China News Weekly reporter: Meng Qian
Published in the 1059th issue of "China News Weekly" magazine on September 5, 2022
What are the characteristics of a high-end mobile phone?
From the perspective of industry insiders, it supports a high-end image and is favored by high-income, business people and other groups; the hardware configuration is perfect enough to reflect the strength of self-research, software system optimization, and comprehensive user experience are the prerequisites.
The most direct measurement method may be the price. The flagship machine with a price of about 6,000 yuan can undoubtedly be included in the high-end ranks.
It is not difficult to define a high-end mobile phone, but it is not easy to find a sustainable high-end mobile phone.
From 2011 to 2022, Huawei and Apple have invested a total of 132.2 billion U.S. dollars and 116.1 billion U.S. dollars in R&D expenses, which are similar.
In the past two years, many entrants have continued to bet on the high-end market. Xiaomi announced that the research and development investment in the next five years will exceed 100 billion yuan, and OPPO will continue to invest 50 billion yuan in research and development expenses, which also indicates that the protracted innovation competition in the smartphone market has already begun. .
According to a report by the Academy of Information and Communications Technology, the total shipments of mobile phones in the Chinese market in the first half of 2022 fell by 21.7%, and domestic brands fell by 25.9% year-on-year.
During the market downturn, domestic manufacturers accelerated their high-end layout and pursued high-quality development.
According to incomplete statistics, in the first half of 2022, major manufacturers including Huawei, OPPO, vivo, Xiaomi, etc. released a total of 51 new products, and the starting prices of many flagship stores exceeded 4,000 yuan, revealing their desire for the high-end market.
In addition, mobile phone manufacturers have launched their own folding screen mobile phones to demonstrate their innovation capabilities.
Xiaomi Group CEO Lei Jun once said that the "high-end road" is a battle of life and death.
The lack of cores and the epidemic have affected the shipments of mobile phones to a certain extent, but the problem that cannot be ignored is that the high-end mobile phones launched by domestic manufacturers lack differentiation and are difficult to impress consumers.
On the way to compete for the high-end market, mobile phone manufacturers may have to constantly think about the source of innovation and debug the path of high-end.
After all, without the support of core technology, high-end will be a castle in the air.
"Going to the high end is the only way to survive"
According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China produced 744 million mobile phones in the first half of the year, a year-on-year decrease of 2.7%, of which smartphone production was 576 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 1.8%.
Guo Tianxiang, a senior analyst at IDC China, told China News Weekly that although the sales of mobile phone manufacturers declined in the previous quarters, their overall revenue was still growing. However, both sales and revenue are now declining.
"Going to the high-end is the only way to survive, but the epidemic has less impact on high-end mobile phones." Sun Yanbiao, chairman of Chaodian Think Tank, emphasized.
According to a report by Counterpoint Research, the total revenue of the global smartphone market will increase by 7% in 2021, of which the market share of high-end smartphones will reach a record high of 27%. Obviously, high-end smartphones can stimulate consumers to change their phones.
The latest report from the market research firm Strategy Analytics shows that online smartphone sales during the 618 period this year were 14 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 25%.
However, on an e-commerce platform, the shipments of mobile phones in the high-priced segment of 5,000 yuan and above did not drop but rose year-on-year.
This means that in a market where sales are sluggish, the strong enough part lies in the high-end segment.
But the high-end market has seen a reshuffle in the past three years.
In 2020, Huawei's consumer electronics suffered an "earthquake", but it is still the leader among domestic mobile phone manufacturers, with a shipment of 125 million units and a market share of nearly 40%.
By 2021, Huawei's domestic market shipment ranking will drop out of the top five due to problems such as chip inventory exhaustion.
After Huawei's "fall", the vacancy in the market share of high-end mobile phones has attracted domestic mobile phone manufacturers to chase.
Domestic mobile phone brands such as OPPO, vivo and Xiaomi have proposed high-end strategies and gradually determined high-end series products.
Sun Yanbiao analyzed that this year's Huawei and Apple conferences are so close together, they actually have their own market considerations.
"Huawei has made adequate preparations in the mobile phone supply chain this time, and the stock has reached 4 million. Such a huge stocking volume must push up the momentum. The key point of the Apple conference ahead of schedule is that the iPhone 13 in this year's 618 is selling well. It proves that the sales cycle of its products is lengthening, so selling in advance can also drive a wave of sales.”
