By hmimcu Just like the hot weather in August, which is still continuing, the current heat of the smartphone circle is not reduced at all.
On August 9, the Ace Pro, which was officially called “the new benchmark for performance mobile phones” by OnePlus, was officially released, and the whole series was equipped with a longevity version of the 150W super flash charge, which can make the 4800mAh battery fully charged back in about 20 minutes. On August 10 and August 11, in just two days, new folding machines from Samsung, Xiaomi, and Motorola were unveiled. Among them, the Xiaomi MIX Fold 2 unfolds to 5.4mm thin and folds as thin as 11.2mm. On August 18, the news came from the industry that the conferences of Apple’s iPhone 14 and Huawei Mate50 “crashed”, and both sides will hold a conference on September 7, “fruit powder”, “pollen” and even onlookers are waiting for it…
On the one hand, holding the burden of “sales” and clenching his teeth, on the other hand, he is struggling to move forward with the steps of “innovation”, which is a vivid white depiction of the current major smartphone manufacturers. Since the first overall decline in global smartphone shipments in 2017, the development of the smartphone industry has gradually entered a challenging new stage. According to the research data released by many parties, the replacement cycle of consumers has exceeded 30 months. So looking at the world, has the smartphone industry entered a large-scale growth “platform period”, or is it only in a short cyclical downturn?
At the beginning of
2007, Jobs solemnly announced at the Apple conference: “Today I will bring 3 revolutionary products – a widescreen iPod, a mobile phone, and a network communication device.” But these three things are inseparable, they are the same device. This
“revolutionary product” in Jobs’s mouth was named “iPhone” With this as a sign, the curtain of the smartphone era has officially opened. Data show that from 2007 to 2016, global smartphone shipments increased from less than 150 million units to nearly 1.5 billion units. Riding on the east wind of the smartphone industry, the development of related manufacturers has been advancing rapidly. In the case of Apple, its market capitalization was less than $100 billion in 2007, and in 2018, Apple’s market capitalization exceeded the trillion-dollar mark for the first time.
However, just as all industries encounter problems in the development cycle, no matter how strong the momentum is, it is impossible to continue forever, and the smartphone field is no exception. When it peaked in 2017, global shipments of smartphones began to decline overall.
“It’s normal for smartphones around the world to stagnate growth or reduce sales in recent years.” Hou Lin, a senior analyst at GfK, told the China Electronics News reporter that the main reasons are internal and external factors. The internal reason is that mobile phones have had a wave of innovation peaks after the emergence of Apple and Android, but there are few highlights that can be called innovation after 2015, so mobile phone sales have begun to decline since 2017. External factors are affected by the global economic situation.
In today’s red sea of stock market, how to find new growth points has naturally become the key to the success of major mobile phone manufacturers. As a result, the smartphone industry began to look for the next spring of industry development by constantly staging various stories about “innovation”.
In fact, the smartphone field has never been buzzing in recent years. IIn terms of fast charging, “65W” fast charging is no longer fresh, has become the standard of many thousand yuan machines, and is still refreshing to 120W, 150W and even 200W, for consumers, under the premise of ensuring safety, there is no upper limit to charging speed. In terms of form innovation, folding screen mobile phones are a big hit, Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO and other domestic players have all entered the game, and iteratively updated in the direction of “thinner, cheaper and stronger”. In addition, in terms of camera quality, chip performance, etc., the major mobile phone manufacturers are “not the strongest, only more volume”… Even industry insiders have thought that today’s smartphones may have excess performance.
So, such an “involuted” smartphone industry, after making the above efforts, how effective is it? Is there an oncoming industry “second spring” in front of its painstaking exploration?
A short periodic downturn?
“In recent years, smart phone companies have mainly innovated from the aspects of processing performance, image processing capability, endurance performance, screen form, etc., but these have not formed subversive changes, and there is no obvious difference in the whole machine experience.” Liu Tun, senior analyst of CCID Consulting, sighed to reporters.
The collective enthusiasm of mobile phone manufacturers does not seem to be transmitted too much to end consumers. On July 22, the entry “Why people don’t want to change their phones” appeared on Weibo’s hot search list and sparked a lot of discussion. For a long time, the 15-18 month replacement cycle was once regarded as a consensus in the industry, but this consensus has been broken. According to the data released by a number of market research institutes, the average replacement cycle of smart phones has been extended to 30 to 36 months. TThe ever-lengthening replacement cycle reflects the weak development of the smartphone industry to some extent.
Looking at the world, is the smartphone industry entering a large-scale and long-term “platform period”? Or is it only in a temporary cyclical downturn?
