With the sales reaching the ceiling, the domestic mobile phone market began to shift from an incremental market to a stock market, and the brand concentration further increased. The Matthew effect of the entire industry began to take off. Under this background, overseas markets are seeking new growth. The point became the consensus of the industry, and the highest-quality European high-end market has become the 'last highland' of the Chinese Legion.
Domestic brands intensively release high-end products
After entering March, domestic mobile phones began a new round of competition.
On April 12, Huawei released the flagship products P20 and P20 Pro in the spring of 2018 in Shanghai. With the help of artificial intelligence technology (AI), Huawei greatly improved the capabilities of the P20 series in image recognition, smart photography, etc., while upgrading the AR. System to support richer AR scenarios.
Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's consumer business, said, 'The biggest innovation of the HUAWEI P20 series is the revolutionary breakthrough in camera technology. The first time the professional SLR camera-level Leica was condensed onto a slim phone.'
It is reported that the HUAWEI P20 series can realize intelligent scene recognition for 19 types of more than 500 scenes, and can also automatically select shooting modes and parameter settings for different scenes. This series of products is currently on sale, including P20 starting at 3788 yuan, P20. Pro is priced from 4,988 yuan.
Coincidentally, Xiaomi also regards the improvement of shooting ability as a major advantage of the annual flagship mobile phone MIX 2S.
At the new product launch on March 27th, Xiaomi Technology Chairman Lei Jun took pictures from the dark light, the game and the voice assistant were compared with Apple’s latest mobile phone iPhone X. Several sets of photos and videos were shown live. , MIX 2S performance is better than the opponent.
From the appearance point of view, MIX 2S still follows the design of the ceramic body and 'full screen', narrower than the previous generation's frame, the chip uses Xiaolong 845 chip, and new AI zoom dual camera, ultra-sensitive, wireless charging And other technologies, can intelligently identify 206 shooting scenes, 8GB+256GB high version is priced at 3999 yuan.
In addition, MIX 2S also has a built-in millet AI speaker capabilities, find photos of specific time and place, send a WeChat red envelope, smart home remote control and other complex operations can be completed by 'one sentence.' However, Lei Jun is most proud of that, According to a special report from DxOMark, a well-known camera evaluation agency, MIX 2S's camera performance is in line with the iPhone X. Especially under low light, the image produced by MIX 2S is smoother. Lei Jun believes that this is the technology of Xiaomi’s mobile phone. A major milestone.
Not only Huawei, Xiaomi, the reporter combed and found out that since March, domestic mobile phone brands have intensively released more than a dozen new products targeted at mid-to-high-end markets. The price is more than 3,000 yuan, and most of them use artificial intelligence technology as a standard. With' : Nubian V18 has added AI voice function, in addition to the ability to search for contacts by voice and search for related applications, but also can convert voice into text in real time, so as to get rid of the tedious check, input process; vivo X21 is built-in The artificial intelligence assistant Jovi AI intelligently predicts the application behavior of the user to schedule the system resources more scientifically and reasonably.
'Entering the 5G era next year will be a high probability event. In the past, mobile phones were a communication tool between people and the digital world. In the era of 5G, mobile phones became a channel for people to communicate with the real world and the digital world. This requires mobile phones to handle The ability to measure information. Therefore, artificial intelligence technology will surely be put on the agenda. 'Vivo X series product manager Han Boxiao said.
Obviously, as AI applications move from shallow to deep layers, how to better 'landing' in various scenarios has become the focus of competition among handset manufacturers.
Industry Matthew effect has emerged
Industry analysts believe that the domestic brands' intensive release of high-end products is a collective manifestation of the 'crisis sense' that the market pressure has become tighter.
On April 9th, the China Institute of Information and Communication under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released the "Analysis Report on the Operation of the Domestic Mobile Phone Market in March 2018." The report shows that in the first quarter of this year, the number of smart phone shipments in the Chinese market was 81.37 million, which was a year-on-year decrease. 26.1%. Among them, domestic brand shipments totaled 75.764 million units, down 27.9% year-on-year.
In fact, since 2017, mobile phone shipments in the domestic market have entered a downward path. Prior to this, the market analysis report released by the China Institute of Information and Communications indicated that the domestic mobile phone market shipments in 2017 were 491 million, which is the same Declined by 12.3%.
The gradual saturation of the low-end market is considered to be the main reason for the overall decline in the domestic mobile phone market.
In the past, domestic mobile phones mostly depended on the wild growth of demographic dividends in the domestic market. For a long period of time, thousands of Yuan machines represented a simple and brutal price war, which has always dominated the competition in the domestic mobile phone market. However, the thousand Yuan machine broke though At that time, the price was strong, effectively expanding market demand, but it did not bring profit and brand loyalty.
