Written by Li Jinlin
Editor/ Li Wenjie
Typesetting/Annalee
With the end of the closing ceremony, this Olympic event belonging to all mankind has officially come to an end. Before the final event, the eyes of the global audience were firmly on who would be offered the top spot in the medal table. However, in this Olympic Games, there will be a fixed "guest" on the podium of each event, which will also attract attention.
At the award ceremony, Samsung launched a "victory selfie" session, allowing the sports to use the Galaxy Z Flip6 Olympic Special Edition for group photos, which can be said to have once again unveiled Samsung's small folding phone in front of more people.
In the process of recovery of the consumer electronics industry, the smartphone market is competing for the current. There are both AI mobile phones dancing, and folding mobile phones accelerating involution.
Among them, the competition between manufacturers in the field of small folding mobile phones is more prominent. From the end of July to the beginning of August, Xiaomi and Huawei respectively released a new generation of folding screen phones, Xiaomi MIX Flip and nova Flip, both of which are aimed at young consumers.
At the same time, the only way to roll up is the price war, Nubia Flip price reduction to2799 yuan, which can be called the cheapest small folding in history, SamsungZ Flip5 also took the initiative to make price concessions, impacting competitiveness.
Looking at the entire market, small folding has actually encountered a certain bottleneck in terms of shipments before, but as a product line that can not only increase revenue but also seize share, it still attracts major manufacturers to come and go. However, in the end, what is the core competitiveness?
Manufacturers roll up "beautiful little waste"
For the newly released MIX Flip, Lei Jun has an expectation, that is, he hopes to reverse the public impression that small folds are "beautiful little waste" through this new product of Xiaomi, and call it "beautiful little cutie" in the future.
Some people say that Lei Jun is particularly fond of this product, not only the "little tail" of Weibo for more than ten days is Xiaomi MIX Flip, but also the poster with the theme of courage out of the circle also holds this mobile phone. After its launch, this MIX Flip, which has the title of the first small folding in Xiaomi's history, has lived up to Lei Jun's love from Internet popularity to sales.
The blogger "Smart Chip Insider" posted, "Glory's small folding is already a very good selling product, but Xiaomi is even more fierce, and the volume of one week has exceeded the volume of the former for three weeks." ”
Zinc Scale also found through offline visits to Xiaomi mobile phone stores that the users who experienced the MIX Flip at the booth were not all female users, but most female users would carefully consult the details of the portable photo set. It is worth mentioning that the two stores visited by Zinc Scale require reservations to purchase the Xiaomi Mi MIX Flip.
Huawei's nova Flip, which has just been on the market for a week, has worked color and thin body, paying more attention to female users and celebrity fans, which are part of the potential consumer group. Compared with the previous vertical folding Pocket 2, nova Flip has a stronger youthful atmosphere, which is also as analyzed by many industry insiders, vertical folding products are developing in the direction of more segmented demand, and the female market and the trend market are the potential consumer mainstays.
Huawei nova Flip
In fact, Huawei, Xiaomi, and Honor have actually launched small folding products one after another this year, realizing the full coverage of the folding screen product line. In terms of effect, the Honor Magic V Flip is equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor, a battery capacity of 4800mAh, and supports Honor 66W super fast charging...... After raising the configuration to a higher level, the price has dropped to 4999 yuan, so the glory Magic V Flip won the championship of the small folding screen category only by pre-sale during this year618.
The Xiaomi MIX Flip, which was released not long ago, has set off a heated discussion on the whole network, and some people have even begun to worry about the future development of the Polaroid, thinking that the Xiaomi MIX Flip with a portable camera is a king-level existence.
In addition to keeping an eye on their potential consumer groups, the new small folding products with more trendy attributes can also have a price advantage over horizontal folding products, thus bringing help from traffic to sales for the entire mobile phone brand.
Can the price hit 2999 to sell well?
Since Royole released the world's first folding screen mobile phone in 2018, the discussion about whether the folding screen is a false proposition has never ended. However, in the past two years, the folding screen market as a whole has maintained rapid growth.
According to data released by IDC at the end of last month, in the second quarter of 2024, China's folding screen mobile phone market maintained a triple-digit year-on-year growth rate, reaching 104.6%, and folding screen shipments reached 2.57 million units. IDC analysts believe that with the release of a new generation of folding screen products from more manufacturers, as well as the increase in new folding screen product lines from manufacturers such as Honor and Xiaomi, it is expected that China's folding screen mobile phone market will continue to grow rapidly in the second half of the year, and the development trend is better than that of the global folding screen mobile phone market.
vivo X Flip
Indeed, because the average price of folding screen products is relatively high, it is a natural opportunity for domestic mobile phone manufacturers to grow their performance. Whether it is the expansion from the high-end political and commercial market to the segmentation and vertical market, or from the product form or the main all-round, or the subdivision specializing in light and thin, it is the top and bottom of the folding mobile phone market that major manufacturers are seeking.
However, to discuss the folding screen market, you can't look at it generally. In the first quarter of 2024, the sales of horizontal folding screen mobile phones in the Chinese market increased by 91% year-on-year, while the sales of vertical folding screen mobile phones fell by 1% year-on-year, which means that the growth of "beautiful little waste" is beginning to decline.
