In less than two weeks, an online conference without a live audience has become standard in the mobile phone industry.
February 24, the second day of the second month of the lunar calendar, Huawei, Sony, Honor and realme four mobile phone manufacturers have chosen to hold an online new product launch conference on this day. Four conferences collided, so it was hilarious.
Chinese mobile phone manufacturers who have released new products on the day of “Dragon Rise” are under the slump of the total market and the haze of the epidemic. They may not be expecting the meaning of “everything from scratch”.
Time goes back to February 13. When most of my fellow villagers were still isolated at home, they attacked Lei Jun, a Hubei man in formal clothes, put on a mask, and went to his stage as usual. There was almost no audience at the scene. Xiaomi ’s new product, the first Xiaomi 10 series equipped with a new generation SOC Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 chip, was released next.
In this way, a “Rebus Show” opened the prelude to the online conference of mobile phone manufacturers, and also fired the first shot of a new round of hardware “arms race”. “There is no audience and no 500 reporters have to hold a press conference to send out new products.” It became a consensus among manufacturers for a while. Huawei, Honor, realme, IQOO, Samsung, Sony, Black Shark, Red Devils and many other mobile phone manufacturers followed closely, rushing to announce their own online conference arrangements, sacrificing a new generation of products in their hands, for fear of letting friends Businesses seize the opportunity.
Compared with the “silence” of other industry giants in the epidemic, the mobile phone industry is particularly active. Under the epidemic situation, when all kinds of technology companies also faced various problems, including difficulties in resuming employees, backlogs of product inventory, and no release of new products, why was the development of the mobile phone industry so anxious?
“On the one hand, Chinese mobile phone manufacturers are basically global oriented. When the Chinese market is in a downturn, there are overseas markets to catch up.” = “text-remarks” label = “Remarks”> (ID: wujicaijing) analyzes, “On the other handDifferent from other industries, the global mobile phone industry is now a 5G air outlet period. Apple’s lag in 5G has left a lot of demand in the market. If other manufacturers want to divide up Apple ’s spit out this part Share, we must fill this part of the demand with products as soon as possible. “
一 、
Spring new product launch is a fixed program for mobile phone manufacturers.
In the past schedules of mobile phone manufacturers, spring was the day to participate in various industry exhibitions and hold new product launches. However, due to the epidemic this year, not only the annual Barcelona MWC exhibition was eventually cancelled, but also the manufacturers ’own Offline conferences cannot be held.
The sudden outbreak has left mobile phone manufacturers a little overwhelmed. All the original systems and planning arrangements were disrupted to varying degrees. Not only the original product inventory was facing a liquidation, but even the new product inventory prepared in advance for this year’s new product conference was facing the risk of backlogs.
“The whole industry is very, very silent now, everyone is in a very sad mood, the whole industry is like pressing the pause button … This special period, everyone came to this press conference of Xiaomi, and more Because the entire industry needs confidence. “After the online press conference, Lei Jun was asked by the media about the reason for the online press conference:” We chose to take the lead in hosting a flagship mobile phone conference at this time, mainly to boost the whole Industry confidence. Under the premise of doing a good job of defense, let life and work return to normal levels.
Just to boost confidence? In Sun Yanbiao’s view, using new products to attract user consumption and drive the original system back to normal operation is more a way for manufacturers to understand the market in the current environment.
“In addition to increasing some confidence in the industry for upstream and downstream suppliers, mobile phone manufacturers hold online conferences mainly to restore the sales system and supply system to normal as soon as possible, and also use new products to test the impact of the epidemic. Everyone can’t understand the market environment. “Sun Yanbiao believes.
Xiaomi’s internal decision to open an online conference is not easy, and it is even a little tangled.
In the three weeks before the press conference, the company was considering cancelling the new product launch from the moment when it felt that it would not be affected, the epidemic situation would soon end, and the resumption of work after the impact festival.
“In short, we were meeting every day during that time. Finally, we decided to hold an online press conference on February 13.” Lei Jun told the media that it was so tangled The main reason is whether to launch an online conference, because an online live conference is much more complicated than an offline conference.
“There is no interaction at the scene, and the speakers are very demanding. If you do n’t speak well, the audience may not see it for a while. More importantly, the process of communicating with 500 reporters at the scene is also missing. The transmission effect is difficult to guarantee. “Lei Jun said.
But, In spite of many concerns, Xiaomi also had to go. After all, not only the industry, Xiaomi itself was pressed the pause button.
According to the “Global Smart Phone Sales Report 2019 and Global Smart Phone Sales Report for Q4 2019” released by market research agency Canalys, Xiaomi’s annual sales in 2019 reached 126 million units, a year-on-year increase of 4% and market share The slight increase reached 9.2%.
Under the background of Huawei being affected by the “physical list” and Google GMS blackout, Xiaomi can be said to be the main winner, but its domestic market is declining every day, and its domestic market sales in 2019 are down 21 %, The market has shrunk by nearly 2%.
Under this environment, the release of the Xiaomi Mi 10 series, which starts at 4,000 yuan, will undoubtedly be a step in which Xiaomi will hit the high-end market and throw a stone. Considering the company’s dilemma in the domestic market, coupled with the early release, it can also grab the domestic debut of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 chip. Xiaomi’s press conference is already on the line and has to be issued.
