On July 20, 2022, China Academy of Information and Communications Technology released the 2022 Chinese market mobile phone sales data report, which aroused great attention to the sales of the Chinese mobile phone market.
From January to June 2022, the total shipment of mobile phones in the domestic market was 136 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 21.7%. Among them, 5G mobile phone shipments were 109 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 14.5%, accounting for 80.2% of mobile phone shipments in the same period.
According to the data report, sales in China's mobile phone market have fallen back to the level 9 years ago, which was in 2013. This data has obviously had a much greater impact on the "melon-eating crowd" who has been in a not optimistic economic environment in the past two years than the data reports in previous years.
However, by 2022, "the domestic mobile phone market has been down for 6 years."
According to the latest Counterpoint data, China's smartphone sales in the second quarter of 2022 decreased by 14.2% year-on-year. Sales in the quarter were 12.6% lower than the first quarter, which was affected by the fifth wave of the new crown epidemic, less than half of the historical peak sales in the fourth quarter of 2016. The last time sales were lower than this quarter was in the fourth quarter of 2012, when the iPhone 5 was just launched nearly a decade ago.
And not only the domestic mobile phone market, but the global mobile phone market is still the same. According to IDC data, in the Q1 quarter of 2022, smartphone shipments in Europe fell by more than 15%, while Africa fell by nearly 30%.
So why did such a huge decline occur?
Factory shutdowns under the impact of the epidemic
Hon Hai and Pegatron have suspended production and work to varying degrees during the epidemic.
March 14, 2022:
Hon Hai announced that its subsidiaries, including Futaihua Industrial (Shenzhen), Shenzhen Yuzhan Precision Technology, Shenzhen Fulian Fugui Precision Industry, Sanying Technology (Shenzhen), Shenzhen Futaihong Precision Industry and other subsidiaries, are located in various factory areas in Shenzhen ( Longhua , Guanlan, etc.), have a shareholding of approximately 50% to 100% of the subsidiary companies. In cooperation with the local government's COVID-19 prevention work, operations will be suspended from now on. The actual resumption of work will be notified by the local government. Due to other backup plants, necessary production allocation has been carried out to reduce the impact on the company's operations.
April 12, 2022:
assembly OEM factory Heshuo (4938-TW) announced today (12) that its Shanghai and Kunshan Zigongs have temporarily suspended work in response to the impact of the new crown pneumonia epidemic and cooperated with the local government's epidemic prevention policies. They will maintain close contact with customers and suppliers, and actively cooperate with the local government to reach the resumption of work as soon as possible. The impact on financial business is still under evaluation. The impact of suspension of production and work is first reflected in the quarterly financial reports of major mobile phone manufacturers. Especially Apple . After the release of Q2 2022 financial report, the explanation of the decline in sales in Greater China is also very straightforward:
Greater China's revenue increased by 3.4% compared with last year to US$18.34 billion, but it fell sharply compared with the 21% increase in the last few months of this year, because the country's surge in the new crown pneumonia epidemic has caused a decrease in demand and the government forced closure.
Autumn and winter are often the high time for the epidemic. At present, the new round of epidemic has shown momentum. Chengdu, Chongqing, Tianjin, Shenzhen, and none of the major cities have fallen behind. It is difficult to guarantee whether there will be further suspension of production. But it is foreseeable that the situation in in the second half of the year is difficult to be better than last year.
The impact of the economic environment has affected consumer confidence
Although the pace of life in various cities has gradually returned to normal after April, the impact of the epidemic on economic production is not limited to simple shutdowns of work and production, but the first thing it brings is the impact of consumer confidence.
The total retail sales of consumer goods in April 2022 was 2948.3 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 11.1%.Even if it is relaxed to January-May 2022, the total retail sales of consumer goods will be 17168.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 1.5%
The economy is downward and the income is reduced, the average selling price of the mobile phone industry will continue to rise. The higher the cost you need to pay, the consumers' willingness to update will naturally decrease. Judging from the reports of various consulting agencies in , this is also indirectly confirmed. In terms of price,
Canalys and Counterpoint t have given close conclusions. They are: "The average selling price (ASP) of smartphones in 2021 increased by 10% year-on-year." "The average selling price of mobile phones in the Chinese market in has increased from the previous range of 1,500-2,000 yuan to the range of 2,700-3,000 yuan."