However, if companies want to survive, they will need to obtain higher profits. This drives domestic brands to start shifting to the high-end market. After all, compared to the low-end market, the high-end market is more profitable, and it is more conducive to the company's long-term growth. development of.
At the same time, as the sales hit the ceiling, the domestic mobile phone market began to shift from the incremental market to the stock market, and the brand concentration was further increased. The Matthew effect of the entire industry began to appear.
According to data released by the survey agency IDC some time ago, the top five brands in the domestic mobile phone market in 2017 were Huawei, OPPO, Vivo, Xiaomi and Apple. These five brands accounted for about 76% of the overall market share. In the global market, , Huawei, OPPO, Xiaomi's shipments in 2017 also burst into the global TOP5.
As for the Matthew effect in the domestic mobile phone industry, the industry actually has a long-term forecast. As early as last November, Lei Jun believed that the domestic mobile phone market has basically matured in the past two years, and the top five brand market share will definitely grow to 90. % or more. Yu Chengdong also stated at the 2015 Mobile World Congress that only three major mobile phone manufacturers will remain in the next three to five years.
According to analysis, the formation of this market structure is due to fierce competition in the mobile phone industry. Each brand has made breakthroughs in innovation, and some companies with strong capabilities in technological innovation, manufacturing processes, channels, and supply chain integration have been able to Stand out on the other hand, on the other hand, the consumer's consumption concept has also changed, no longer blindly pursuing low-cost mobile phones, began to accept higher prices, better quality and experience, more innovative ability of the product, which also creates high-end for mobile phone manufacturers Products provide opportunities.
It is worth mentioning that Samsung and Apple, which used to occupy the domestic high-end market, have performed a little over the past two years: Samsung's Note7 battery 'explosive door' incident has caused its own reputation and reputation in the Chinese market to suffer a major downturn; Since the iPhone 7, several products launched by Apple have also been criticized for failing to meet users' psychological expectations. In this context, domestic high-end users have led domestically represented companies such as Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, Vivo, and ZTE. Manufacturers.
Landing overseas markets 'The last high ground'
Under the background of the saturated domestic mobile phone market, it has become the consensus of the market to seek new growth points in overseas markets. The domestic brands represented by Xiaomi and OPPO also use data to prove how rewarding overseas markets are.
According to IDC's survey data, Xiaomi’s sales volume increased by 96.9% in the fourth quarter of 2017, and the global market share jumped to 7%, ranking fourth in the world. Among them, the Indian market contributed. The data show that the fourth year of 2017 Quarterly millet pressures Samsung with a 25% market share, making India the No. 1 market.
Over the past year, the OPPO has continued to be a success story in overseas markets: In Pakistan, OPPO has occupied three seats in the top-selling five models in July; in India, OPPO F3 also relied on 24.2% in the second quarter of 2017. Market share has become the best-selling model from 15,000 rupees to 30000 rupees. Up to now, OPPO mobile phones have successfully entered 30 countries and regions in the world, and have been favored and praised by a large number of young users.
Although domestic brands have shown a positive attitude in India and Southeast Asia and other countries and regions where the mobile communication industry is developing rapidly, the industry believes that the highest-quality European high-end market is the 'last highland' of the Chinese Legion. .
According to the Spanish "The Five Daily" report, KANTAR consumer index company KANTAR TNS data shows that Chinese mobile phone manufacturers are replicating their position in the global smart phone market in Spain.
Kadu believes that currently, 6 of the 11 best-selling smartphones in Spain come from Huawei and 2 of them are millet. Among them, millet officially launched its offline business in Spain in November 2017. Now Xiaomi has Become the fourth largest mobile phone manufacturer in Spain's free market. In February of this year, Xiaomi's market share has already approached 10%, exceeding Apple's 8.3% and LG's 7.3%.
It is understood that in addition to Huawei and Xiaomi already stationed in Spain, there are at least three domestic brands, and the focus of overseas development in 2018 has been placed on Spain.
It is not difficult to see that after several years of hard work, domestic mobile phones have not only achieved group breakthroughs in terms of quantity, the brand has also moved from middle to low-end to mid-to-high end, and has the strength to compete globally. Huawei and Xiaomi in particular have become Chinese mobile phones. The iconic brand.
When talking about the opportunities for domestic brands to hit overseas high-end markets, Lei Jun believes that domestic mobile phones have a certain advantage in the world. In the future, we should consider how to output more quality products so that everyone in the world can enjoy China. A good life brought about by manufacturing. However, it should be noted that domestic mobile phones still have to be further enhanced in the details of user experience and some of the key core technologies. It is believed that in the next few years, domestic mobile phones will have even greater development in overseas markets.