Introduction: "If one day the traditional laptop manufacturers give users clearer high-reflash screen, thinner and delicate metal shell, better audio and video experience, more powerful gaming performance, and a more open software and hardware ecosystem... This is not because they find it with conscience, but because mobile phone manufacturers have come."
( Observer Network News Text/Zhou Hao Editor/Zhang Guangkai) In April 2022, IDC released the global computer sales data for the first quarter of the world. The performance of 80.5 million units is not bad, but the year-on-year decline rate of 5.1% shows a reality. The growth period of the global PC industry has ended for a year and a half.
Since the global consumer electronics market rapidly transformed into the mobile Internet field in 2012, the saturated PC market's sales data have almost been on a downward trend every quarter. If it weren't for the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, the shrinkage of the PC industry would have been almost an irreversible for the failure of the new crown epidemic.
But even such a "sunset industry" has attracted the attention of a large number of foreign players in the past five or six years - domestic mobile phone manufacturers.
mobile phone manufacturers are coming in full swing
Around 2016, the rapid advance of China's smartphone industry attracted the attention of the entire technology circle. Correspondingly, the laptop market in the traditional consumer electronics field has dropped to the bottom of 157 million units in 2016, and has fallen into the quagmire of hardware convergence and weak innovation.
It was also in this year that Huawei and Xiaomi , a pair of enemies in the mobile phone field, announced their entry into the laptop market, and Yu Chengdong even shouted the slogan "Sooner or later, Huawei will become the first in the PC field."
At that time, the cross-border decisions of these two manufacturers confused many people. After all, for each other who are fighting closely in the mobile phone market, it is hard to say that it is a reasonable business point of view.
However, Huawei values high-end in the two major brands, while Xiaomi continues to continue the path of "cost-performance ratio".
"Smartphone Apple first, Apple has laptops, Huawei and Xiaomi also need laptops." Following Apple's footsteps to make up for the product line, this was a common view in the industry at that time.
In fact, many observers are also happy to see the disruptive ability of mobile phone manufacturers, especially after Xiaomi succeeds in the mobile phone field through its unique business model, Xiaomi, which has the title of "catfish", will cause huge shocks every time it enters a new industry, from power banks, bracelets, to TVs, home furnishings, etc., it changes the ecological pattern of the original industry. The same is true for the laptop market. From the current perspective, the entry of Xiaomi and Huawei did subvert the gameplay of the laptop market at that time.
Take Xiaomi notebook Air as an example. The first generation of Xiaomi Air adopts the strategy of "benchmarking" Apple MacBook, with metal shells, IPS material 1080P high-definition screen, narrow bezel plus full glass fitting technology, excellent heat dissipation molds and conscientious configuration, coupled with Xiaomi's consistent "making friends" pricing, which has beaten all products of the same price in terms of cost-effectiveness.
You should know that traditional laptop manufacturers at that time even used outdated configurations such as Laojiu's molds, plastic shells, 720P TN panel screens at the price of 5,000 yuan.
Like Xiaomi, Huawei, which is just a newcomer to the laptop industry, is also a novice, but Huawei, which aims at high-end, has anchored the direction of multi-device interaction from the beginning, which is Huawei's advantage. On the road of trying to change the inherent thinking mode of the PC market, Huawei is not a pioneer. Including Xiaomi, even Google and Microsoft are pushing forward its own PC hardware products.
But multi-device interaction is a differentiated experience that Huawei has refined and deepened under the industry downturn. As long as it can create enough freshness for users, it will still be profitable. For example, at the end of 2018, Huawei launched the "one-touch transmission" function on laptops, and this operating mode has continued to this day in the Hongmeng era.
Lenovo Savior Game Notebook
The entry of new players has obviously stirred up the ecosystem of the entire laptop market. Traditional manufacturers including Lenovo , Dell , HP , ASUS , etc. have quickly changed their own products, and better craftsmanship, high-quality materials, higher configurations, stronger promotion and distribution are followed one after another. For example, Lenovo took the lead in launching Xiaoxin Air to counter Xiaomi and retaliated for a lot of share; in the game notebooks of the Savior series, Lenovo, which has piled up materials, even received praise from the most picky users.