In terms of update frequency,
Counterpoint data shows that the replacement cycle of domestic users has increased from 24.3 months at the beginning of 2019 to 31 months.
and Vivo's data are based on representativeness. Hu Baishan, executive vice president and chief operating officer of vivo, said in an interview before:
"I remember the earliest (mobile replacement cycle) was 16-18 months, followed by 20-24 months, and the latest was 36 months. This is because the product has no innovation and cannot attract users, so the speed of users changing their phones will be extended."
and he is also pessimistic about the future:
"The total volume of consumer electronics will be relatively weak in the next 2-3 years."
All domestic and foreign Android mobile phone manufacturers are not having a good life.
According to THE ELEC, the inventory of Samsung smartphones has reached 50 million units. Samsung originally planned to ship about 270 million smartphones this year. From January to February, Samsung produced 20 million smartphones a month, but by May, production cut halved to 10 million units.
According to Xiaomi 's financial report, in June 2022, compared with December 2021, the inventory increased by 8.555 billion yuan, reaching 32.49 billion yuan. The average selling price of Xiaomi smartphones (ASP) has also dropped from 1,189 yuan in 2022Q to ,081.7 yuan in 2022Q2, a month-on-month decrease of 9.02%. If we roughly estimate based on the average price, Xiaomi's inventory has reached 30 million units, exceeding half of the total inventory of all domestic manufacturers.
But only, Apple is an exception. After the factories resumed work one after another, Apple 022 Q3 financial quarter iPhone revenue was US$40.67 billion, a year-on-year increase of 3%
022 Q3 financial report, Apple believes that even if growth resumes, various business lines are still greatly affected by the economic environment: "By product category, Except for exchange rate , the macroeconomic impact of iPhones in the third quarter was not obvious; Macs and iPads were greatly affected by insufficient supply, so there was not enough supply to judge the real demand situation; wearable devices and home products were indeed affected by the macroeconomic environment. In terms of service business, some businesses were indeed affected, such as the digital advertising business was very obvious. Considering the many challenges the company experienced in this fiscal quarter, we are very satisfied with the performance we can achieve."
Finally, there is insufficient innovation in mobile phones
What are the main innovations in mobile phone products in recent years? I believe that many consumers may find it difficult to remember what are the essential differences and innovations.
In a word, it is summarized as:
Android phone: co-branding, co-branding, or co-branding
iPhone: change color, change color, or change color
Even if you carefully compare mobile phones from 3 years ago, the biggest difference is that the magnifying glass-level photo improvement, better than none charging improvement (except for iPhone), and the painless battery life improvement. If these points were included in the years when mobile phone technology developed rapidly and its performance would double at all, no one would read it. It is indeed closely related to the technical bottleneck, but the rise of trade protectionism in various countries has also accelerated the shrinking process of the mobile phone industry. After Huawei
After being banned, the mobile phone market not only did not improve, but also worsened.Android camp Qualcomm has started to increase the price and become a bad one, and Snapdragon has become a veritable fire dragon. iPhone is even more blatant, not only changing colors as its main selling point, but also changing the tradition of using the latest SOC every year since its birth (there are rumors that starting with iPhone 14, the normal version directly uses the old A15). And we will continue to increase the price based on iPhone 13.
If you have to say, folding screen is a huge improvement, and it can be said that it can be said.
But the folding screen does not solve any essential problems. Under the current physical conditions, no matter how you improve the hinge design, it is difficult to avoid the crease of the screen. In order to ensure that the screen can support folding, the inner screen of the folding mobile phone is made of plastic, and the screen of this material can be said to be almost zero in terms of scratch resistance. After folding, not only does the body double the thickness, but it is also expensive. Therefore, since the world's first folding screen phone was released in October 2018, folding screen phones are still in an embarrassing situation with a primary form and a niche sales. It is hard to imagine that folding mobile phones can become the banner that drives the recovery of the mobile phone market.
History is also a circle, and the current market is very similar to the years when Nokia fell.
What’s worse is that while the current anti-globalization is also accompanied by a wave of unrest and waves of epidemics, there is no sign of any positive trend that can drive economic growth and restore consumer confidence. It can only be said that the global economy has not reached the bottom, and the mobile phone market has not reached the bottom.
borrowed Wang Xuehong 's sentence: "If there are only two mobile phone manufacturers in the future, HTC will definitely be one of them." The general trend was predicted correctly in 2015, but there is no HTC among these two companies. It is hard for anyone to say which companies are left in the future. Perhaps "cost-performance ratio" will once again become the most important consumer choice point.
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I am @ Wang's Internet Notes , an Internet technology author who likes digital. Welcome to like, follow , comments, and exchange Internet technology dynamics together~
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