In February 2022, the sales volume of smart phones in China was about 23.48 million, down 20.5% year-on-year and 24% month on month From Counterpoint&CINNO

The following is the In February 2022, the sales volume of smart phones in China was about 23.48 million, down 20.5% year-on-year and 24% month on month From Counterpoint&CINNO recommended by recordtrend.com. And this article belongs to the classification: Counterpoint, Intelligent mobile phone, Mobile device.

How long has it been since you changed your cell phone? Two, three, or five years? Yesterday, when I threw this question to my friend, her answer to me was: “my iPhone 8 plus can fight again!” “Why don’t young people want to change their mobile phones?” This may not only be a problem on the hot search list, but also a problem for the whole mobile phone industry.

“Mobile phones are really hard to sell.”. From the end of last year to the beginning of this year, many dealers have issued such exclamations.

“Now I don’t know what to sell except apple. These domestic brands don’t sell well…” Li Qing, a mobile phone dealer who has worked for more than 20 years, told me.

But in fact, today, even apple, the situation is not as optimistic as it seems. Recently, it is rumored that the newly released third-generation iPhone se has suddenly encountered a single cut, with a single cut volume of between 2 million and 3 million, accounting for about 20% of the total sales.

Apple also seems to have some confidence in the medium and low-end models between 3000-4000 yuan. You know, the second-generation iPhone se released by Apple two years ago ranked among the top 10 best-selling smartphones in the world until 2021.

▲ ranking of top 10 best selling mobile phones in the world in 2021, source: counterpoint

Recently, Liu Deyin, chairman of TSMC, told the media that due to geopolitical uncertainty and the blockade of the epidemic, the demand for consumer electronics showed signs of slowing down, affecting the fields of smartphones, laptops and televisions.

Guo mingpeng, a well-known Apple analyst at Tianfeng securities, also gave his view: at present, from high-end to low-end brands are cutting orders, and the mobile phone industry is undergoing structural adjustment.

Recently, cinno research, a market research institution, released a sales report on the domestic smartphone market in February. Its data showed that the overall sales volume of China’s smartphone market fell by more than 20% year-on-year and 24% month on month in February. The cold on the sales side seems to be true.

▲ sales volume of domestic top 5 mobile phone brands in February 2022, source: cinno

Objectively speaking, the significance of this structural adjustment to the whole smart phone industry may not only have simple advantages or disadvantages, but what are the driving factors behind this adjustment? Will the severe winter facing the smartphone industry today evolve into an “ice age” and how will the giants respond? Both deserve our deep thinking.

Fortunately, there was no sorrow at home or abroad

After verifying with many people in the supply chain, I found that everyone gave similar answers. The current mobile phone market is indeed not optimistic.

A management of Shunyu optical technology, a large domestic smartphone lens manufacturer, told Zhidong that the overall situation of the mobile phone market is not optimistic, and the shipment volume has decreased by about 20% – 30%.

At present, the inventory of Android mobile phone manufacturers has begun to rise, but the demand of mobile phone market has become lower, which brings the intuitive feeling that mobile phones can’t be sold.

According to cinno research, the sales volume of mobile phones in the domestic market in February was about 23.48 million, a year-on-year decrease of 20.5%, a month on month decrease of 24% and a year-on-year decrease of both. The sales volume of domestic top mobile phone manufacturers decreased year-on-year, reaching about 45%, close to halving.

We can also see a similar situation from the domestic market data released by the agency in January. The sales of several domestic head mobile phone manufacturers such as oppo, vivo and Xiaomi decreased year-on-year, with the largest decrease of more than 20%.

▲ sales volume of domestic top 5 mobile phone brands in January 2022, source: cinno

It can be said that in the two months since the beginning of 2022, the domestic mobile phone market has really experienced a cold spring.

Not only the domestic market, but also the situation of overseas giant apple is not optimistic. Apple analyst Guo Mingyu’s forecast for the newly released third-generation iPhone se shipments fell from 25-30 million to 15-20 million, with a maximum decline of about 40%.

Not long ago, Apple announced that it would release a subscription service in the future. In short, it allows users to “rent iPhone” and pay a certain fee every month to use iPhone.

Some insiders believe that this is actually another policy that reflects cook’s strong inventory management ability. Apple continues to reduce the threshold for users to use iPhone and expand the user group to cope with the increasingly weak global smartphone market.

