5G wait-and-see period: Cheng also 5G, defeat also 5G
Wen | Chen Xuanbin
Gartner, a world-renowned IT research and consulting firm, analyzes the current development phase of the emerging technology industry and the time it takes to reach maturity, and plots it on a curve called the Technology Maturity Curve.
In August 2018, on the emerging technology maturity curve released by Gartner’s official website, there were some subtle changes in the 5G position.
Compared with the emerging technology maturity curve released in 2017, the 5G position is shifted to the right, which is critical to the edge of the technology trigger period and the expected expansion period, and the latest predicted 5G technology mature time is reduced to 2-5 years ( In 2017, it will be 5-10 years).
Obviously, the growth rate of 5G technology in the past two years has exceeded Gartner’s expectations.
As the 5G position moved to the right and the expected expansion period, the media began to report relevant information on a large scale, and the manufacturers also entered the new product release stage for 5G related products, and the market fever increased sharply, the most notable of which was the 5G mobile phone.
The smartphone market has been cold since 2017 and has fallen into a relatively low stage. It is hoped that 5G mobile phones will become a new demand in the market.
So, can the smartphone market be able to enter the explosive growth phase again with the support of 5G?
5G wait-and-see period: Cheng also 5G, defeat also 5G
The growth of the smartphone market is cold. Since 2017, shipments have continued to decline, becoming the trend of the entire industry.
According to the data released by the China Business Research Institute, 2016 is the highest peak in the domestic smartphone market, with a total of 522 million units. Until 2017, shipments fell to 461 million units, down 11.6% year-on-year, and this trend continues.
With the popularity of smartphones, after experiencing a period of rapid growth, the entire industry has entered the stock market, the growth rate has slowed down, and shipments have entered a downturn.
Discussing the reasons for the decline in the smartphone market is nothing more than two laws, markets and products.
On the one hand, the market has entered a period of relative saturation, and a large period of growth has passed. At the same time, as the country enters the second half of the demographic dividend (2010-2035), the total population has entered a period of negative growth, and the market is approaching the ceiling. Although the growth space has always been there, it is not enough to bring about the previous high growth.
On the other hand, smartphones are maturing, and current innovations are hard to bring new breakthroughs in functionality, directly leading to a decline in user enthusiasm for replacement. When the development of the product touches the ceiling of the technology, the factors driving the user to replace the new equipment are also declining, which will inevitably slow down the growth rate of the market.
Therefore, it is hoped that 5G will bring a new experience and become a new boost for smartphones to break through the current technology ceiling. Manufacturers are expecting and users are expecting.
However, the main problem at the moment is that 5G did not come.
From the announcements issued by the three major operators in China, 2019 is the pre-commercial application phase of 5G, and it will be officially launched in 2020.
Therefore, this period is the 5G wait-and-see period. The higher the user’s expectations for 5G, the lower the probability of replacing the new machine at this stage.
Even if the current user has plans to replace the new machine, it may be in the wait-and-see stage due to the upcoming 5G mobile phone, and the replacement plan will be suspended.
This is the balance between technology iterations and market consumption.
Because technology is iterating too fast, product devaluation exceeds consumer expectations, causing market consumption to enter a downturn.
A similar case is the “returning event” of Xiaopeng Automobile in July this year.
Xiaopeng Automobile launched the Xiaopeng G3 2020 on July 10, and the cost performance is higher than that of the previous Xiaopeng G3 2019. This makes the original old customers feel that they have lost money and think that Xiaopeng Automobile is suspected of fraudulent sales. Lead to a series of rights violations.
Don’t talk about Xiaopeng’s propaganda and other issues. In fact, this is a problem of technical iteration and market consumption imbalance.
In the consumer’s psychological cognition, the appreciation of a new product means the depreciation of the old product, although the old product has no functional changes.
Back to 5G mobile phones, consumers will unconsciously delay the replacement time for this consideration. As the period of new product release is getting closer, the mobile phone market is becoming more and more depressed.
From the data monitored by the Prospective Industry Research Institute, this trend became more and more obvious in 2019. In February, the biggest decline in the smartphone market in recent years appeared. It was indeed 5G and 5G.
Bet 5G? Mobile phone manufacturers can’t wait
In the new wave of 5G, users may be able to wait, but manufacturers are already anxious.
In the second half of the year, major domestic manufacturers have said that they will launch their own branded 5G mobile phones around August, including Huawei, one plus, vivo, OPPO and other mobile phone giants.
It is understood that there are currently 8 mobile phones that have obtained 3C certification, of which Huawei has 4 models, one plus, vivo, OPPO and ZTE each.
In the 5G market, it is currently