Of course, Huawei, OPPO, vivo and many other manufacturers also have their own embarrassment.
More importantly, for those “latecomers to online conferences”, if everyoneIt does n’t matter, it ’s okay to follow the new product and not release it, but once a new product from a friend company comes out, especially a new product with a new generation of SOC, it wo n’t work.
Under the effect of the board machine, a new round of hardware “arms race” has to be launched, and the crowded outbreak of the online press conference is not unusual.
二 、
Before the outbreak, the domestic mobile phone market experienced negative growth for 4 consecutive years.
According to the latest statistics from market research company Counterpoint Research, in the whole of 2019, the sales volume of China’s smartphone market fell by 8% year-on-year. The decline is greater than 3% of the global smartphone market.
At the same time, the dawn of industry growth lies in that China is the largest contributor to the global 5G mobile phone market, accounting for 46% of the global 5G market in 2019. Therefore, for the domestic market, the 5G commercial The need for a replacement has always been considered an inflection point .
“According to the industry’s original expectations, as the first year after the full commercial use of 5G in 2020, there should be a big pick-up in the market.” An industry source told the letter list that mobile phone manufacturers had originally promoted the Spring Festival Expectations are very high, “In addition to 5G new products, each company also has a batch of 4G mobile phone inventory in the warehouse waiting to be cleared. Recently, Huawei’s 4G mobile phones have begun to cut prices across the board.”
According to previous reports by WeChat.com, there are currently nearly 50 to 60 million inventories on the mobile phone channel, of which Huawei has a high inventory of at least 20 million, and Xiaomi, OV and other inventories also have about 10 million. Last year, Huawei’s market share in China’s shipments reached 38.5%, which exceeded 1/3 of the entire market.
According to this, Jiwei.com predicts that if the epidemic is effectively controlled in early March and the market is subsequently recovered, Huawei Q1 shipments are expected to fall by about 6 million units, while the impact on OV and Xiaomi will fall by 200 -3 million units. In addition, the inflection point of the epidemic was delayed and shipments continued to decline.
However, the clearance of these 4G mobile phone inventory does not necessarily have to be completed in the Chinese market.
Compared to a global model with a unified global model and a unified model naming, Chinese mobile phone manufacturers have their own special characteristics: the same model, slightly adjusted configuration, or directly change the packaging, can be sent overseas, especially It is a new type of market in India, which is sold as a new product. In the process, all the manufacturer needs to pay is the repackaging and debugging of the product.
But this obviously does not solve the problem of China ’s own negative growth. The continuous negative growth of the Chinese market is mainly due to the transformation of the mobile phone market from an incremental market to a stock market. At the same time, GDP growth has slowed down, and people’s purchasing power and consumer desire have declined.
“The simplest point is that all aspects of smart phones are very mature now. Compared with earlier smart phones, they are more durable. It is difficult to have a novel point to stimulate users who already have mobile phones. “Relevant persons in the above industries told the alphabet list that 5G full commercial use is the largest replacement demand that the industry can see at present.
“Of course, the user’s demand for 5G will not be cancelled by the epidemic. And although the user’s demand for 5G will be delayed, in fact, the popularity of 5G will not be greatly affected by the epidemic.” .
In fact, although this year is the year of true popularity of 5G technology, 5G mobile phones have not yet begun to enter the popularization period. In addition to the Redmi K30 5G version, which hits the industry’s shockingly low price of 1999 yuan, other 5G products, including these new products just recently released, are basically priced above 4,000 yuan.
According to Sun Yanbiao, the current domestic mobile phone shipments are around 32 million units, and it is good that about 5 million phones can be used for more than 4,000 yuan, so the overall 5G mobile phone The share is still relatively low. Only when the 5G mobile phone reaches the 2,000 yuan or even 1,000 yuan file, 5G can be regarded as true popularity.
“At present, everyone has the baggage (referring to 4G mobile phone inventory) , it is estimated that each will not release this until April this year New priceAt that time, the impact of the epidemic should have basically ended. So in general, 5G will still be the vent of this year, and the popularity of 5G in China will also be completed within this year. “He said.
Even so, Considering the downturn in the first quarter, many research institutions have adjusted their forecasts for the 2020 mobile phone market, and have announced that the mobile phone market will decline by at least 30% in the first quarter. .
According to foreign media reports, market research company Counterpoint Research expects the epidemic to be basically controlled in March, but the Chinese mobile phone market will still experience negative growth in the first and second quarters of 2020, although in the third quarter of 2020, Demand may pick up, but the backlog of inventory in the first and second quarters will also have some adverse effects on the production and supply of new models of mobile phones.
“In the long run, the decline in sales of the Chinese mobile phone market and supply chain problems will also cause the global mobile phone market to decline by another 5%.” Counterpoint Research analyst Tang Flora pointed out recently, “We had expected 5G to be in 2020 Promote the growth of the global mobile phone market, but for the time being, the global mobile phone market may still stagnate.
In addition, there is also a relatively optimistic voice in the industry, which believes that after the epidemic, there will be a big outbreak and a large increase.
“Affected by the epidemic, I think that the sales volume of the entire industry will definitely decline sharply in the first quarter, but will retaliate in the second and third quarters. I think mobile phones are still the most commonly used smart devices, so the decline in the overall market may not be imagined That’s so big. “Lei Jun previously told the media.