5G shoulder watermark, smartphone market cooling. Chinese media commentary

　Last year, an article titled “ Why young people don’t buy new smartphones ” went viral on the Chinese SNS Weibo, recording 410 million views. According to Counterpoint data, the average replacement cycle for Chinese smartphone users is 31 months , which supports this data. 2017 was 22 months.

　This is affecting the smartphone market as a whole. In the first quarter of 2022, the global smartphone market shipments decreased by 11% year-on-year, and the Chinese market also decreased by 18%. There are also statistics that from 2017 to 2022, smartphone shipments in the global and Chinese markets will decline for the fourth consecutive year.

　How long will the "cooling down of the smartphone market" last, and what kind of measures are manufacturers taking? I will introduce from the commentary of China "Phoenix Network Technology".

Index 

• 1 Response to 5G is not good
• 2 "Folding display" is not as popular as manufacturers expect
• 3 Small brands are in a tragic state of “if you can find a buyer”
• 4 The five major manufacturers show a conspicuous decrease in the number of Chinese manufacturers
• 5 Pessimistic market forecast, response of Chinese smartphone manufacturers
• 6 General comments

Response to 5G is not good

　In 2017, when the smartphone market experienced a decline, smartphone product innovation entered the bottleneck while prices continued to rise, weakening user demand in a situation where the market was essentially saturated. The phenomenon of saying something was already beginning to appear.

　The basic situation has not changed since 4 years ago, and the wave of bankruptcies and withdrawals began in the smartphone industry in 2018 , and the smartphone industry entered the second half, and the situation of the top group has calmed down. In terms of products, Chinese smartphone makers have entered the high-end route in order to secure the market and profits, and have focused on folding displays, semiconductor chip development, video recording, and quick charging technology, but the impact has not been enough to boost the market. is not.

　“We are in the low tide of the replacement cycle,” said Huang Peng, who has been running a mobile phone store in Shenzhen for 10 years. Around 2014, the mobile phone market was in a transition period from physical key models to smartphones, and in 2017, the replacement from 3G to 4G was almost completed. Until then, the presence of 5G is not very strong for consumer users.

"Folding display" is not as popular as manufacturers expect

　Chinese smartphone makers are launching foldable display smartphones one after another for high-end. In April of this year, the vivo X Fold and Mate Xs 2 were released.

　However, while manufacturers are heating up, users are cold. It seems that there are many voices such as "Isn't a tablet good?" Huang Peng said, " Foldable smartphones have more strategic significance than actual significance ."

　In addition, there are five points that users pay attention to when choosing a smartphone: "camera function", "display refresh rate", "battery life", "specs", and "design". where you put it.

　In terms of camera functions, there has been competition for narrow pixels, number of lenses, image sensor competition, image competition, and processing chip competition. 200W wired fast charging has already been put into practical use, and 120W fast charging is standard equipment for Chinese manufacturers.

　As for semiconductor chips, Xiaomi, vivo, and OPPO all announced chips developed in-house last year. However, they are all image information processing chips, not SoCs with a higher degree of difficulty.　Since Huawei's Kirin was restricted, all the flagship models of Chinese manufacturers use Snapdragon, but the performance is not very good, such as heat generation, and smartphone manufacturers have taken effective measures. situation that is not

Small brands are in a tragedy of “if you can find a buyer”

　The number of players in the Chinese smartphone market has also decreased significantly since 2018. Kinryu withdraws, Fuko goes bankrupt, Rakushi disappears, and Ichika returns to OPPO. After being acquired by Tencent, Heijin started to make VR/AR, and it is said that Mizoku was also acquired by Geely.

　It is difficult for small brands to survive due to high costs and lack of scale and technical strengths. Nowadays, small brands are in trouble if they find a buyer.

There is also an opinion that "the smartphone market is a mass market, and it is difficult for segmented brands to exist. The biggest change in recent years is Huawei's loss of market share due to chip supply restrictions.

The five major manufacturers show a conspicuous decrease in the number of Chinese manufacturers

　In the international market, Samsung, Apple, Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo are the five major manufacturers. is basically stable, although there are fluctuations in

　However, with the smartphone market as a whole hitting a plateau, despite the efforts of various companies, the difficult situation continues. Looking at shipments in the first quarter of this year, Apple increased by 2.2% year-on-year, Samsung remained flat, but Xiaomi , OPPO, and vivo all decreased by more than 15% .

　Looking at the domestic market in China, in addition to the rising tide of Ryouya, which is in a recovery period, both OPPO and vivo are down more than 30% year-on-year, which is a tremendous figure.

　According to Tianfeng International analyst Guo Mingxuan, China's major Android smartphone brands have already cut orders by 170 million units, which is one-fifth of their shipment plans for this year.

　According to Huang Peng's observation, it seems that the number of smartphones sold in the first quarter of this year is about 30% lower than in the past at the smartphone stores around us in Shenzhen.

　Smartphone-related suppliers are also beginning to seek a shift. “The higher the ratio of orders for smartphones, the more headaches we have,” points out Sun Yan Peng, director of the First Hand Machine (Mobile Phone) Research Institute. Suppliers such as Sunyu Optical and Oufeiguang have announced that they will shift their focus from the smartphone business to smart cars and new businesses.

　According to Sun Yanbai, "the current industry consensus is that the smartphone market in the next three years will be in a state of poor consumption."

Pessimistic market forecast, response of Chinese smartphone makers

　The basic strategies of Chinese smartphone makers are basically the same. The direction of the product is high-end oriented. The market is global. On top of this foundation, we will develop other products and new businesses.　

　There is no change in the fact that the middle-range and low-end markets will continue to slay each other in a bloody manner . Speaking of what we are working on in this direction, we are focusing on foldable displays, chip development, and shooting function updates, but considering the situation last year, it seems that we are not making progress.　　

　The IoT ecosystem is also expected to be a new innovation, but when the smartphone market shrunk in 2017, each manufacturer tried it out, so it's hard to say it's a new story. Smartphone makers are entering the electric vehicle market one after another, with Xiaomi and Huawei being the representatives.

　Sun Yanbai said many Huawei smartphone dealers were wondering whether to stay in business after Huawei shifted to the automotive business. It's been over a year since Xiaomi announced that it would start manufacturing cars, but according to the official announcement, mass production will be in 2024.

　Trial and error by smartphone manufacturers is still ongoing, but explosive growth is difficult without groundbreaking innovation. It remains to be seen how the next breakthrough hardware will come out.

　Huang Peng has been in business for 10 years, and at its peak, it operated 8 stores, but now only 1 store remains. The thought that "now is the time to stick" may represent the attitude of those involved in the industry.

Overall review

　The smartphone industry lacks groundbreaking changes like 3G → 4G that make anyone consider buying a replacement, and even major manufacturers are struggling.

　Until we see products that say, "I can do this that I couldn't do before!" or "If it's so convenient, I want it right now!"