Chaodian think tank, a domestic market research institution, has predicted that from 2022 to 2024, global smartphone shipments will fluctuate between 1.1 billion and 1.2 billion, far from the 1.5 billion at the peak.

According to industry information, in the face of this severe winter, domestic and foreign mobile phone manufacturers have not only cut orders and lowered market expectations, but also reduced the specification and configuration of mobile phone products.

In short, it is to start to increase efforts to “roll in” the middle and low-end smartphone market. Now, the remaining space in the middle and low-end smartphone market is very limited. This operation has the feeling of “drinking poison to quench thirst”.

Most of the high-end market has not been successfully taken away by Huawei, because of this, most of the high-end market has not been successfully taken away by apple.

▲ share of global smartphone sales of more than $400 in 2021, source: counterpoint

In addition to making mobile phones “more difficult to sell”, this severe winter also has a deep impact on enterprises and practitioners.

Zhidong and a number of people in the mobile phone industry learned that the turnover rate of peers around them has increased significantly this year. Most of these resigned people later switched to smart cars, smart homes, AR / VR and other tracks with higher potential.

Some leavers said that now the mobile phone industry is “involved” fiercely. They feel very tired and feel that their love for this career has been eroded a lot.

Whether the overall order cutting of the mobile phone industry, the cold sales at the retail end, or many practitioners have changed careers, all show that everyone’s expectations for the smart phone market are not optimistic.

There is no doubt that the mobile phone industry is going through its own difficult period. This severe winter has gone deep into every corner of the industry rather than just a watch.

However, it is worth noting that, compared with the sluggish sales, some market research institutions remain optimistic about the shipments of smart phones in 2022, believing that the shipments will reach 1.43 billion units in 2022. How the actual situation will develop, the market will give the answer.

▲ 2009-2022 global smartphone shipment statistics and forecast, data source: counterpoint

Weakness is not always the pot of the epidemic

How long has it been since you changed your cell phone?

So why is the smartphone industry showing such a weak trend? Behind this severe winter, why can’t mobile phones be sold, and why aren’t consumers willing to pay for a new one?

1. The epidemic suppresses consumer desire, and I won’t change it if it’s not bad

From a macro perspective, the most direct reason is naturally the impact of the epidemic. The increasing demand for tablet and office products, as well as the increasing demand for all kinds of tablet and office products, has not led to the continuous growth of AIT products.

I received similar feedback in my communication with mobile phone dealers and supply chain manufacturers, that is, the two-year epidemic from 2020 to 2021 did slow down the global economic growth, and consumers’ Consumption Willingness and purchasing power also decreased to a certain extent.

“Now we have more money in our pockets than before, but in the past two years, we have been more cautious about spending money, especially for expensive electronic products such as mobile phones, which are basically not just needed and rarely changed.” Li Qing told me very frankly.

You know, whether in the global or Chinese smartphone market, the main force of shipment has always been medium and low-end models, especially thousand yuan machines and hundred yuan machines.

The main shipping market of these thousand yuan machines and hundred yuan machines is mainly in the second, third and fourth tier cities. In large cities with a high degree of digital office, people can still “work online” in the face of the epidemic, but in many small and medium-sized cities, the epidemic has brought a great impact to many people who need to work offline.

The cinno research report mentioned that in more than a month since the end of February, the epidemic situation in many places in China has been repeated, which has also brought more adverse effects on the resumption of work and production of domestic mobile phone manufacturers, which is one of the main reasons for the decline of the overall performance of mobile phones in February.

Of course, in addition to the adverse environment caused by the epidemic, smart phone products themselves also have many internal factors that lead to the downturn in the demand for replacement.

According to statistics, the current mobile phone replacement cycle has increased to about 32 months, that is, nearly three years. In contrast, according to the data of the information and Communications Institute, the domestic market released more than 400 new models in 2021, with an average of 1.32 models per day.

But do consumers really have such a big demand for changing planes? Today, with the improvement of mobile phone quality, the failure rate of mobile phone has been significantly reduced.

The large-scale production of mobile phone supply chain system and parts has been very mature, and in the increasingly fierce competitive environment, manufacturers have higher and higher requirements for mobile phone quality control. After all, almost all manufacturers who withdrew from the mobile phone market in the past two years “rolled over” in quality control.