"Huawei mobile phones equipped with 4G chips are trying to break through the high-end market from the front, which means that Huawei has already established a firm foothold in the high-end market before, which is where Huawei's confidence lies." Senior engineer Yuan Bo pointed out that the high-endization of domestic mobile phone manufacturers has not yet can achieve such an effect.
In the traditional concept of the mobile phone industry, it is believed that a successful mobile phone manufacturer should pay equal attention to the high-end market and the low-end market. In addition, although high-end products have higher profits, the shipment volume will be much lower than that of low-end and mid-end mobile phones. The huge shipments of mobile phones help mobile phone manufacturers integrate supply chains and become the ballast of upstream and downstream resources in the industry.
However, Apple only makes high-end products, and the new products launched every year are the global sales champions of that year, and harvest most of the industry profits of the mobile phone industry.
This has caused a great impact on other mobile phone brands, and also made many brands firm in their belief in high-end products.
According to the Canalys report, global smartphone shipments will reach 1.35 billion units in 2021, of which 44% of the global mobile phone market revenue will be taken by Apple with 17% of shipments.
In the past ten years, more and more mobile phone manufacturers are chasing after Apple in the high-end mobile phone market.
In the early days, the kings of feature phones, Nokia and Motorola, had a close game with Apple and eventually disappeared. In the era of full-screen smartphones, the Android camp represented by Chinese mobile phone manufacturers has become the most developed mobile phone market and industrial chain in the world. One of the perfect areas.
However, there are very few companies that can really challenge Apple.
In the domestic high-end mobile phone market, Huawei is the only mobile phone manufacturer that has been on an equal footing with Apple.
In the first half of 2020 released by IDC, the market share of smartphones in the price segment above $600 in China shows that Huawei ranked first with a share of 44.1%, followed by Apple with a share of 44%.
The two share 88.1% of the high-end mobile phone market share.
However, after Huawei's fall, no domestic manufacturer has been able to fill the position.
According to the latest report from Counterpoint Research, the sales share of China's high-end smartphone market has risen slightly from 31% in the second quarter of 2021 to 33% in the second quarter of 2022, which also confirms the decline in overall shipments. The tenacity of the high-end mobile phone market.
In the segmented market of high-end models, Apple ranked first with a 46% share, an increase of 3% compared to the same period last year. Vivo, Huawei, Honor, Xiaomi and OPPO ranked second to sixth in order with a share of 13%, 11%, 9%, 8% and 8%, respectively.
"The mobile phone market has long entered the era of stock competition. In fact, many mobile phone brands in 618 this year are 'extremely versatile', and even overlords like Apple are the first to start a 'price war', triggering a domino effect", Magic Mirror Market Observation COO Sun Guoqiang observed such a phenomenon.
In order to maintain its high-end market share, Apple launched a "price war."
As early as last year before Apple's autumn conference, Apple took the initiative to sell the new iPhone 13 at an unprecedented price.
During 618 this year, the iPhone 13 became the number one best-selling mobile phone, accounting for almost half of the sales.
According to Canalys data, in the second quarter of 2022, China's smartphone market shipped approximately 67.2 million units, down 14.7% year-on-year; however, Apple's mobile phone sales were approximately 9.5 million units, with a market share of 14.1%, an increase of 2.1 units over the same period last year. percentage point.
From the perspective of the high-end market, the iPhone 13 series products occupy two-thirds of the global high-end market.
Li Junhui, a special researcher at the Intellectual Property Research Center of China University of Political Science and Law, told China News Weekly that on the whole, Xiaomi, Honor, vivo, OPPO and other brands have the highest market shares, and some market shares have increased, mainly because of the division. The original Huawei mobile phone market share.
However, due to various factors, Huawei's mobile phone production and shipments have declined.
High-end is still in the stage of "quantitative change"
Sun Yanbiao pointed out that in the past few years, domestic mobile phone manufacturers have gained a place in the price range of 4,000 yuan to 5,000 yuan through their own efforts and through various technologies such as imaging and chips.
