Although the slowdown in the growth of smartphones in China has been going on for some time, the reality was even more cruel than the forecast when the 'report card' was actually released by the end of that year.
Among the latest figures released by Canalys, a market research firm, shipments of smartphones in China for the first time in 2017 saw a total decline of only 459 million units, down 4% from 2016; of which, in 2017 Canalis analyst Jia Mo said: China's mobile phone market recession, faster than expected.
In 2017, the overall shipment volume of smartphones has been on the decline, for example, Meizu, which had a certain scale before, showed a significant drop, while LeTV and Coolpad are slowly marginalizing. By the year 2018, the top five vendors will make the market more attractive Curing, leaving other mobile phone manufacturers will have less room. "Jia Mo told a financial science and technology reporters.
In fact, not only small and medium-sized mobile phone manufacturers, even for the top five mobile phone manufacturers in China, the sales growth pressure is not small.
Huawei's market conference at a recent ceremony, Huawei's consumer business in 2018 market target of 44.1 billion US dollars, the more conservative figures as early as the beginning of 2016, Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei has given this department set the goal of ' Over 100 billion US dollars in sales revenue in 5 years'. Influenced by the overall decline of smartphones, there is still a long way to go in order to achieve its goal.
Even OPPO, which won the No. 1 spot in the Chinese market with nearly 80 million shipments in 2016, expects only a slight year-on-year increase in shipments this year. "Wu Qiang, vice president of OPPO, said in an interview with reporters: The competition pattern of the head enterprises has been formed and the competition will be fiercer. In this case, the mobile phone enterprises can not make mistakes.
Why do we have to grow? The market downturn is the most important thing to survive. "Wu Qiang said.
'No growth' era
When the Chinese smartphone market saw its first quarterly shipments decline for the first time in the second quarter of last year, there was no such pessimism on the performance of the rest of the industry as it is today.
At that time, Jinli's market target also expected to be 100 million units in two or three years, Sharp also hopes to rely on Foxconn's resources to high-end market to do, and OPPO and vivo are also to the high-end market, complete the brand upgrade.Cool, Although Meizu and other manufacturers have encountered difficulties, but also there is hope for the market, waiting for the opportunity to stand up.
However, in less than a year, the bad news of bankruptcy, debt collection, and capital chain difficulties has shrouded the industry and has become the market strategy of most handset manufacturers at present.
As for why the handset market in China will decline in 2017, Canalys analysts said that consumers have now completed the upgrade from basic phone to entry-level smart phone, and the life cycle of the phone is continuously prolonged, so the replacement The intention is not high.
In fact, the global handset market is essentially dominated by Apple and Samsung from 2010 to 2015. While first-tier cities, the iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy have become essential items, spending on small cities and rural areas Apple, and Samsung are clearly overpriced and they need more basic features, so Chinese handset brands have seen rapid growth in the last two years with 'entry-level' smartphones at a more affordable price.
According to a study released by the U.S. agency Zenith, by the year 2018, the number of smartphone users in China will rank the first in the world to reach 1.3 billion, which is close to the average one-person level. That is, even the current market entry Level smartphones are also feature-rich, with a cell phone life cycle of 26.8 months, Canalys said the Chinese cell phone market will stagnate for some time before the 5G popularity.
Wu Qiang also agree with this view, in addition, he also believes that the power of innovation is not obvious lead to consumers willingness to change does not become strong.
'The smart phone industry is not growing so fast as in previous years, because in the past six months there is no technical innovation products to stimulate the user's replacement factor is not so strong, consumers' willingness to replace the target is declining.' Wu Qiang told reporters that this The trend will continue, with 2018 challenges even stronger than in 2017, with the overall market still declining slightly.
The fullscreen phone is one of the most frequently appearing terms in ad-language marketing for the whole of 2017. But in fact, fullscreen phones are not a fresh product, as early as three years ago, Sharp introduced the full-screen mobile phone EDGEST 302SH, but due to the traditional supply chain led to the finished product price is too high, this product did not cause too much waves in the market.More importantly, from the shipments, the full screen is not shipped in 2017 The main product.
