If it hadn't been so close to the dream, it would not be so sad now.
On April 2, 2019, Huawei's Consumer Business Unit CEO Yu Chengdong set a new goal under the "new historical stage" on Weibo: Huawei's single brand is the world's number one, honoring the world's fourth and China's second.
This time, Yu Chengdong was not ridiculed by the technology media as "Yu Dazui." Because just two months ago, Huawei closely followed Apple with a slight gap of only 2 million and became the third largest mobile phone market in the world. What the industry expects is that Huawei grew by 33.6% that year and became the only brand with positive growth among the top three. Following this trend, Yu Chengdong's "new goal" is not far away.
Sure enough, Huawei surpassed Apple and Samsung in quarterly sales, and ranked first in the world in the second quarter of 2020. However, before we wait for the "Global Champion of the Year", in the fourth quarter of 2020, Huawei's shipments fell sharply and fell in the "closest place to dream".
IDC data shows that Huawei fell 42.4% in the fourth quarter of that year to become the fifth. And it even fell out of the top five in the two quarterly lists of canalys and Omdia. With the sale of Honor, the main cost-effective brand, Huawei wants to compete with Apple and Samsung again, and the difficulty can be imagined.
But in fact, 2020 is more than just a year of dreams for Huawei.
Xiaomi will separate the Redmi brand in 2019 and use the Xiaomi brand to make high-end efforts. However, after two years, the effect of this dual brand strategy is still not obvious. First, the starting price of the Xiaomi series has not broken through, and secondly, the global market share is still largely dependent. Redmi.
Due to the periscope design of Find X, OPPO once became a leader in the design of the mobile phone industry, and tried brand upgrades, bid farewell to advertising and marketing, high-end channels, and opened up two new series of K and Ace to enter the cost-effective market. However, the follow-up design of the FindX series has returned to mediocrity, and after Ace ceases to be updated in 2020, the internal strategy seems to be back to the old path.
At the same time, those manufacturers who tried to reverse their fate through the wave of 5G replacement were also disappointed again. The original product matrix is most like Apple's only high-end OnePlus. In 2020, the mid-range Nord series will be launched, and the founder will return to Ouga. Meizu turned to life hardware and announced the abandonment of the mobile phone business after the Nuts finished its last mobile phone, while the former big names such as moto and LG can only struggle to support the second or third land, and no breakthrough has been seen.
Many sweet dreams that have been conceived since 2018 will come to an abrupt end in 2020.
Huawei's "competition" dream is broken
How much impact will the sale of Glory have on Huawei's global share?
According to Sinodata, Honor shipped 54.27 million units in the Chinese market in 2018, which is only 10 million units behind Huawei. Recently, Zhao Ming has announced a sales target of 100 million shipments in 2021. According to Zhao Ming's "stupid bird" style, this sales volume will not be too aggressive. As a result, it can be estimated that the volume of the Honor brand in 2020 will be at least 70 to 80 million.
Huawei, which has lost this share, will not only return to the second echelon, but may even fall behind Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo.
Judging from the 2020 global shipment data released by IDC, Huawei's (including Honor) annual sales have fallen by 21.5% to only 189 million units. After deducting the glory in 2021, it is unclear whether Huawei will fall out of the 100 million yuan club.
Huawei's dream of winning the championship is broken, and the global market has returned to the "two superpowers and many strong", and then it is also the hope of domestic mobile phones to dominate.
As we all know, since 2011, Samsung and Apple have held the top two positions in the world for a long time. They have not only surpassed 3G and 4G, but also have the potential to continue to lead the 5G era. This ability to cross the cycle without falling, I am afraid that even the former kings Nokia and Motorola would envy the three-pointer.
The reason is the overall innovation and control power covering the upstream and downstream of the industry. This is not the success of a certain mobile phone, but the overall result of integrating chip innovation, supply chain control, and system ecological service capabilities.
