Loss, decline, slowdown, saturation? The grievances of pessimistic vocabulary, the market that is filled with horror, seems to indicate that the golden age of Chinese smartphones is ending.
According to the latest data released by market research firm Gartner, in the second quarter of 2015, global smartphone sales increased by 13.5%, mainly driven by markets outside China. In China, smartphone sales fell by 4%.
More ugly is the profit. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, in 2014, the average profit margin of China's mobile phone industry was 3.2%, which was lower than the average level of China's electronics manufacturing industry by 1.7 percentage points. According to market research firm Canaccord, in the smartphone market in the first quarter of this year, Apple’s operating profit accounted for 92% of the total operating profit of the top eight vendors (including Samsung [microblogging] and China’s Huawei, Xiaomi, Lenovo, etc.). .
The seemingly beautiful domestic mobile phone market is actually facing a meager profit or even a loss. Under the homogenization pattern formed by years of competition, domestic mobile phones have reached a new intersection and need to find a way to break through.
The reshuffle period is coming
"Transition breakout" is not only an eye-catching slogan for current mobile phone manufacturers, but an urgent issue.
In August this year, Lenovo’s first-quarter financial report for the fiscal year 2015 showed that the mobile business unit had a loss before tax of $292 million. In addition to revenue, Lenovo's handset shipments were only 16.2 million units in the first quarter, and its share of the global smartphone market fell to 4.7%.
Lenovo is not the only company that is in trouble. As the pioneer of China's smart phone popularity, Xiaomi is also experiencing growth bottlenecks. Its first-half results show that smartphone shipments were 34.8 million units, down from 35 million in the second half of last year. For the first time in six years, there has been a decline in the chain.
The entire market cake is also shrinking. At present, the penetration rate of smart phones in the domestic market has reached 90%. In June this year, the domestic mobile phone market shipments were 38.12 million units, down 10.2% year-on-year. In 2014, China’s smartphone shipments reached 389 million units, down 8.2% from 423 million units in 2013. Moreover, with the end of the product change period in the 4G era, sales of smartphones will continue to decline in the future.
Outside of Apple, there are only a few markets left, and it is also divided by a few companies. According to statistics, in the first quarter of this year, mobile phone companies such as Huawei, Lenovo, Xiaomi, and Coolpad accounted for 50% of the domestic market, and the oligarchic trend is intensifying.
Obviously, with the arrival of China's smart phone shuffling period and wanting to survive the fierce competition in the market, domestic mobile phone companies need to form a differentiated core competitive advantage.
Old troubles and "core" opportunities
The high profit of Apple's mobile phone comes from the high brand premium brought by its excellent system and hardware manufacturing process, but for domestic mobile phones, this has always been a headache.
For example, the mobile phone chip as one of the core components of the mobile phone directly determines the performance and price of the mobile phone.
Looking at it, domestic mobile phones are over-reliant on mobile phone chip makers such as Qualcomm [microblogging] and MediaTek [microblogging] at the chip level. The biggest advantage of domestic mobile phones at present is the high cost performance, which is based on the chips and integration solutions of mobile phone chip manufacturers such as MediaTek and Qualcomm. It can be said that the cheapness of domestic mobile phones is the cheapness of mobile phone chips and accompanying solutions.
Since the beginning of this year, with the game of MediaTek, Qualcomm and Intel [microblogging] in the field of mobile phone chips, chip prices have been falling. However, if several chip companies form a price alliance, the purchase price of mobile phone chips may double.
This trend has already appeared in 2012. At that time, it was reported that Qualcomm and MediaTek had privately signed an agreement to protect the price of the chip market, and no longer unrestrictedly lower the price of mobile phone chips.
For domestic mobile phone companies that have already reduced their profits to the lowest point, if the price of mobile phone chips rises or the overall plan implements paid services, the cheap advantage will be difficult to sustain. We can't make breakthroughs in chips and other aspects. In the future, Chinese mobile phone companies will face tremendous pressure to survive.
In addition to the urgency, the breakthrough of domestic mobile phones in the field of chips is also welcoming the best opportunity.
In June 2014, the State Council issued the "Outline for the Promotion of the Development of the National Integrated Circuit Industry" (hereinafter referred to as the "Outline") and proposed the establishment of a special industrial fund. Only after 2 months, 8 companies including China Development Finance, China Tobacco and Huaxin Investment jointly invested to form this national fund. The fund, which aims to drive the development of China's integrated circuit chip industry, will drive 5 trillion yuan into the chip industry in the next 10 years.
At present, the fund has made large-scale investments in leading Chinese manufacturers of chip manufacturing, design, packaging and testing to accelerate the formation of the Chinese chip industry chain. The news that Chinese companies are buying foreign chip companies from the market has also confirmed the driving force of chip funds.
Core independent research and development breakthrough
However, as we all know, the development of core hardware such as chips has a very high technical threshold. The accumulation of technology by Chinese mobile phone manufacturers at the core hardware level is almost zero. Is there a way out for independent R&D?
The current practical difficulty is that there is still a big gap between Chinese chips and world-class standards. For example, in 2014, Intel introduced a 14nm process processor, and today the most advanced process in China is still 28nm. In addition, the lack of design software, manufacturing equipment, etc., also make the Chinese chip lack of stamina.
But having difficulty does not mean that there is no hope at all. The most typical case is Huawei. Huawei launched its own mobile phone chip, HiSilicon, in 2012, and subsequently launched a total mobile phone solution based on the Hess chip.
In the past three years, Huawei has tasted the sweetness compared to other domestic mobile phone manufacturers. The average price of mate7 and P8 equipped with Hisilicon chips has exceeded the $500 price line of high-end mobile phones. According to Huawei's terminal performance report, in the first half of this year, in the case of weak growth in the market, the sales revenue of Huawei's consumer business in the first half of the year was US$0.99 billion, a significant increase of 69% year-on-year.
The news that SMIC and Huawei, the Belgian Microelectronics Research Center and Qualcomm jointly invested in research and development of 14 nanometers indicates that Huawei's mobile phone chips will be expected to make certain breakthroughs in the process, and then move toward the middle and high-end fields.
In addition to Huawei, Xiaomi has recently accelerated the pace of “self-developed processorsâ€. It is reported that Xiaomi recently purchased a full set of chip technology licenses from ARM, and is ready to transform and upgrade its own R&D chips.
Although it has fallen behind Huawei, for Xiaomi, this is a step that has to be taken. The competitive situation in the past two years has shown that the growth bottleneck suffered by Xiaomi is largely due to the fact that its core model is easily copied and surpassed by its rivals. Xiaomi needs to achieve a counterattack from the market scale to the upstream industrial chain.
However, under the high-tech threshold of core chip research and development, whether it is Huawei, Xiaomi, or other domestic mobile phone manufacturers who want to break through the core hardware, this is a difficult road, waiting for domestic mobile phone manufacturers to explore and break through.
Marine Control Cable,Cwb Marine Control Cable,Ship Control Cable,Shield Marine Cable
Baosheng Science&Technology Innovation Co.,Ltd , https://www.cablebaosheng.com