At the same time, the fierce internal roll of domestic manufacturers also makes the mobile phone materials more and more “luxurious”. Even models with a performance of about 2000 yuan can use chips comparable to the top flagship mobile phones.

The workmanship and performance of mobile phones are getting better and better. For relatively expensive consumer goods such as mobile phones, many consumers even hold the attitude of “counting when they are worn out”. If there is no problem, they will not consider replacing them.

2. The average price of Android phones exceeded 7000 yuan one after another

With the improvement of mobile phone materials, the price of mobile phones has also gone up. Compared with the main price range of 2000-3000 yuan, 100 yuan and 1000 yuan of Android machines, the price of the top version of Android flagship smartphone has mostly reached about 7000 yuan.

In addition, from last year to this year, almost all domestic mainstream manufacturers have displayed their own folding screen mobile phones, and the mobile phones of folding screen mobile phones basically start from 8000 yuan, and it is common to sell at a price of more than 10000 yuan.

According to counter point data, the average price of global smart phones reached US $322 (about 2046 yuan) in 2021, with a year-on-year increase of 4%, reaching an all-time high.

▲ global average price of smart phones from 2016 to 2020, data source: counterpoint

4% doesn’t sound like much, but in the economic downturn, how many people can increase their income by more than 4%?

It is worth noting that in the past two years, the price of Apple iPhone has not increased on models with the same storage specifications, and there are even some operations of “increasing the quantity without increasing the price”. Therefore, the main drivers of the rise in the average price of mobile phones are Android mobile phone manufacturers.

According to counter point data, the proportion of global smartphone sales of more than $400 (about 2541 yuan) has increased to 27% in 2021, an increase of 4% in just one year.

▲ proportion of global smartphone sales above $400 in 2016-2020, data source: counterpoint

There is no doubt that mobile phones are selling more and more expensive now.

3. Lack of innovation is a hard wound, and it is difficult to have “qualitative change” in technological upgrading

Of course, whether it is the negative impact of the epidemic, the improvement of mobile phone quality or the rise of prices, it seems that it is not enough to become the decisive factor leading to the severe winter of the mobile phone industry.

Whether chatting with family, friends and colleagues around us or communicating with people in the industry, they all point to a similar conclusion: one of the fundamental reasons why we “don’t want to change phones” is that the update of mobile phone technology slows down and the products lack enough attractive innovations.

In the view of a senior person who has been concerned about the consumer electronics industry for many years, they all say that the aroma of wine is not afraid of the deep alley. Now the alley is very shallow and almost brings the wine to you, but the problem is that the wine doesn’t smell at all.

As the insider said, after deep digging into several major technical fields such as the core chip, screen, camera, fast charging and operating system of smart phones, we do find that there are only a few experience upgrading points that can brighten consumers’ eyes.

In the field of mobile phone chips, the powerful counterattack of MediaTek’s flagship chip against Qualcomm has become a hot topic among consumers recently, but behind this competition, we see today’s flagship chip, whose energy efficiency ratio is almost the same as that of two years ago.

▲ comparison of CPU performance and power consumption (under similar performance, there is little difference between Xiaolong 865 two years ago and the single core and multi-core power consumption of Tianji 9000), chart source: geek Bay

Not only does the performance improvement of the chip slow down, but the only performance improvement also needs to sacrifice a lot of power consumption. At the same time, people’s attention to power consumption also leads to the competition of chip technology, which has increasingly become the competition of chip foundry manufacturing process, rather than the real chip design ability of manufacturers.

In addition, the peak performance of mobile phone chips has exceeded the range that mobile phones can use. With the chip blessing that can complete hundreds of trillions of neural network calculations per second, smart phones are still not “smart”.

The performance of mobile phone chip itself is not weak, but the performance that mobile phone can use is very limited. The difficulty of deep coordination and adaptation of software and hardware has become the bottleneck encountered by various mobile phone manufacturers.

The customized self-developed chips pulled out by mobile phone manufacturers are difficult to bring very intuitive improvement in the user experience level after the actual implementation, and it is also difficult to become a new selling point bought by ordinary consumers.

In the field of mobile screen, although almost all mainstream mobile phone manufacturers except apple have released or will release their own folding screen mobile phones, it is undeniable that, according to the current actual situation, the actual use experience of each folding screen mobile phone is not different except for the different appearance design.

▲ vivo x fold mobile phone to be released soon

The lack of software ecology, lack of substitutability and high price are still several walls between consumers and products.

