China's handset makers staged another series of mobile phone release show

Leung Tech Liang Chen reported on May 16

In April and May, China's handset manufacturers staged another series of new cell phone releases. Only ZTE held three press conferences during this period. At the meeting, or high-level, or product manager, always loved a geek Fan children, attracted numerous fans shouting and cheering. In these fans, look carefully, you may find some familiar faces.

This is the current mobile phone market in China, the introduction of the brand, user loyalty is declining, it also means that the industry reshuffle period or will come.

Earlier, GfK China, a third-party analyst, reinstated the slowdown in China's handset market after it investigated the Chinese handset market. According to the latest data, the retail market of mobile phones in 2013 was 406 million, an increase of 41% over the same period of last year. However, the scale of the retail sales in 2014 will reach 460 million with the growth rate shrinking to 13%.

Reduction of market growth is a superficial phenomenon, hidden behind this is the cell phone product cycle to further shorten. The Chinese market in 2013 has already begun to show signs of a rise in the pace of new smart phone launches by Chinese handset makers due to higher production capacity and better supply chains, enabling the product to ramp up rapidly in a short period of time. Under such a trend, the competition of domestic mobile phone brands is becoming increasingly fierce.

The results of the market monitoring show that the mobile phone products released in the second half of 2013 have enjoyed a 45% market share in these six months, while the mobile phone market share released in the first half of the year has rapidly dropped from 61% of the peak to 39% %.

Centralized release behind: 4G pressure around the apple

GfK's advice is that domestic handset makers should be able to grasp the rhythm of product launches as a crucial capability to the extent that they control supply chains upstream, products, channels, and marketing. However, such a proposal can not cool the fanatics of domestic handset makers because they can not wait any longer.

On December 4, 2013, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officially released 4G licenses to the three major operators. China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom all obtained TD-LTE licenses. This day for domestic mobile phone manufacturers, it means the shift of product focus, from 3G to 4G, they need to replace not just a small baseband chip.

In the first six months, although some domestic manufacturers such as ZTE and Huawei also introduced 4G products, Apple and Samsung dominated the 4G market. At the same time, domestic manufacturers are subject to the shipment of chip makers, there is no way to quickly update to 4G in more product lines, leading to the absence of the market more obvious.

However, more importantly, in the first half is the best time for cell phone manufacturers to block Apple's new products, and even Samsung is no exception. Yan Zhanmeng, senior analyst at IDC, said that many manufacturers released new products intensively in the first half of the year in order to catch up with the release of products in the second half of Apple before it was based on product strategy and positioning considerations.

Parameter iteration hardware upgrade to promote new products

The product's attributes are not only followed by 4G, but also often followed by related parameters and performance. Last year, domestic mobile phones have "nuclear" number increase, CPU quad-core war to stimulate the competition, including chip makers, once the chip makers even introduced eight-core solution.

This competition will continue in 2014, and extended to multi-mode multi-frequency and processor performance and so on. MediaTek chips based on quad-core or eight-core AP + 4G Modem solutions will enter mass production in the first half of the year, and will launch a variety of SoC chips that meet different price points in the second half of this year. This system-on-chip solution will allow handset manufacturers to develop Shorten the cycle, to further speed up the iteration of product updates. In the meantime, Qualcomm, which owns a significant amount of intellectual property in 4G, will also bring its 64-bit processor down into the mid- to low-end market, allowing more vendors to sync with Apple.

Of course, the performance of the camera is also the focus of competition for mobile phone manufacturers. Within these two months, Mito Xiu Xiu and Vivo cut into the camera beauty phone market respectively from software and hardware. What you can see is that the top level of vivo apologized for entering the market too late and introduced the new Xshot product line featuring the main imaging feature.

Ever since Sharp unveiled its 11-megapixel camera phone with J-Phone in November 2000, handset makers have been increasingly pursuing pixels because it is the most direct competition consumers can perceive. Nokia 808 in 2012 to increase the pixel to 41 million, which is the highest record. Samsung, Jin Li, Sony and other manufacturers will be the mainstream market pixel index increased to 16-20 million.

However, with optical zoom, autofocus, large aperture, HDR, and a host of sensors, the parameters of other hardware are displayed one by one. Vivo emphasized the camera solution it has customized with chip makers when releasing new products and said it can effectively solve the anti-shake problem.