“To be precise, the global market should be divided into two parts: mature markets and emerging markets. Mature markets, including developed Western Europe, North America, East Asia and other regions, the mobile phone market can indeed be said to have entered a period of development platform. Guo Tianxiang, senior analyst at IDC China, further analyzed that the saturation of consumer mobile phone ownership has made the mobile phone market in these areas basically enter a period of stock replacement, and it is difficult to find new growth space. The stagnation of mobile phone innovation in technology and other aspects has also made consumers lack of power to change machines, and the replacement cycle has been continuously lengthened. “But for emerging markets, including Latin America, Asia Pacific, the Middle East, Africa and other countries and regions, the mobile phone industry is still in an incremental era.”
In emerging markets, consumer demand for new or switched phones remains high. It is understood that because these countries or regions are generally in the period of population growth, the age distribution of the social population is relatively young, so the demand for mobile phones in the future will also be in a long-term growth stage. “But due to the underdeveloped economy, limited consumer budgets, telecommunications and Internet infrastructure still need to be improved, and most countries are still in the stage of 4G development, so the demand in these countries and regions is more concentrated in low-end products, or even functional machines.” Guo Tianxiang told the China Electronics News reporter. <
“An industry is in a platform period or a short period of decline, not only to see the past sales of the industry, but also to see how transformative the industry is.” Hou Lin gave a further explanation, such as the PC industry, after the desktop computer launched the laptop, although both belong to the PC industry, but it is already two completely different products. However, the post-consumer market continued to decline due to the fact that there were no new products launched after the laptop. In fact, mobile phones have a similar situation. From the earliest big brother, to the later flip phone, and then to the current Apple and Android system smartphones, although they can make calls, they are no longer a product of the times, and this change is a major internal factor driving the continuous rise in mobile phone sales. “From the current point of view, if the mobile phone can not appear in the short term to completely surpass Apple, Android cross-era products, it is likely to appear a long-term downward trend.” Hou Lin said.
Looking for the next spring
In February this year, OPPO officially announced an imaging cooperation with Hasselblad. In May this year, Xiaomi officially announced that it had reached a global strategic cooperation with Lycra. For the joint optical lens brand of mobile phone manufacturers, Zhao Ming, CEO of Honor, said: “A simple gimmick, to avoid short-term quick success. Relying on others alone, I have, there is no way to meet the needs of consumers. In fact, when the combination of “Huawei + Leica” debuted in 2016, it really made the smartphone industry shine.
In Guo Tianxiang’s view, when Huawei cooperated with Leica, the picture quality of the photo was greatly improved, and it was absolutely leading in the mobile phone industry at that time; IIn addition, at that time, the cross-border joint products of the two high-end brands were in line with the demands of high-end consumers with Hua as the core, which was the most essential reason for the success of the cooperation between the two. Similar joint cooperation is not uncommon today, but to achieve better results, there needs to be enough differentiation.
In fact, co-branded images are just a small episode in the exploration of smart phones on the road to innovation. However, the results of the same or similar “innovations” at different stages may vary widely.
“The smartphone industry is actually in a period of great change, and the entire industry is currently undergoing micro-updates, but not changing. If it is only a micro-update, from the perspective of the entire industry, just like the notebook continuously improving the configuration, although it can continue to exist for a long time, it will no longer have a pulling effect on sales growth. Hou Lin stressed that every innovation at the beginning can not be sure that it will succeed, just an attempt. For example, these attempts like folding screens are constantly exploring, but exploration does not necessarily have the expected returns.
In the new stage, although the smartphone market is burdened, it still has to move forward. In this context, how to find a “second spring” to promote the development of the industry is a long-term issue. screen module lcm
Liu Tun said that to continue to maintain market vitality, smart phones need to grasp the changing trend of future interaction methods, such as the change from the functional machine era to the smart phone era in the previous stage, and the mobile phone can be used as a port for the interconnection of all things and the intelligent connection of all things in the future to complete more ubiquitous connections. Guo Tianxiang believes that high-end is a direction. At present, various manufacturers are already competing for long-term research and development investment, accumulating qualitative changes from quantitative changes, in order to bring consumers a significant differentiated experience in the future. Hou Lin said bluntly: “At present, the next trend of mobile phones is definitely not the current straight mobile phone, nor will it be the original folding screen of the current generation.” Whether it is a watch-type mobile phone or a VR glasses-type mobile phone, it may be the next mobile phone spring. In 2010, smartphones began to replace traditional feature phones, and it took a decade to complete this mission. In 2018, the “folding screen era” opened, and today this segment has been racing. Does a folding screen phone just bring a bigger screen? Obviously not, there are endless possibilities in the flexible and changeable form of human-computer interaction. In 2024, Apple AR glasses may be officially launched, Apple has promised to use it to replace the iPhone within ten years…
Among these “strange” innovations, there may be a place for smartphones to live in the next spring, and when the time is ripe, it will open an equally dazzling golden new era.