"Gray Swan" has become the "savior"
Honor CEOZhao MingIn an interview with Observer.com, he talked about his feelings when he first entered the laptop: in the past, he focused on ID design with mobile phones (referring to a process of designing the appearance, usage, and human-computer interaction of a hardware product). After entering the laptop market, he found that there were only modules in the industry, and there was almost no place to intervene at the hardware level.
OPPO sub-brand Realme China President Xu Qi also talked to the media about the difficulties of cross-border laptops: "Although mobile phone manufacturers have considerable advantages in entering the PC industry to make laptops, the PC industry has certain special features. Traditional brands have been working for a long time, and they have obvious leadership positions in terms of brand influence or market segmentation. It is difficult for mobile phone brands to subvert the entire industry in one go."
notebook ODM industry chain is very mature. The statements of executives of mobile phone manufacturers indirectly confirm a reality. Faced with the laptop market where the supply chain is already very mature, even inexperienced "novice" can quickly customize products through ODM OEM factories such as Yingyeda and Renbao ; but similarly, it is difficult for new players to break through the laptop market by hardware innovation.
In fact, around 2020, other mobile phone brands except Huawei could only make certain breakthroughs in the business model level with the rise of Inspur , and the impact on traditional manufacturers has basically stagnated at the product level; especially the high-end gaming laptop market, which is still an absolute private place for traditional laptop manufacturers.
For example, although Xiaomi, which entered the market with Huawei, attracted attention in the early stage, it did not meet shipment expectations in the competition for "cost-performance ratio", Xiaomi even suspended the update of PC product line for four years.
Moreover, this situation has been continuously amplified in the face of the biggest "grey swan" in the 21st century. In addition, Huawei's supply chain is blocked under the influence of external factors. Traditional laptop manufacturers rely on the accumulated scale effect to gather industry resources concentrated in the head, quickly filling the online office market generated by the new crown epidemic.
Take PC leader Lenovo as an example. According to its official data, Lenovo has established good and stable cooperative relationships with 5,000 suppliers around the world, and has established a digital cooperation platform with more than 400 core suppliers to achieve collaborative operation. More than 30 manufacturing bases around the world provide product services to 180 markets.
Online office has promoted the recovery of the PC market
Such a powerful supply chain integration capability is not available to new players, which can be reflected in the changes in domestic market share in the second quarter of 2021.
Canalys data shows that in the second quarter of 2021, Lenovo grew by 31% year-on-year, accounting for 40% of the market share with 5.6 million units shipments; Dell grew by 32% year-on-year, reaching second place; HP and Asus ranked third and fourth-ranked - Huawei ranked fifth, with shipments of only 500,000 units, a sharp drop of 64% year-on-year.
Gartner data also shows that Lenovo ranked first in the global market in the first half of 2021, with a market share of 24.1%; HP, Dell, Apple, Acer, and Asus ranked second and sixth are HP, Dell, Apple, Acer, and Asus, with market shares of 20%, 17.1%, 8.5%, 6.1% and 6% respectively. Emerging players such as Huawei were classified as "others", accounting for only 18.2%.Liu Yushi, a senior analyst at
CINNO Research, told Observer.com that the laptop market is different from other small consumer electronics products . Upstream key component suppliers have strong voice and stable supply relationships. Mobile phone manufacturers entering this market from the downstream has not brought about disruptive innovation. They still need to compete with traditional manufacturers for resources under the existing system. It is indeed difficult to make breakthroughs in a short period of time.
secondary offense and defense, can laptop manufacturers still withstand it?
The impact of the new crown epidemic will always disappear, and the fluctuations in the supply chain will definitely gradually stabilize. When market dividends fade and everything falls, mobile phone manufacturers who have not won the "roll" in the past five years are back. This time, what is brought about is the Internet of Things.
Under this background, the technological advantages of mobile phone manufacturers in multi-device interconnection will greatly disturb the layout of the laptop market; for example, Huawei has already returned to the top three in the Chinese notebook market in the second quarter of 2022 with the advantages of Hongmeng multi-device collaboration. Although
Honor and OPPO do not have the ability to rebuild systems as powerful as Huawei, they have also launched their own "middle-layer" systems one after another.