"The creator of the 'cardboard machine' is Apple. Apple has the world's most complete software and hardware integrated ecosystem advantage. If Chinese mobile phone manufacturers want to achieve real breakthroughs, they must break into the price of more than 5,000 yuan, but if they want to achieve large-scale Selling is actually very difficult."
The latest report shows that in the second quarter of 2022, driven by the hot sales of vivo X80, vivo’s range from $600 to $799 (about 4,100 to 5,470 yuan) increased by 504% year-on-year, and vivo’s overall sales increased by 91% year-on-year. , replacing Huawei in second place.
At the same time, in the list of best-selling mobile phones from US$600 to US$799, iQOO9 Pro, Xiaomi MI 12Pro and Honor Magic 4 and other mobile phones from domestic manufacturers are among them.
In the range of US$400 to US$599 (approximately RMB 2,750 to 4,100), the competition among domestic mobile phone manufacturers is very fierce. Vivo and Honor have taken high-end market share from Huawei and OPPO.
In addition, among the best-selling mobile phones in this range, there are also models such as Redmi, which are originally low-end series.
Combined with Apple's price-cut sales, the price band of the high-end mobile phone market is actually being removed bit by bit by the army of domestic mobile phones.
Back in 2016, that may be the stage when domestic mobile phone manufacturers have truly achieved breakthroughs in high-end products.
In 2016, the Huawei P9 series, the first product of the cooperation between Huawei and Leica, was officially born. This mobile phone became Huawei's first high-end product with over 10 million shipments.
At that time, Huawei was in the climbing stage of the high-end mobile phone market, and the P9 series made a good start. From 2016 to 2019, Huawei's mobile phone market share increased rapidly.
In 2017, Huawei's global mobile phone sales were 153 million units, accounting for 19% of the Chinese smartphone market, becoming the top 1 manufacturer in the Chinese market and the top 3 manufacturer in the global market.
In 2019, Huawei's global mobile phone sales reached 240 million units, with a market share of 17.6%, ranking the top two in the world.
In addition to Huawei's visible efforts in high-end products, Chinese mobile phone manufacturers were accelerating their efforts to go overseas. Chinese smartphones such as OPPO, vivo and Xiaomi accounted for half of the Indian market. Transsion became the king of the African market. Huawei and other manufacturers also In-depth development into the European market.
According to the data from the Academy of Information and Communications Technology, the average price of smartphones in the domestic market in 2017 increased by nearly 20% compared with 2016. The shipments of mobile phones with prices ranging from 3,000 yuan to 4,000 yuan increased by 74.9% year-on-year, and those above 4,000 yuan increased by 170.8% year-on-year. accounted for more than 12%.
"You will find that there is an advanced curve at that time, and the price band of Xiaomi, OPPO and vivo has broken through to 3,000 yuan," Sun Yanbiao mentioned.
"In the 5G era, these manufacturers began to break through the range of 3,000 yuan to 4,000 yuan. This year, through the development of imaging algorithms and self-developed chips and other technologies, the price band continued to rush up into the range of 4,000 yuan to 5,000 yuan." Sun Yanbiao added, " When the price band is gradually breaking through, the prices of the really best-selling products in the Android camp are also going up, which is actually a strategy similar to Tian Ji's horse racing."
"Users of Android phones have a low purchasing power ceiling as a whole and are more sensitive to price. The premise of premiumization is that consumers accept it and are willing to pay for the premium price. Therefore, consumers must pay more attention to the places where manufacturers upgrade." Industrial Securities Electronics Industry Analyst Yao Dandan told China News Weekly that cameras, design, processor, screen display and fast charging are all selling points that consumers are more concerned about.
The smartphone track has become a red ocean, and imaging capabilities have always been the focus of the game.
Sun Yanbiao said, "Chinese mobile phone manufacturers can develop from 3,000 yuan of high-end mobile phones before 2018 to 4,000 yuan or even higher. The application of cameras is very important. The development of Huawei's imaging technology made Apple a catcher in this field." .
On May 23, 2022, Officer Lei announced that Xiaomi and Leica will conduct in-depth cooperation in the whole link of smartphone imaging including optics, imaging, image processing, and experience.
This official announcement also means the end of the seven-year cooperation between Huawei and Leica that began in 2015.