In terms of chips, Apple has always adhered to the principle of not asking for people. Its own A-series chips have the highest overall smoothness from the bottom layer. Samsung does not only have Exynos chips, but can even produce for others;
In other hardware supply chains, Samsung directly controls a number of key hardware such as screens, memory, flash memory, and cameras, so that today domestic mobile phone manufacturers still need to purchase screens from Samsung if they want to produce the most advanced folding screen phones, while Apple buys with hardware innovations. Become a top hardware trader in a broken way;
In terms of ecological service capabilities, Apple's control is the most prominent, and its monopolistic but highly efficient ecological service capabilities have established user barriers. This kind of responsiveness in the market is evident in the late but rewarding iPhone 12 series. This has also become the reason why Apple was able to control the production line in reverse.
Looking at domestic mobile phone manufacturers, from chip design capabilities to ecological service capabilities, Huawei was once the closest company to this "model of success". It is the self-developed Kirin 5G chip and the overall ecological service capability of "1+3+N" that enable Huawei to counterattack in the 5G era. Its investment in innovation in these two areas cannot be surpassed by other domestic mobile phone manufacturers in the short term.
But who ever thought of a ban, banning chip foundry on the front end, and banning the right to use Google's bottom ecosystem on the back end, turning the two "advantages" into "disadvantages" in an instant.
Therefore, judging from the full-year market share in 2020, even if other domestic mobile phone brands temporarily take over part of Huawei's market share, it is not fortunate. Because no one can rebuild a Huawei in a short period of time.
On the other hand, the admission tickets for 5G chips have been largely used up, and domestic mobile phone manufacturers can only wait for the next era, or wait for Samsung and Apple to make another big mistake. Otherwise, the position of the second echelon will be difficult to change in the short term.
Not long ago, Huawei officials announced that Yu Chengdong will serve as the president of Huawei Cloud Business Division in addition to mobile phones and automobiles. On the surface, Yu Chengdong's mission has increased. On the other hand, Huawei will focus on the B-end business to make up for Huawei's mobile phone consumption.
Since 2018, Huawei's consumer business has become Huawei's largest revenue pillar, accounting for 54.4% of total revenue in 2019. In the performance of the first half of 2020, Huawei's cloud and computing BG revenue was less than one-fifth of the consumer business.
At the same time, Ren Zhengfei mentioned in an interview with the media that "mobile phones are only one part of the terminal" and "Huawei will never sell terminal business" side confirms that Huawei's overall development focus on large ecological products.
OPPO, Xiaomi "Break the Circle" Dreams Broken
Although there is no extravagant desire to "win the championship" like Huawei, domestic mobile phones still dream of "tipping off the label", first rushing to the high-end, secondly breaking into the hinterland of rivals, and marching toward higher profits and greater market share.
Looking back at that time, the reason why OPPO and Xiaomi were not satisfied with "existing man-made" was that the overall market saturation forced them to explore new ideas, and secondly, some existing achievements gave them the confidence to change.
Since 2016, Huawei, OPPO, Xiaomi, and vivo have continued to stand in the top six in the world. Even in 2018, when the global and Chinese markets doubled, these four major domestic mobile phone brands continued to increase their global shipments and became counter-trend growth. Unique scenery.
For this reason, domestic mobile phone brands that believe they are already well-developed have started "changes," and OPPO has the greatest strength.
At the beginning of 2018, OPPO Vice President Wu Qiang told the media: "Except for the original intention, all of our previous tactics and play styles can be adjusted and changed according to the time and situation, so as to achieve'nothing and nothing'." At the same time, OPPO started to seek changes in four aspects: technological innovation, brand upgrade, market layout and product outlook.
At that time, OPPO’s first super flagship store had just opened. Half a year later, OPPO restarted the Find series that had been silent for four years. It amazed the global technology media with FindX. The lifting structure was once the third design that the industry competed to imitate. Turned a good start.
On the other hand, OPPO is also trying to reverse its impression of heavy marketing and continue to make efforts in the online cost-effective market.
