In the blink of an eye, the 2022 Lunar New Year has passed. Looking back at 2021, under the background of the normalization of the epidemic, all walks of life have begun to return to the right track in an orderly manner.
However, on the one hand, the impact of the epidemic is still there, on the other hand, the dividend of the smartphone industry has disappeared, so in 2021, the smartphone industry has not achieved high growth as expected. According to the 2021 Chinese market mobile phone sales list released by market research institute Counterpoint, shipments in the Chinese smartphone market fell slightly by 2% in 2021.
Don't forget the past, the teacher of the future. Next, we will review the smartphone industry in 2021 through six major events and sort out the development context of the smartphone industry.
Big Hydrogen Is Dead: OnePlus merges with OPPO
On June 16, 2021, Liu Zuohu, founder of OnePlus, released an internal email announcing that OnePlus mobile phones and OPPO will be fully integrated, and one plus will become an independently operated brand under OPPO in the future.
For OnePlus fans, the merger of OnePlus and OPPO is indeed regrettable, but from the perspective of the market, with the harvest of market dividends, it is better to warm up in groups than to fight alone. This can be seen in OPPO's market share.
According to the survey report released by CINNO, the top three chinese mobile phone brand sales in 2021 are OPPO, vivo and Apple, of which OPPO has a market share of 20.5%.
However, the merger did have a certain impact on OnePlus's product strategy, such as the previous one-plus dual-machine strategy. For example, in early 2021, one plus 9 and one plus 9 Pro were released in one go, but in early 2022, OnePlus only released one plus 10 Pro.
Huawei launches 4G flagship phone
On the evening of July 29, 2021, Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's consumer business, released the P50 series that consumers have been looking forward to for a long time, although Hua focused on introducing the image of this phone and the Hongmeng ecology, but at the end of the conference, Yu Chengdong still helplessly said: "Huawei P50 series mobile phones will not be equipped with 5G technology." ”
In fact, Huawei's launch of 5G mobile phones in 2021 is also really helpless.
According to data released by Omdia, in Q2 2021, global smartphone shipments were 299 million units, an increase of 6.9% year-on-year. However, Huawei's mobile phone shipments continued to decline, with 9.8 million units shipped in Q2, down 74.6% year-on-year and 33.3% month-on-month.
Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's consumer business, said at the 2020 China Informatization 100 People Conference: "Due to US sanctions, Huawei's world-leading Kirin series of chips cannot be manufactured after September 15 and will become a masterpiece." It's really a big loss, a great pity! This also means that the Kirin 9000 has a high probability of becoming the best song of the Kirin 5G high-end chip.
At present, the main purpose of Huawei's launch of 4G mobile phones may not be to reproduce the peak of the market, but to occupy a place at the entrance level of smart phones. Because with the advent of the era of Internet of Everything, smart phones may have very important strategic significance under Huawei's heavy-rated Hongmeng full-scene ecology.
Meizu's three-zero strategy was canceled for half a year
On September 9, 2021, some netizens found that Meizu Technology's official Weibo deleted all promotional advertisements about "Three Zero Mobile Phone", in addition, in the description of flyme9 official website and Meizu 18 series mobile phones, the description and content of "Three Zero Mobile Phone" disappeared.
Subsequently, Meizu officially released an apology letter, from the apology letter, Meizu's abandonment of the non-advertising strategy has become an established fact, but it is gratifying that Meizu 18 series is not affected, and can still continue to enjoy the treatment of "three zero mobile phones".
Part of the reason why Meizu abandoned the "three zero mobile phone" may be because its mobile phone share continues to decrease and needs to increase revenue at the software level. According to the domestic mobile phone sales report for the third quarter of 2020 released by market research institute CINNO Research, Meizu mobile phone sales accounted for only 0.3%.
What is even more worrying is that Meizu has also been rumored to have sold itself before. On January 21, the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily released a message saying that it learned from a number of independent sources that geely group mobile phone companies are in contact with mobile phone manufacturer Meizu to negotiate acquisitions. Several people close to the deal said: "The deal is still ongoing and DD (due diligence) is being done. ”
I don't know how Meizu will resolve the crisis in 2022.
The Redmi Note 11 Pro features the car backwards
Who would not have thought that in 2021, the products of redmi, the main cost-effective brand, have also rolled over.