What kind of changes will the cooperation with Leica bring to Xiaomi has attracted the attention of the outside world.
On July 4, Xiaomi released the Xiaomi Mi 12S series of mobile phones, of which the Xiaomi Mi 12S Ultra is equipped with Leica professional optical lenses. The starting price is 5,999 yuan, and the highest version is 6,999 yuan.
Lei Jun announced on the same day that the upgrade of the imaging strategy is a key step taken by Xiaomi since it launched its high-end strategy two years ago. He believes that imaging has become the commanding height of mobile phone experience.
In fact, not only Xiaomi, but also domestic manufacturers have found their own alliances for joint cooperation in recent years.
Earlier this year, OPPO officially announced that it has reached a strategic cooperation with Hasselblad. Hasselblad had previously deeply integrated with OnePlus on the camera system.
In 2020, vivo announced that it has become a global imaging strategic partner with Zeiss, and the "vivo Zeiss Joint Imaging Laboratory" was listed at the vivo headquarters in Dongguan, China.
Sun Guoqiang pointed out that in a market with stock competition and without substantial innovation, price cuts can certainly attract people, but they also need some "windows": the camera function of mobile phones is the outlet of public and social public opinion.
Therefore, now the main camera of the mobile phone has changed from the previous single head to 2 heads to 3 heads, making it a "Yuba" mobile phone.
Sun Yanbiao believes that this may become a "weight" for mobile phone manufacturers in the high-end process.
"In the beginning, the release of the flagship phone was indeed planned to follow Apple's rhythm. Domestic high-end mobile phones often had under-screen fingerprints, multi-cameras and body modification, which were the core signs of high-end at that time." Sun Yanbiao pointed out that in the past two years Mobile phone manufacturers have begun to take a different approach by releasing folding screens, trying to grab share from Apple.
According to public data, the current average price of folding screens is still around $1,000.
Li Junhui pointed out that since the beginning of this year, one of the characteristics of high-endization is the accumulation of "folding screen" mobile phones, including major smartphone brands such as Xiaomi, vivo, OPPO and Honor, all of which have launched their own folding screen mobile phones.
On the one hand, this shows that folding screen technology is becoming more and more mature; on the other hand, it also shows that these larger mobile phone brands can better control folding screen accessories.
"But the more embarrassing problem is that consumers will only accept the best among similar products, so if a folding screen phone wants to be recognized by consumers, it must be practical, such as solving the problem of crease or weight. , so as to enhance the user experience of consumers, rather than becoming a product with a 'new and peculiar' concept." Sun Yanbiao emphasized.
"The supply chain is not smooth, and the critical point of Moore's Law is constantly approaching, resulting in an insignificant improvement in the absolute performance of mobile phones." Zhong Xinlong, a senior consultant at the Radio Research Institute of CCID think tank, believes that it cannot be said that there has been no technological progress in the mobile phone market in the past few years. It is still in the stage of quantitative change, and it has not reached the qualitative change that triggers and touches consumers' demand for replacement and purchase.
Li Junhui emphasized that the standards for high-end mobile phones mainly include technical content, degree of innovation and user experience.
In the end, the key to high-end mobile phones will be reflected in the price. However, if the price of the mobile phone is high, the technical gold content is low, the innovation degree is not high, or the user experience is not good, then this kind of high-priced mobile phone It belongs to "pseudo-high-end".
Difficulties in the underlying technology
In order to rush to high-end, mobile phone manufacturers have spared no effort to find opportunities in the underlying technology in recent years.
The usual practice in the past is to compete for the opportunity to launch and cooperate with chip giant Qualcomm.
Sun Guoqiang pointed out that the development of mobile phone manufacturers in the high-end market, especially Android high-end mobile phones, will focus on chips.
In fact, the chips are currently dominated by Qualcomm and MediaTek (now mainly 4nm chips).
In recent years, this trend has undergone a subtle change, and "self-developed chips" have become a hot spot in the mobile phone industry.
The mobile phone system chip SoC has the ability to perform complex operations, and can be regarded as the "brain" in a smartphone. It includes a combination of modules with different functions such as CPU, GPU, ISP, DSP, and baseband, each in charge of different tasks.