After interviewing a number of Taiwan's supply chain analysis agencies, I found that Samsung and Apple will take 6 points if the full-screen mobile phone shipments in 2017 are taken as 10 points. The remaining 4 points are divided by the Android camp In the Android camp, Huawei will account for more than 2 points, while the remaining 2 points, is the hurly in the market before the 'full screen'.
'For most second-tier manufacturers, to enhance shipments will be quite difficult, third-tier companies must firmly hold their own users.' Jia foam told reporters that the scale of the advantages to manufacturers from 2017 to reflect all aspects, From the control of the supply chain, the efficiency of production, the intensity of marketing, and the speed and breadth of channels, we can see that the larger the manufacturers, the more productive the smaller vendors must invest in. This is also the case One of the reasons we think their challenges are tougher.
The next step at the crossroads
It can be seen that the growth rate of domestic smartphones may be in the single digit or even lower data in 2018 shipments expected by many handset research institutes.For the activation of how to be more efficient Market, various manufacturers use the same way.
For the OPPO, a strong offline market is an advantage, and how to achieve the brand upgrade has become the most questions over the past year or so Wu Qiang in Xiaomi and Huawei and other brands under the aggressive market strategy, OPPO want to explore a 'super flagship Shop 'model, to better establish the brand image of OPPO.
By the end of 2017, OPPO opened the world's first 'Super Flagship Store' in Shanghai and hopes to 'abandon' the 'Routines' that used to sell Orense in OPPO stores in the past and set no KPIs for store employees to open more sharing courses Consumers to communicate, although Wu Qiang do not know if it will succeed, but for the OPPO brand upgrade, this is a beginning.
Vivo from the product point of view, to enhance the tone of the brand January 24, vivo launched the X20 Plus screen fingerprint version, the price is 3598 yuan, which is also the market's first screen carrying fingerprint recognition technology Before this, vivo is also the first to launch 18: 9 full screen mobile phone manufacturers. vivo founder Shen Wei Qualcomm in the recent technical meeting of the General Assembly, said vivo is willing to continue investment in scientific and technological innovation , But also that vivo is the beneficiary of each scientific and technological innovation.
Huawei is more focused on the 'AI phone' in 2017, artificial intelligence chips into the high-end market, Huawei's mobile phone 'nuclear weapons', the mobile phone chip has been released two years before unicorn 970 by Yu Chengdong called Open the key of the 'AI era', he said, now is the APP era, but the future must be the AI era.At the same time, he stressed that the current mobile phone market is still shuffling, including the Chinese market, most brands will disappear, There will be only three remaining in the world or even fewer in the future.
Yu Chengdong told reporters that artificial intelligence has brought subversion for the experience of smart phones: no touch screen, you can direct voice operations; artificial intelligence brain, cloud knowledge base, mobile phones with deep learning capabilities; direct service, do not check the various App , Integrated experience of direct service.
However, he also admits that artificial intelligence only provides a foundation and capability. Applications such as voice and photographing are just the beginning. The follow-up needs ecological improvement. Huawei has also opened up resources and capabilities for developers in AI development. Will listen, will say, will think, the future of AI on the phone there is more, more possibilities.
The difference with other mobile phone head enterprises is that millet's focus on the international market in 2017. Millet founder Lei Jun recently told a financial science and technology reporter interviewed that in 2017 millet's international business has grown by 300% And it is estimated that by 2018 will reach 100%.
Jia Mo told reporters that in the high cost of domestic channels, the market saturation, the sea has become the only way for enterprises to expand the scale and maintain growth.But how to choose to enter the market is the need to weigh the manufacturers.Western Europe, North America and other developed countries Can bring better profits, but the open channel accounted for limited.If you do not cooperate well with operators, will make ends meet, choose more suitable to their own channel strategy and product market to try the most secure.
For Canalys, the recession in China will have an adverse effect on Chinese companies that rely heavily on the domestic market. Both cash flow and profitability will be constrained, and the pace of overseas expansion by manufacturers will also slow down.