In October 2021, Redmi released the Redmi Note11 Pro family of products. Unfortunately, this phone is only equipped with Tianji 920 chip. Although the Tianji 920 chip is a 6nm process, it has only 2 A78 cores, and the A55 core has increased to 6, and the GPU is Mali-G68 MC4.
In contrast, the Redmi Note10 Pro is equipped with Tianji 1100 chip, 6nm process, 4 A78 cores, 4 A55 cores, and the GPU is Mali-G77 MC9.
According to PChome's actual measurements, the actual test score of Redmi Note11 Pro+ in the Antutu review is only 49.4W points, for which we have commented: "Redmi Note 11 Pro+ is positioned on the 'experience small flagship', so it is inferior to the Note 10 series in absolute performance performance." ”
On November 1, 2021, Lu Weibing, partner of Xiaomi Group, president of China and International Department, and general manager of Redmi brand, also helplessly said on social media: "After the release of Note11Pro, Note10Pro is still selling very strongly."
Zhao Ming said that the folding screen can challenge Apple
After independence, Glory stepped out of the "smile curve" in 2021.
In the Q3 China mobile phone market share report released by Canalys, Honor rose to third place with a market share of 18%, second only to vivo and OPPO, surpassing xiaomi in fourth place and Apple in fifth place. For comparison, at the beginning of 2021, Honor's market share was only in single digits.
Glory CEO Zhao Ming said in an interview that after Q3 in 2021, it has no longer paid special attention to the proportion of market share, but pays more attention to product polishing and consumer experience, "there is no game of "climbing to the top" in the mobile phone market, if at a certain moment it feels stable and safe, it means that danger will come. ”
It is precisely for this reason that in early 2022, we saw Honor release its first folding screen mobile phone - Honor Magic V.
In the past few years, we have seen a lot of folding screens, but the Glory Magic V must still shock many people, not only because it is equipped with a new generation of Snapdragon 8, but also because its appearance is thin enough, and the 21:9 screen is easier to use. Because of this, Honor Magic V has been praised by many netizens as "the strongest folding screen mobile phone", and even Zhao Ming frankly said: "(Glory Magic V) should be said to be a product without opponents this year."
Perhaps because he saw the opportunity of the folding screen mobile phone industry, Zhao Ming also began to benchmark Apple.
On January 11, Zhao Ming said in an interview: "Frankly speaking, Apple today in terms of system design and consumer experience, I think it is doing better than us. But it also has its shortcomings. Honor's goal is to take the lead in surpassing Apple's experience in China's service ecosystem, such as the various Internet services supported by the Magic Live intelligent engine. ”
5G construction is slowing down
In 2021, a small but far-reaching change in the smartphone industry is at the level of 5G network infrastructure. According to the Nikkei Asia Review, spending on 5G networks and other infrastructure by Major Chinese telecom operators fell by 25% in the first half of 2021.
This is mainly because the construction and operating costs of 5G are huge, and at the consumer level, there has not yet been a corresponding 5G application scenario.
According to the survey data, the construction cost of a 5G base station is 300,000, which is 2-3 times that of a 4G base station. And the 5G base station coverage radius is short, only 100-300 meters, which is one-tenth of the 4G base station, but the density is 10 times that of the 4G base station, and the cost of building 5G base stations in the same area is 20-30 times that of 4G. From the perspective of consumer use, the current mainstream content ecology such as games and short videos is still born out of the 4G network, and there is no content upgrade.
According to a user survey data by foreign media, less than 20% of users are using 5G functions.
There are many reasons why consumers don't use 5G features, as can be seen in user voting data. Only 17.6 percent of respondents are using 5G phones and using 5G features, which is far less than we think. 33.69% of users said that there is no 5G network in their area, so naturally there is no way to talk about 5G mobile phones and 5G functions.
Overall, the big event in the smartphone industry in 2021 does have some negative news, but we also see the spirit of manufacturers persevering to build products. For example, Zhao Ming hopes to benchmark Apple through folding screen mobile phones, and Redmi's cost-effective new K50 is also about to come out.
Therefore, presumably, smartphone manufacturers who have experienced hardships will bring us more surprises in 2022.