"The two biggest problems in mobile phone technology, one is the SoC system chip, and the other is the operating system." Kuang Shan, COO of Ruisi Zhixin, emphasized that these are the two "crowns" in the mobile phone industry technology, which embodies the advantages of a mobile phone manufacturer. Self-development capabilities require long-term and determined investment.
In 2017, Xiaomi released the self-developed SoC Pengpai S1, which has been silent for 4 years. Last year, it released the first self-developed ISP (image signal processor, an auxiliary chip) Pengpai C1, and then released the self-developed battery management chip Pengpai G1 and self-developed battery management chips. Researched the charging chip Surging P1; vivo launched its self-developed ISP chip vivo V1 in September last year.
OPPO released its self-developed NPU chip "MariSilicon X" in December 2021. The NPU is a neural network processor with stronger AI computing capabilities.
At the same time, some news such as "self-developed AP chips will be launched in 2023, and self-developed 4nm SoC chips will be launched in 2024".
A relevant person in charge of OPPO told China News Weekly that the core of high-end mobile phones is the competition of differentiated technologies. Breaking through the high-end requires truly innovative products. Innovative forms and self-developed chips are the two strategic control points for OPPO to break through the high-end.
The breakthrough of the underlying core technology is the most difficult but also an indispensable step in the mobile phone industry.
Li Nan, a former Meizu executive and founder of Numiao Technology, mentioned that the three brands that are truly successful in the global high-end mobile phone market: Apple, Samsung and Huawei, all have their own SoCs.
However, the high-end trend does not start from now, and many mobile phone manufacturers may not have a clear and feasible high-end path before.
The domestic mobile phone manufacturers' self-developed chips are still in the "auxiliary chip" stage. A truly mature SoC is a highly integrated body of several chips. It is difficult to develop and invest a lot of money, and the research and development process often encounters bottlenecks, making it difficult to advance the project.
Taking Huawei as an example, it took 22 years to create the first self-developed SoC Kirin 910. By the release of Kirin 9000 in October 2020, it has been more than 30 years and the annual investment has reached 100 billion yuan.
Zhong Xinlong emphasized, "Everyone knows where the end point is. The road is clear. It just says what path to take to reach the end point. Some people drive private cars, some people take planes, and some people take high-speed trains." He believes that in the field of self-developed chips It should be more cautious on the road. If it is impossible to develop research and development, it will lose everything.
It is necessary to make R&D planning according to the strategic decision-making direction of the company, such as the development of image algorithm chips or fast-charging chips.
In 2018, the competition for 3D sensing cameras began in the mobile phone industry, and Kuang Shan keenly captured the opportunities in the mobile phone industry chain.
Kuang Shan and his team are determined to apply the bionic event camera chip to the field of consumer electronics such as mobile phones to solve the pain points in mobile phone shooting.
"In the process of mobile phone innovation, consumers can actually perceive, the first is the screen, and the second is the camera. Previously, the entire vision system has undergone years of development, and there have been some application bottlenecks, such as blurred shooting, overexposure and power consumption. too high a problem".
Kuang Shan, who had just formed a team and founded a company, returned to China to conduct market research. She was surprised to find that the entire mobile phone industry was relatively closed before, with fixed core technologies and core components, and suppliers were also some fixed foreign companies.
It is very difficult for start-up companies and new technologies to enter the industry, and there are relatively few opportunities.
Now manufacturers are more open and willing to cooperate with new suppliers and try new technologies.
Kuang Shan said, "Obviously, manufacturers have increased their investment in research and development, and paid more attention to upstream new technologies and new devices."
"The introversion of Android mobile phone manufacturers lies in the non-integration of software and hardware. Based on the same hardware platform of Qualcomm, the essence of the differentiation of software systems is not easy to reflect." Li Nan mentioned that SoC is the most powerful technology, but mobile phone manufacturers You need to think about whether you have to do it yourself, and which technical path to choose requires a clear understanding of yourself.
Zeng Jianqiu, an economics professor at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, pointed out that chips are only one of the elements of mobile phone technology, and high-end development is not a new problem. The biggest difficulty is actually to combine the technology path with the market.
"The technical path is simply to follow the national strategy and realize the combination of technology and market. Self-research is required for self-research, and joint is required for joint development. Only in this way can healthy development be achieved."