According to media reports, in 2018, OPPO reduced its exclusive naming and chose more low-investment special sponsors and joint broadcasts; in 2019, OPPO only released 8 variety shows, of which the exclusive naming continued to increase from 6 in 18 years. The gear is reduced to 3 gears. At the same time, the OPPO conference also "from luxury to frugality", no longer cooperated with satellite TV to invite stars, but returned to a sense of simplicity and quality of science and technology.
On the product line, OPPO's first dedicated power supplier product series K1 was released in October 2018, starting at 1599 yuan, entering the cost-effective market. In 2019, the more high-end Ace series was released, with the strongest performance configuration + fastest charging start to compete with the Xiaomi series.
However, in 2020, Find X’s successor, Find X2, will return to mediocrity in design. The two heavyweight symbols previously called "change"-the first super flagship store and the Ace series, will all be broken in 2020. . So far, its Shanghai super flagship store has been closed, and the Ace series has been cut off after only updating two generations of products.
Chen Mingyong once said in an interview with the media, "For OPPO, the problems that need to be solved first come from internal." For this reason, the OPPO team will change blood in 2020, and the Reno5 series conference released at the end of the year will return to the old star style.
"Return of tactics" did not disappoint OPPO. The IDC report shows that in the fourth quarter of 2020, OPPO returned to the world's fourth position with a year-on-year growth of 10.7%.
Xiaomi's change path is somewhat similar to OPPO. First hit the high-end, in order to isolate the brand influence brought by Redmi, in January 2019 Lei Jun announced the independence of the Redmi brand. "Redmi focuses on the ultimate price-performance ratio, focusing on the e-commerce market; Xiaomi focuses on mid-to-high-end and new retail."
Subsequently, Xiaomi released 9 Pro 5G, Xiaomi CC9 Pro and Mix Alpha 5G surround screen concept phones one after another, and tried to compete for female users who love to take pictures with 100 million pixels. But from the price point of view, it is still difficult for Xiaomi to let go. At this time, the starting price of Xiaomi 9 Pro 5G is still only 3699 yuan, while Xiaomi CC9 Pro is only 2799 yuan.
The effect of breaking the circle brought by 100 million pixels is also limited. Due to the large camera module, Xiaomi's several 100 million pixel phones are thick and heavy, and they are laughed as "female phones that can be used for self-defense" by users.
Following the release of 5G mobile phones, Xiaomi has just increased the price of mobile phones, but it has to face competition with Huawei, Honor, and even many new Internet brands iQOO and Realme. Although Lei Jun has repeatedly mentioned that the cost of 5G has increased by nearly 1,000 yuan, Xiaomi 10 and Xiaomi 11 still have not bid farewell to the starting price of 3999 yuan in 2020, and Redmi is fighting to the end on the "cheapest 5G mobile phone".
According to Xiaomi's 2020 third-quarter financial report, the average retail price of its smartphones rose from 1006.5 yuan in the same period last year to 1022.3 yuan, an increase of only 16 yuan. If you further consider the upgrades of 5G and the new flagship, this "price increase" is somewhat " "Price cut" feeling.
At the same time, at the tenth anniversary conference of Xiaomi, Lei Jun repeatedly raised the power of fans and insisted on 5% profit margin. In the past two days, Lei Jun's rice noodles New Year's banquet was screened again. It seems that Xiaomi will stick to the cost-effective route.
Although OPPO and Xiaomi have returned to their old ways, fortunately, as the owner of global head resources, a new round of 5G replacement crowd has begun in front of them. It is enough to reap a new round of replacements by using familiar methods and established minds.
However, it is unlikely for those small-scale manufacturers to "turn over" with 5G.
"5G Changed Fate" Dreams Broken
2020 has proved a fact that there is no "myth" in the 5G replacement wave.
When 2G came, Nokia’s shipments in 2007 increased by 26% a year, and 105.5 million units were sold, surpassing one-third of the global share. During the 3G period, Samsung and Apple surpassed Nokia to the top and runner-up positions, and have maintained their way across 4G to this day. But for 5G, apart from Huawei and the "5G lucky guys" passing by, there is no second brand that has changed its destiny due to 5G.
