at the level of core chips+5G.

In contrast, although other domestic flagships have made certain breakthroughs in images, screens, charging, appearance design, etc., the core chip is subject to Qualcomm. Due to the high power consumption of the Snapdragon 888 chip Manufacturers can only be limited and optimized as much as possible, but they still cannot completely solve the problem -when the core components drop the chain, they have no second choice.

The autonomy of the core supply chain is actually adhering to the product power, and competition with Apple is also competing with himself. He controls the lifeblood in your own hands and enhances product competitiveness and anti -risk ability.

Putting the eyes far, if it is true, as Luo Yonghao's judgment, the commercialization conditions such as AR and VR such as the next -generation computing platform have matured and the performance requirements are more extreme, so the competitive pressure of mobile phone manufacturers in the future will be more heavy. "Savior" is not so easy to find.

Conclusion

After entering the stock market, various manufacturers fell into the zero -sum game. The sense of crisis of each other made the competition among manufacturers unprecedentedly fierce. In the cold winter, there are not many opportunities to make mistakes in various manufacturers. As a majority of mature mobile phone technology technology, whether the folding screen that is the first to be deployed can help Android manufacturers to break through the high -end, it is difficult to conclude.

It can be certain that in order to continue to deeply cultivate technology and improve product quality and experience, in order to stick to the last moment in the winter of the industry; in this road that can only be spoken with innovation and product power, competition in the future is more intense. There is no small and beautiful space.

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