And it is worth noting that due to the limitations of the internal structure design of the fuselage and the current technical level, the folding screen mobile phone lags behind the straight flagship smart phone in terms of performance, heat dissipation, screen quality, screen durability, charging life and portability.

Folding screen mobile phones bring innovative use experience, although the “perception is not strong”, but the short board is very prominent.

At a time when mobile phone manufacturers have vowed to impact the high-end market, the folding screen does not seem to be a powerful innovation to attract ordinary consumers, but has become a “shield” for mobile phone manufacturers to sell their mobile phones more expensive.

In addition, after several rounds of iterations, the off screen camera technology, which has been landing since 2019, has achieved that the opening of the screen can not be detected by the naked eye. However, due to the difficulties in optics and materials, it is difficult to solve in the short term, and the camera effect is difficult to be substantially improved.

In terms of screen resolution and refresh rate, after years of accumulation, domestic manufacturers have generally broken through the problems at the patent level in recent years. The pixel arrangement of high-end screens is very close to that of Samsung, and it is difficult for ordinary consumers to perceive the difference with the naked eye. The high refresh rate has also been popularized, which can be realized from 1000 yuan machine to 10000 yuan machine.

▲ drill like arrangement for domestic screens

It can be seen that after years of rapid iteration, the technical points such as screen resolution, refresh rate, off screen camera and folding screen have gradually matured. No matter how loud the manufacturers say at the press conference, the perceived improvement on the user experience side has been small.

This is more obvious in mobile phone photography. In just four or five years, smart phones have quickly gone through technical points such as multi photography (three photography, four photography and five photography), ultra-high pixels and oversized sensors. Photography has gone from “can you see” to “good enough”.

Today, manufacturers are more promoting the breakthrough of photographing algorithm, but for many ordinary consumers, most of the time they are “taking a picture at will”, and in this regard, the effect of mobile phone photographing has not changed much.

Whether it is the self-developed image chip or the addition of AI algorithm, it brings more “icing on the cake” than “qualitative change” to the photographing experience.

An insider of Shunyu optical technology told me that the improvement of mobile phone photography now requires changes in the underlying technology. For example, metals (micro lens) technology can make the camera thinner, but this technology has a long R & D cycle and usually takes 5-10 years to take effect.

In terms of charging and operating system, the “qualitative change” improvement of experience has also become rare. If the charging time is shortened from 2 hours to more than 10 minutes, it is a qualitative change, then changing from 15 minutes to 10 minutes is “weak perception”; Similarly, the operating systems of mobile phone manufacturers have developed from “blank room” to “hardbound room”. There is basically no difference in the functionality of each operating system, but the specific forms of function are different.

On the whole, innovation at the chip, screen, camera, charging or operating system level lacks the ability to bring substantial improvement at the experience level, which leads to the reduction of consumers’ desire to change planes. It can be said that this is the core problem that mobile phone manufacturers really want to break through under the severe winter.

“Since the difference is not big and I have to spend more money, why should I change it?” A friend who has long paid attention to the field of mobile phone digital told me.

How to break the game in severe winter?

Car making and meta universe become new variables

Soon, a quarter of 2022 has passed and the first quarter has passed. How long will this severe winter last? Will the smartphone industry gradually warm up with the weather at the turn of spring and summer in 2022? In this regard, industry insiders have given different views.

In the view of Li Qing, who has experienced many “changes of Dynasties” in the mobile phone industry, the fatigue of this industry and the reduction of consumers’ purchase intention should be long-term. At present, he has not seen a turnaround or a good solution.

No matter what kind of “fancy promotion” they do at the retail end, the decline in the attractiveness of products is a hard injury, and consumers are becoming more and more rational. Under the background of the economic downturn, it is by no means easy for consumers to pay quickly.

Compared with Li Qing’s pessimism, a person in the mobile phone supply chain seems to be more positive. He believes that smart terminal devices often have their own life cycle. Perhaps the winter of smart phones goes to spring and is pregnant with new terminal forms.

As mentioned above, many practitioners in the smart phone industry have “switched” to VR / AR, smart home or smart car industry. Compared with the smart phone category that has been developed for 15 years, these emerging terminals are obviously more dynamic.

Through horizontal comparison, it is not difficult to find that head mobile phone manufacturers such as apple, Huawei, Xiaomi and oppo are actively deploying smart cars and VR / AR related technologies.

