The growth momentum of Chinese brands such as Meizu, LeTV, Coolpad, ZTE and Lenovo abruptly ceased. Many brands only target 1% of the market.
On April 18th, the big data service provider QuestMobile announced China Mobile Internet Data Report for the first quarter of 2018, showing that as of March 2018, the market size of Apple, OPPO, Huawei, Vivo, and Xiaomi's five manufacturers was 82.3%. Cell phone brands are eating less than 20% of the market size.
At the same time, the China Institute of Telecommunication Research released a report showing that in the first quarter of this year, the overall domestic shipments continued to decline. From January to March, China's smartphone shipments totaled 81.87 million, a year-on-year decrease of nearly 30%.
China Mobile’s China Union Secretary-General Daxuan had previously analyzed with reporters that the pattern of the domestic mobile phone market has been determined and that foreign countries are beginning to show signs that mobile phone brands without base areas will become more and more difficult. With the expansion of first-line brands overseas, when the domestic market With more and more competition in the Red Sea, overseas space is getting smaller and smaller, leaving little time and space for small brands.
Difficult to survive
It should be pointed out that QuestMobile's report shows that the number of intelligent terminal users in the domestic market accounts for a relatively small proportion of the latest shipment data. It can be seen that in the incrementally depleted market, the top few manufacturers Although the market size is slightly fluctuating, but the overall structure is stable. In the current market, Apple is ranked first with 25.7% market share, and OPPO's market share has increased from 15.2% in December 2017 to the current 17.2%. Huawei is from 15.9% increased to 16.8%, Vivo's share increased from 12.2% to 12.3%, and Xiaomi’s market share fell from 11.2% to 10.3%.
Outside the top five manufacturers, the international giant Samsung continued to slip to 3.3%. After Samsung, Jinli held 2.6%, Meizu 2.2%, Cool 1.8%, ZTE 1.1%, and Lenovo 0.6% market share.
For these domestic manufacturers after Samsung, there have been major turbulences in the past three years. Internal adjustments have caused a certain degree of instability, affecting the products and market strategies of these brands, and ultimately causing the loss of users. .
Jin Li is currently in the vortex of the capital chain. Because blind investment and mobile phone sales have fallen short of expectations, Jin Li’s lack of hematopoietic capacity and tight capital chain has in turn eroded the supply chain and channel system established in recent years. Currently, Jinli’s factory and headquarters are conducting With drastic downsizing, channels are gradually being accepted by other manufacturers. Jinli Plant currently maintains a small amount of production. Whether it is possible to survive the difficult times is still unknown.
Meizu, who was once represented as 'small and beautiful', has long lost. In addition to layoffs for three consecutive years, Yang Wei, Meizu’s senior vice president and chief staff officer, met with Meizu employees’ extortionist. Bo's saliva sent Meizu to the hot search. In the past year, Meizu has also undergone two organizational restructurings. In the middle of last year, the company established Meizu, Charm Blue, and Flyme's three business divisions. By Huang Zhang, Li Nan, Yang Yan, three people in charge. At the end of the second reorganization, in addition to the establishment of overseas, accessories, e-commerce business division.
A resigned Meizu employee told the 21st Century Business Herald reporter that the decline in mobile phone sales and the continuous adjustment of the organization had undermined the company's overall atmosphere. The Meizu salary was not as good as that of the first-line mobile phone manufacturers. Therefore, he chose to quit at the end of last year.
Cooler experienced high-level blood exchange after joint marriage and music, new products were delayed, valuations were cut, and the banks were recovering from a series of embarrassing circumstances. Currently, they basically withdrew from the domestic market.
ZTE Terminal announced at the beginning of this year that overweight the domestic market, but unfortunately encountered the US embargo a few days ago, or will lose the right to use the Android system, and parts and components are facing off, the business hanging in the forefront.
Dominic Sunnebo, Kantar’s global business unit director, commented that the growth momentum of Chinese brands like Meizu, LeTV, Coolpad, ZTE and Lenovo all abruptly stopped. Many brands only target 1% of the market.
As one of the big manufacturers of small and medium-sized brands, Wu Qiang, vice president of OPPO, previously stated that under the current T-shaped pattern, the competition among head companies is fiercer. In his view, first of all, one cannot make mistakes. If you make mistakes, the scale will soon Eat by other homes. You can wait until the competitor makes a mistake and get the other person's market share.
Differentiated way out
Currently, first-line manufacturers have more funds to invest in R&D, marketing and marketing, and they also have greater say in the supply chain. Small and medium-sized manufacturers are becoming increasingly passive.
Of course, there are also successful cases in the market segments, such as Meitu mobile phones relying on beauty photography. Meitu reported that the gross margin and gross profit margin of its intelligent hardware segment increased from 297 million yuan and 20.1% in 2016 to 2017 respectively. 860 million yuan and 23.0%, which explained in the financial report, 'mainly due to changes in the product mix, the introduction of Meitu T series with higher prices is the main driving force for the substantial increase in the gross profit of this sector'.
Small and medium-sized mobile phone manufacturers are also exploring opportunities in the market gap of the head brand. For example, the current candy phone launched the world’s first mobile phone version of the candy bar blockchain created mobile phone, Lenovo launched the claim that the payment system is built on the ground floor Blockchain Technology's Blockchain Phone S5.
One financial industry practitioners explained to reporters, adding block chain function greatly increased the premium mobile phone, the phone configuration average price up to 3999, the first sales of 50,000 units sold out one minute, to block chain industry professionals brought a lot of confidence. According to reports, the built-APP 'candy treasure' by candy mobile phone, users log in daily attendance and access to shared network resources candy TGF, can be used to achieve ETH (Ethernet Square), ETF (Ethernet fog) mining The function can also be used to exchange some of the goods and services in the candy cell phone store and application market.
Many people in the blockchain industry have previously stated that in the current application scenario, the blockchain mobile phone is not a gimmick. The blockchain concept mobile phone does not clearly specify which specific blockchain technology is used. The encryption function is not clear. The mobile phone's computing power is hard to match with the mining machine. 'Mobile phone mining' is also not realistic.
In addition, the use of 'mobile gamers' strong demand to tap the selling point of the game has also become a breakthrough point for some manufacturers. Xiaomi Investment's Black Shark Technology released the first game mobile phone on April 13, Nubian Red Devil game phone is also in April. It was officially released on the 19th. The current game handsets basically follow the 'hard work on hardware and structure' ideas, improve the mobile phone cooling system, so that the mobile phone chip at full-load operation at high frequency, to ensure that the game full frame rate continues to run for long. In addition, Black Shark mobile phone specifically designed a removable rocker handle, to achieve a single physical button operation.
However, Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's consumer business, believes that pure gaming phones are conceptual hype, just like waterproof mobile phones. Now all flagships are waterproof. All mobile phones should have game performance.
Industry insiders commented that most of the game phones on the market are optimized for hardware, but the configuration is only the basis for guaranteeing the game experience, the threshold is not high, and it cannot hold up the concept of game phones. The real barrier lies in the uniqueness of the game content platform. , And this is something that terminal manufacturers do not have.