At different development stages of the enterprise itself, "it is very necessary to take different technical paths and strategic planning paths, and conduct exploration and trial and error".
Guo Tianxiang, a senior analyst at IDC China, pointed out that under the trend of high-end mobile phone manufacturers, major manufacturers are competing for long-term R&D investment, and the high cost of R&D investment also requires higher product revenue to support.
In fact, manufacturers and supply chains have begun to cooperate deeply from the technology pre-research stage. The mode of sharing investment and risks is becoming more and more common. Some supply chains and SoC underlying technologies are also more open, and more customized products are emerging.
Tian Kehan, founder and CEO of Yuguang Technology, has devoted himself to the field of three-dimensional sensing, and realizes the "control" of optical signals through micro-nano optical devices.
"In addition to Apple's large-scale use of 3D technology, Android mobile phones have not been rolled out on a large scale, and only some high-end models will be used because of high costs and poor application scenarios." Tian Kehan told China News Weekly that Apple At that time, the face brushing function was used and gradually established its own ecology.
In contrast, domestic mobile phone manufacturers are slightly less "gut" in using high-end technology.
"Only when you come up with real technology can you really make others pay the price of high-end machines, and let others pay the price of high-end machines before you can do higher-end technology." Tian Kehan believes that this is a positive cycle, and now Apple has achieved this. .
But domestic mobile phone manufacturers still have a long way to go. In his communication with domestic mobile phone manufacturers, he found that these manufacturers are still hesitant about the application of technology.
Ecology and brand building cannot be ignored
In 2020, Xiaomi proposed the core strategy of "Mobile Phone X AIoT" to strengthen the collaboration between mobile phones and AIoT.
According to Xiaomi’s financial report for the second quarter of 2022, the number of IoT devices connected to Xiaomi’s smart ecological AIoT platform increased by 40.7% year-on-year to 527 million units; as of June 30, 2022, there were 5 or more devices connected to the AIoT platform The number of users increased by 37.0% year-on-year to 10.2 million units.
On August 11, in Lei Jun's keynote speech, he disclosed the progress of Xiaomi's car manufacturing, "Xiaomi's car manufacturing is currently progressing smoothly, and it can even be said to exceed expectations."
Lei Jun also showed the road test video of Xiaomi's self-driving technology. As of now, the first phase of Xiaomi's self-driving technology has planned 140 test vehicles, and the goal is to enter the first camp in the industry in 2024.
From smartphones, wearable devices to smart homes, to smart cars, smart manufacturing, etc., the smart ecosystem is emerging.
"After the development of the mobile phone market begins to enter a bottleneck period, both manufacturers and supply chains need to find new growth points." Guo Tianxiang mentioned that new energy vehicles are undoubtedly the next outlet currently recognized, and mobile phone supply chain manufacturers are in the new The energy vehicle industry itself also has certain advantages, so they also enter the automotive industry directly with manufacturers or themselves.
Yao Dandan pointed out that consumers are not very enthusiastic about mobile phone upgrades, which will guide manufacturers to reduce their energy in disguise. Xiaomi makes cars and robots, and Apple makes VR. Everyone starts to focus on product iterations to mobile Internet, watches, headphones and other aspects. some new products.
Guo Tianxiang suggested that for mobile phone manufacturers to expand the multi-terminal field, first, they can find new growth points, such as the popularity of the tablet market in the past two years, and the future development of VR and AR in the Metaverse.
Many parts and components of terminals such as tablets and mobile phones are interoperable, which can also help consume spare parts in stock.
The second is to use mobile phones as the core, combined with other multi-terminal forms, to bind its own brand users and form a brand moat.
The last is the development of ecology. Through the system, a variety of terminals are opened up, a complete ecological chain is established, and more development in software is achieved.
Apple's latest quarterly earnings report shows that service revenue has grown the fastest, with a year-on-year increase of 12%, a growth rate that far exceeds Apple's other revenue segments.
Sun Yanbiao pointed out that Apple is the world's largest mobile Internet charging company with the largest number of charging users.
Built on cloud storage services, Apple makes a ton of money from mobile billing services.