Based on the data of Q4 in 2020 and Q4 in 2019, the ranking and share of the world's top ten mobile phone manufacturers have not changed significantly:
Except for Huawei, the other top five market share changes are all within 3%; the remaining four third-tier brands Realme, Lenovo, LG, and Transsion still have their share between 2% and 4%; and even leave other shares to others. Fixed at 18%, ZTE, OnePlus, Nokia, Motorola, Meizu, Gree, etc. are still among the others.
Speaking of the "myth" under the tide of replacement, Apple's story is still the most exciting. After the iPhone 3GS was released in 2009, Apple's mobile phone ranked third in the world in 2019 with a market share of 14.4%. At this time, the iPhone was less than three years old and only two generations of 3G mobile phones were released.
Looking back at this wave of 5G replacements, starting from entering the 5G market one after another in 2019, there are more than two 5G products from many mobile phone brands. Take OnePlus (mainly high-end products) which is most similar to Apple in product matrix design as an example:
In 2019, OnePlus and the operator T-Mobile released the OnePlus 7T Pro McLaren 5G version in the United States, which is also the world's first mobile phone equipped with Qualcomm X55 5G baseband. According to Counterpoint data, OnePlus accounted for 11% of the US 5G mobile phone market in 2019, ranking third.
In April 2020, OnePlus officially released the OnePlus 8 series of 5G mobile phones. It is also the world's first mobile phone brand to win a 5G band Grand Slam. In the same year, OnePlus released the OnePlus 8T and Cyberpunk 2077 limited editions.
It can be said that OnePlus’s 5G development momentum is very strong. It has reached the widest market with the best products, the fastest speed, and even surpassed many brands. However, its sales growth is limited, which is similar to that of Apple’s. The sales explosion can be described as the difference between the cloud and the mud.
The reason is that although manufacturers have released 5G mobile phones, there has never been a product that "redefines mobile phones" like iphone3Gs. Carrying new communication standards is not an advantage. Whether the advantages of new communication standards can be brought into play in an innovative form is the fundamental ability to obtain the myth of the replacement wave.
Although Motorola and Nokia hope to focus on feelings in 2020 and reproduce classic products that sold more than 100 million in the form of 5G single products; ZTE hopes to reverse market share with new 5G products in the top form of folding screens; but the current market feedback is flat.
On the contrary, it is the opposite of OnePlus. It is different from the idea of relying on a single 5G top flagship. OnePlus broke the limitation of only making high-end products and released the OnePlus Nord in the price range of 3,000 yuan in mid-2020 as an aid to expand sales. And it has achieved good results in the UK, India, and US markets.
Obviously, 5G can't change the situation that some manufacturers have fallen into decline. In 2020, Meizu released the 17th series of new 5G products, but judging from the evaluation of JD.com, this series has only 50,000 reviews, while the Xiaomi Mi 10, which has a similar price, has reached 700,000+ reviews.
According to previous media analysis, Meizu shipped only a few million units in 2019, with a market share of less than 1%. The data for 2020 does not look optimistic. According to Meizu's official microblog, its main energy has been shifted to smart home and Alot peripheral areas.
The Nuts brand is more dramatic. It released its first and last 5G mobile phone in the fourth quarter of 2020, and soon announced its official farewell to the mobile phone business. For these small brands, 5G did not give them a "second chance."
Conclusion
The dreams of many mobile phone manufacturers come to an abrupt end in 2020, but this is undoubtedly a wake-up call: companies need to return to the simplest way of thinking, constantly asking who they are, and then asking themselves "why".
After this year's adjustment, the intuitive change in the industry is that each mobile phone manufacturer pays more attention to bottom-level innovation, supply chain management and ecological services, and collectively marches towards the new market blue ocean AioT.
Although old dreams are broken, new dreams are germinating.