Honor announced the Magic OS 7.0 operating system at the MagicBook press conference last week, saying that it will break the boundaries of the system's convenience and ecological environment and enable mobile phones, tablets and laptops to be interconnected.
OPPO also launched the smart cross-end system Pantanal earlier this year, intending to connect different brands of mobile phones, PCs, flat panels, TVs, cars and more smart devices to provide users with a smart and multi-device interconnection experience.
combined with Microsoft's decision to cooperate with Qualcomm in the Windows ecosystem. Google has obtained cooperation with Samsung , MediaTek , Ruxin Micro , etc. in the Chromebook ecosystem and other information. According to the once solid wintel alliance has the intention to open the door of cooperation to the "ARM" system.
From this perspective, 2021 seems to be a watershed between the old and the new in the history of the PC market. Chen Shuxin, assistant research director of
IDC China, told Observer.com that with the market's pursuit of the overall ecology and the stable demand for notebooks as productivity tools, more and more mobile phone manufacturers are entering the notebook market. Although it is relatively difficult for traditional manufacturers to enter the ecosystem, they have certain advantages in the user cognition level.
Faced with the upcoming wave of market changes, new and old manufacturers have different attitudes in response.
For example, Dell's second-quarter financial report revenue increased by 9%, but with the fact that the cost has not increased significantly, the net profit and gross profit margin have begun to decline across the board, falling into a situation of increasing revenue but not increasing profits, and its operating conditions have not met the expectations of Wall Street . The main reason why
PC cannot be sold. Dell CFO Tom Sweet said that Dell has seen slowing PC sales since May, but all they can do is "continue to focus on what we can control", and the feeling of powerlessness about the big changes is vividly revealed.
Insiders familiar with Lenovo also told Observer.com that Lenovo's performance during the epidemic was able to hit record highs, maintain the world's first PC, and is directly related to strong supply chain resilience and efficient operation; but in the face of the impact of new brands carrying the "Internet of Everything", Lenovo will also expand into scenario-based solutions such as smartphones, tablets, embedded computing IoT, intelligent collaboration, and smart office.
It is obvious that at the "Internet of Everything" level for the terminal market, Lenovo, which has a strong voice in the PC market, does not intend to "live it flat", but Lenovo, which lacks the core of mobile phones, can go far in the independent IoT ecosystem, needs to be questioned.
In contrast, emerging brands appear more confident when facing the "Internet of Everything".
Huawei "One-Touch Transfer" Internet
Honor emphasized in an interview with Observer.com that the Internet of Things is the general trend. With the increasing diversity and complexity of consumer application scenarios, a single product function experience has become increasingly difficult to meet user needs. A more powerful full-scene smart ecological integration experience will be the main battlefield for industry competition. PC, as the device with the highest frequency in mobile office scenarios, is a key link in Honor's multi-device collaboration.
Chen Shuxin believes that in addition to the ecosystem, consumers actually attach great importance to the performance, appearance, price and channels of the PC itself. In the future, both traditional manufacturers and mobile phone manufacturers should start from user needs and develop related businesses in all aspects. Liu Yushi, a senior analyst at
CINNO Research, also believes that although the cross-screen collaboration function of the notebook market at this stage is practical and attractive, it is also a software barrier set by consumer electronics manufacturers at some level. It mainly binds their own mobile phone users to become laptop consumers, which has the role of strengthening brand identity and does not cover the needs of laptops outside the office. At the same time, traditional brands can also achieve similar functions through apps, and multi-device collaboration is not enough to become a key player for consumer electronic brands to challenge traditional giants.
No matter where the future competition route will go, for any industry, innovation is the eternal driving force for progress. Honor CEO Zhao Ming often likes to use an example to describe the stagnant laptop industry: mobile phone manufacturers have used five years to make camera pixels from 5 million to 50 million, while laptop cameras use 2 million to 5 million, but it took more than ten years to use 2 million to 5 million.
If one day in the future, traditional manufacturers will not "spread" cross-border mobile phone brands, this may be the crux of the original.
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