Channel change online channels into a climate

Cruel market not only promote the products side of manufacturers continue to introduce new products, channels of fighting more intense. Different from the traditional operators' customized markets, with the development of e-commerce platforms, the open market sales strategy such as JD.com plans to re-upset the market.

At the same time, telecom operators are also gradually changing the custom machine market subsidy strategy, increasing subsidies for bare metal sales in the open market. This market is not the operator before the market. However, as more and more handsets are released in different markets in the open market, the telecom operators' subsidies will result in a drop in the selling prices of products, which will fully extend the market competition for telecom operators.

Especially in 2014 the emergence of virtual operators, making the traditional channels further changes. Some of the country's top foreign investors who did not worry about profitability were nervous. Among them, Ai Shide finally established the overall transformation strategy of "virtual operator" + "mobile phone distributor" and "mobile distribution platform." Tianyin also strengthened its logistics And after-sales service system. Retail Channel Dixon cooperated with a number of local channel manufacturers to set up a China-Chile joint communications company to increase the proportion of online sales, and at the same time, drove the channel to sink based on 19 local retailers.

In many channels, the online market potential is still underestimated. From the market performance point of view, due to some e-commerce launched "618", "815", "double 11" and other festivals, making the price competition more frequently, the collective retailers online retailers formed the Chinese market unique online market sales season . Monthly sales in 2013 online sales were generally higher than the same period last year, especially in November reached its peak.

Traditional vendors also saw online growth opportunities, but their brand influence far outstripped that of a group of so-called Internet handsets developed on the Internet. This is because, for a long time in the past, traditional vendors were mainly targeted at operators and agencies rather than consumers. Therefore, the choice to reshape a brand has become a new choice.

Huawei's "glory", Cool "God", ZTE's "Nubian", Lenovo's "Vibe" and other brands continue to join the online market competition. In addition, "IUNI" of Jinli Investment and "one plus" of the first generation of Internet mobile phones such as Xiaomi also showed different market competitiveness.

Some highly-competitive brands have been exited

The increase of market brand makes consumer's brand awareness and loyalty declining. Some mobile phone manufacturers that have not kept up with the development have either fallen or have not much voice. Such brands as Zhuo Pu, Sharan, Duowei, Coke and so on are short-lived. The reason is that large brands use the scale of production and channel capacity to reduce profit margins, making the former no longer have any market opportunities.

However, big brands also have hidden worries. Wang Yang, China Research Director at IHS iSuppli, said that after the death of a small brand, the competition among big brands will be more pronounced. In the end, it is fortunate that the remaining three Chinese mobile phone brands in the market will be available. "Even if it is a front line brand will be eliminated by the market, the competition is so cruel."

Excessive overdraft brands and profits, and constantly strengthen the market card bit, making some manufacturers have already faced the risk of excessive inventory. Therefore, choose to open up new markets is a good choice. For now, the channel sinks and overseas markets are a good choice.

GfK expects that the following markets in 4-wire cities in 2014 will be the major drivers for growth in the smartphone market. The market retail stores were decentralized trend, small stores will achieve rapid development.

For overseas markets, unlike first-tier brands which rely on overseas carriers, second-tier brands such as vivo have opted to open their markets overseas, especially in Southeast Asia, which is adjacent to China, as the second battlefield for domestic brands. The reason for choosing the Southeast Asian market is that local users are facing nodes that shift from 2G to 3G, much like the Chinese market a few years ago, so market tactics do not need to be tweaked much to manufacturers.

However, there are also front-line manufacturers, such as Lenovo, acquired by Motorola to Motorola, in order to enter the European and American markets. Yang Yuanqing, chairman and CEO of Legend Group, said the merger will help Lenovo seize the rapid growth opportunities in the mobile space and accelerate the growth to a global mobile device manufacturer.

Wang Jiping, assistant director of IDC China, also believes Lenovo's acquisition will help shorten the market share gap between Apple and Samsung in the smart phone market, fill gaps in its global market, enhance Lenovo's product development capability and supplement its patented technology.

The market is so, domestic mobile phone spring tide is being formed, and then who first be eliminated, who can seize more markets, only to see whether the manufacturers strategy can be transformed into actual production, product positioning and sales and whether To meet consumer tastes. After all, in 2014 China's mobile phone market will have a total size of 460 million.