The gathering of the flagship mobile phone conference in spring did not bring more good news to the industry. On the contrary, with the April coming to an end, the first quarter report card of smart phones will be announced in 2018. The naked data will be removed. The last fig leaf on the manufacturer.
The first is that the trend of continuous decline in shipments has not been eased.
The “China Mobile Phone Market Operation Analysis Report of March 2018” released by the China Academy of Information and Communication Technology shows that the Chinese smartphone industry continues to show negative growth, with Q1 mobile phone shipments of only 87.370 million units, down 26.1% year-on-year, among which domestic mobile phone brands are out The volume of goods decreased by 27.8% year-on-year.
In addition to the weakening demand for smart phones, there are management shortcomings that second- and third-tier brands have exposed under market pressure. For example, Jin Li, which was deeply affected by the turbulence in the capital chain, has dropped by nearly 30%, and has experienced three consecutive layoffs. In addition, Meizu's shipments also slipped faster in the first quarter, and experienced high-level exchanges, new products were delayed, valuations were cut, and after the bank’s collection of debt problems, Coolpad almost lost its domestic position.
On the other hand, the increased competition among mobile phone companies will make the survival of more 'others' phones more difficult.
As one of the big manufacturers of small and medium-sized brands, Wu Qiang, vice president of OPPO, told the author that under the current T-shaped pattern, the competition of the head enterprises is fiercer. In his opinion, first of all, one cannot make mistakes. If they make mistakes, the scale is very fast. Will be eaten by other competitors. Can wait until the competitor makes mistakes to gain the other's market share.
The siege of the head enterprises has caused more small and medium-sized brands to face the pressure of continued decline in their share. From the data rankings provided by the analysis agency Saino, it can be seen that the Chinese market has a marked polarization in the first quarter, with the top six vendors in the first quarter. The shipments are all in the tens of millions. Starting from the seventh ranked Meizu, the shipments of Jinli, Samsung, and Xiaoli are all in the order of one million. This also means that the mobile phone manufacturers ranked above ten, shipments Less than a million in the first quarter, with an average of 400,000 sales per month failing.
For small and medium-sized brands, the harsh winter of the market is an indisputable fact.
But in the face of harsh winters, the SMEs need to understand a real market environment.
For the first quarter of the decline in shipments, there is a misunderstanding in the outside world that the purchase of channels is considered to be the demand of the terminal market. In fact, in the mobile phone industry chain, there is another data called 'SellOut' or 'SellThrough'. , which is the channel business, the network store sales to end-user shipments, this data can truly reflect the market demand of end-users.
According to the sales figures released by the global research agency GFK, since Android machine manufacturers started to cut orders in November 2017, year-on-year comparison data has started to enter negative numbers, and the growth rate has increased from 0 in November to -7% in December. By -20 percent in January 2018, -4 percent in February. In fact, the data on terminal sales is improving. One important reason for this is that channel companies have begun to digest inventory. Small and medium brands have been able to unblock this time. The crisis of inventory is more effective than the issue of a new machine that follows hot spots.
On the other hand, from the perspective of the financial data of the mobile phone supply chain, the decline in handset shipments in the first quarter did not make supply chain vendors too passive. Thanks to the growth in shipments of components, such as Ophelia, sales of Qiu Titanium Technologies. It is also climbing. This undoubtedly reveals another trend, that is, the increase in sales volume in overseas markets has become a new driving force for the growth of domestic mobile phones, and will benefit the upstream.
A careful observation of the positions of domestic manufacturers in the top five for overseas markets can be seen in the outbreak of opportunities in overseas markets. For example, Zhao Ming, president of Rongya, said at the glory 10 conference that current glory overseas growth achieved by the end of last year Hundreds of growth, this figure is difficult to achieve at home, he hopes to speed up the layout of overseas while achieving 200% to 300% growth in some countries, with the appropriate play to consolidate the glory in the local brand. And millet in 2018 The plan is to expect the shipment volume to exceed 50%. Last year, Xiaomi’s overseas sales reached 42 million units.
The more difficult it is, the domestic defense is a way of thinking, but taking risks overseas is also a way of survival for small and medium-sized brands.