"Previously, Geely acquired Meizu, and NIO was rumored to be making mobile phones, trying to establish a business model for interconnected development through the interconnection of smart cars and mobile phones, which would result in payment." Sun Yanbiao believes that in the future, manufacturers are faced with intelligent In the market, the ecological construction of mobile phones in smart wear and even new energy vehicles is carried out to create value-added services, ensure profit growth, and establish a better profit model in the future.
"The premise of building an ecosystem is to have sufficient innovation capabilities. Whether it is headphones or smart watches, innovation can impress high-end consumers and gain the right to speak." Li Nan observed that currently on the smart wearable track, the key indicators of products are not If not improved, there will be greater growth in the future.
At present, Li Nan has positioned his entrepreneurial goal in emerging consumer electronics. The first TWS headset has been developed for 19 months, and the price is as high as 4,300 yuan, which is a lot higher than AirPods.
"Confronting Apple's AirPods Pro in the $40 billion battlefield to compete for high-end TWS market share".
Sun Guoqiang emphasized that the competition of mobile phone manufacturers in the future is essentially ecological competition.
This is why manufacturers including Apple and Xiaomi want to build cars, and in turn why car manufacturers make mobile phones.
On their own ecological ports, they can only do better if they do it themselves, but not all brands can do it well at the same time.
In fact, the debate over software systems has been going on for years.
There are still differences in experience between iOS and Android systems. Most of the underlying technologies of the iOS system come from Apple's own research, which is well optimized and relatively safe, but this makes the Apple ecosystem relatively closed.
The underlying system of Android is fully open, which requires each manufacturer to carry out further customized research and development of the system, create their own characteristics, and establish differentiation from competing products.
"Due to historical reasons and market layout problems, China does not have a unified operating system. At present, the development of this market is very fragmented. Huawei's Hongmeng system has high expectations, but it still needs to be advanced in lower-level technologies." Zeng Jianqiu believes that the operating system It is the foundation of future ecological construction.
Last year, Huawei launched the "1+8+N" all-scenario smart life strategy, building tablet, TV, watch, car, headset, PC and other businesses around mobile phones, extending to scenarios such as mobile office, smart home, and smart travel.
At present, the number of Huawei devices equipped with the Hongmeng system has exceeded 300 million.
Yao Dandan pointed out that the Hongmeng system is actually a super terminal based on the entire Internet of Things and all-scenario application fields of the Internet of Things.
Yuan Bo said that the Hongmeng system has technical content, which is the product of Huawei's long-term investment.
After the hardware is constrained, the software ecosystem is revitalized, which is the embodiment of the software and hardware integration capabilities of high-end mobile phones.
"Domestic mobile phones need more technical accumulation, ecological development can help to enhance the brand image, and only by accumulating a lot can we cope with the arrival of the next technological revolution."
After entering the 5G era, the iterative demand of consumers is very weak.
Guo Tianxiang pointed out that at present, 5G has not become a driving force for consumers to switch phones. For ordinary consumers, the 5G experience has not improved much.
Zhong Xinlong believes that products such as smart wearables belong to the extension of the generalization of mobile phones. These products themselves are built based on the technical accumulation and ecological advantages of mobile phone manufacturers in the past.
"In the 5G era, if we can improve ultra-high-definition video technology and connect mobile phones with VR or AR products, maybe there will be another technological revolution at that time."
How can a mobile phone brand truly go high-end?
Guo Tianxiang explained to "China News Weekly": "First of all, we launched a product with good product strength, which won the reputation of some users, and at the same time continued to build our own high-end brand image. Since then, product updates and iterations have maintained a unified idea, and the product user experience has been continuously improved. After at least 2~3 generations of products, it is expected to gradually establish a high-end product image, and then be accepted by the majority of consumers. Of course, independent research and development technology is the most important point. "
Many years ago, the 8848 mobile phone was mainly for high-end people when it was launched.
"In the final analysis, high-end mobile phone products must stand the test of the consumer market for a long time." Zhong Xinlong observed that in the past two years, many companies want to seize the high-end market and promote consumers to form a high-end consumer psychological cognition. Long route construction.
"Insist on long-term investment, including investment in product strength, services, channels, and its own brand image, and accumulate from quantitative changes to qualitative changes, so that we can truly stand on the high-end market." Guo Tianxiang said.
"China News Weekly" Issue 32, 2022
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