Although the promotion of Apple’s car building project faces many challenges, Apple’s smart glasses equipped with strong self-developed M2 chip and capable of supporting AR / VR dual mode have undoubtedly become the heavyweight new products most concerned by the industry.

IPhone 4 has opened the era of smart phones, and whether Apple’s first “meta universe” product will lead the future meta universe era gives people enough imagination.

The Hongmeng smart car completed by Huawei in cooperation with auto companies, Xiaomi’s first self-developed electric car expected to go offline in 2024, and oppo’s ar glasses with a strong sense of future science and Technology… No one will put eggs in one basket. All smart phone giants are laying out technology in advance to try to take the lead in these potential tracks.

Opening up new territory seems to be much more interesting than fighting in the fierce internal smartphone market.

On the other hand, in the face of this severe winter and the structural adjustment of the whole smartphone industry, mobile phone manufacturers are also moving forward in compliance. Even if they want to fight to the end in the smartphone market, they should strive to become survivors after “optimization”.

At present, almost all domestic mainstream mobile phone manufacturers are shouting the slogan of “benchmarking apple and impacting the high-end”, so as to improve the average price of mobile phones, improve revenue capacity, improve profitability and feed back technology research and development, so as to make themselves have more unique competitiveness. It seems to have become a tacit understanding of each family.

Of course, this tacit understanding is to rush to a battle of gunpowder hard core technology.

Conclusion: who can laugh to the end in the severe winter of 2022?

It can be said that the release of iPhone 4 has opened 15 years of rapid development of smart phones. From the decline of functional machines and the rise of Shanzhai machines to the fact that high-end machines have become a pastry, smart phones have become excellent in quality and rich in functions, and the smart phone industry seems to have encountered the biggest bottleneck in the life cycle at this time.

Slowing market growth, sluggish sales, serious brain drain, lack of technological innovation, rising prices and insufficient product attraction… A series of complex factors have jointly contributed to the severe winter of the smartphone industry.

How will the mobile phone giants rising by the wave of smart phones face the severe winter in the whole industry in 2022? Who can give a solution or find a new breakthrough? In the end, they may become the leaders of the technology industry in the next decade.

Read more about Zizhi things: Counterpoint: in Q1 2017, the shipment of medium and high-end smart phones increased by 49%. Trendforce: in 2019, the total production of global smart phone brand factories reached 375 million domestic mobile phones. The Civil War: the southern faction comprehensively suppressed the northern faction and almost collapsed. An rabbit rabbit: in February 2022, the second flagship of Android mobile phone cost performance ranking was less than 1000 yuan. IDC: in Q3 2017, the shipment of smart phones in China was 115 million, a year-on-year decrease of 0.1%. It is expected that in 2017, Huawei The total global mobile phone shipments of Xiaomi and ov will exceed 400 million. Counterpoint: Huawei ranked third with 10% share in the global smartphone shipment ranking in 2017. Counterpoint research: Q4 China smartphone market report in 2021: domestic mobile phones hit the iPhone, Juniper research: it is estimated that the global smartphone shipment will reach 1.2 billion units in 2014. Counterpoint: in Q2, 2017, the smartphone market in China increased by 3% year-on-year. Counterpoint: in Q4, 2018, the online sales of smartphones in China reached a new high of 28%. Counterpoint research: in Q4, 2021, the iPhone shipment of Apple reached 81.5 million units, surpassing Samsung to become the world’s largest smartphone manufacturer. Cinno research: in January 2022, China About 30.87 million smartphones were sold in the market, with a year-on-year increase of 0.4%. Counterpoint: the shipment of Q3 iPhone in China in 2016 decreased by 27% compared with the same period last year

If you want to get the full report, you can contact us by leaving us the comment. If you think the information here might be helpful to others, please actively share it. If you want others to see your attitude towards this report, please actively comment and discuss it. Please stay tuned to us, we will keep updating as much as possible to record future development trends.

RecordTrend.com is a website that focuses on future technologies, markets and user trends. We are responsible for collecting the latest research data, authority data, industry research and analysis reports. We are committed to becoming a data and report sharing platform for professionals and decision makers. We look forward to working with you to record the development trends of today’s economy, technology, industrial chain and business model.Welcome to follow, comment and bookmark us, and hope to share the future with you, and look forward to your success with our help.