However, as an important increment in the folding screen mobile phone market, small folding is still a business line that cannot be ignored by major mobile phone manufacturers, not only accelerating the pace of launching new products, but also actively carrying more configurations, and making differentiation from the playability.
And in the midst of all kinds of explorations, the price war came on time.
For example, at the 2024 Spring New Product Launch Conference, Nubia released the Nubia Flip. Compared with the Nubia Flip's innovations in hovering and previewing on both screens on the camera, the price is the biggest highlight of this product. As a small folding screen product, the price of Nubia Flip starts at only 2999 yuan, which greatly reduces the purchase threshold of folding screens.
If this is a fearless "disruption" of new entrants, then a brand like Samsung, which has a high price and was originally the leader, has begun to cut prices, which makes the situation of this "big brawl" even more tense.
Huawei Pocket S
With the launch of Samsung's new generation of Z Flip6 small folding screen mobile phones, the previous generation of Z Flip5 ushered in a cliff price reduction, from the original 7499 yuan to 4499 yuan, which is almost half the price. With Samsung's small foldable configuration, an overclocked version of the 2nd generation Snapdragon 8 flagship chip, the industry's largest external screen, and aviation-grade armored aluminum metal exteriors, all make the Z Flip5 more competitive after the price cut.
In addition, there is also a good sales of Glory Magic V Flip is not willing to lag behind in this summer price war, and reduces the price in disguise by means of additional gifts, and goes all the way to the "volume" on the road to compete for cost performance.
Zinc scale in the offline store visit found that many small folding consumer audiences will be affected by price reductions when making decisions, a woman who chooses a spare machine told Zinc Scale, "I personally think that the service life of small folding will not be very long, and it will not be used as the main machine, so it is very important to look good and cost-effective." ”
Gain a foothold before Apple gets in
Since the beginning of this year, there have been more and more mobile phone manufacturers with small folding product lines, but the hot and cold user demand has made the mobile phone manufacturers in the besieged city embarrassed for a while. OPPO and vivo, which entered the game earlier, even suspended the new plan of small folding.
According to Honor CEO Zhao Ming, the pricing of the Magic V Flip is "extremely difficult" for Honor, and it will take at least 1 million units to break even. However, before the launch of the Magic V Flip, in the first quarter of 2024, the shipment of folding screen mobile phones in China was about 1.86 million units, which has increased by 83% compared with the same period last year.
OPPO Find N3 Flip
In addition, many mobile phone manufacturers have begun to set off a price war on the small folding product line, exchanging low prices for the market, so the space left for major manufacturers is getting smaller and smaller. "Whether it is a big brand that reduces profits or directly loses money, or a small brand that ends up going out directly, it is not conducive to making the cake bigger." Practitioners in the mobile phone industry told zinc scales.
In the end, what can really be competitive from price to configuration is still the supply chain behind the brand. On the one hand, a simple price drop inevitably means that there are certain limitations, limited by the high cost of core components such as hinges, covers, and flexible OLED panels, and the profit margins of the brand are extremely compressed in the price war, so it will also affect the follow-up research and development momentum.
On the other hand, the popularity of Xiaomi MIX Flip actually provides another idea, and the ability of the portable shooting set to sell out, it can be said that Xiaomi has its own traffic, or it can be said that Xiaomi knows how to grasp the needs of female users, but in essence, it is actually thanks to the advantages of the Mijia ecosystem.
Folding screen products have relatively high requirements for brand, ecology, software adaptation, and after-sales service, and these happen to be the advantages of the head mobile phone manufacturers, and they also happen to be the weaknesses of second-tier manufacturers, so Xiaomi MIX Flip uses existing products and new mobile phones to make a 1+1 greater than 2 effect, which is both an accident and an inevitability.
Such a situation will also become a long-term development trend of the folding market in the future, and with the launch of Apple's mobile phone, the change of the market pattern will be further accelerated. Just recently, a source revealed that Apple is developing an iPhone with a small folding design, the internal code name of the product line is V68, and the new design may be launched as early as 2026.
In the Chinese mainland market in 2023, Apple's share of high-end smartphone users in the price range above $600 is as high as 63%. When Apple's folding mobile phone goes on the market, the price will presumably be on this price line, and at that time, the domestic mobile phone manufacturers that originally covered high-end consumer groups with folding products and seized high-end market share will be in a more difficult situation.
There was a sentence at Xiaomi's new product launch conference: high-end is the only way for Xiaomi's development, and it is a battle of life and death. This statement not only reflects Xiaomi's current survival situation, but also can be used to describe the entire mobile phone market. The battle in the low-end market has been fierce enough, and profits have fallen again and again, and only by expanding the high-end market share can we increase profitability.
Generally speaking, whether it is to avoid risks or to establish a solid foundation in this segment, domestic mobile phone manufacturers need to work hard to create a good cross-terminal experience and software ecology, create new use scenarios, and show differentiated advantages, otherwise it is very likely to fall short.