Apple, which seeks a larger share of China's high-end market by "cutting prices", is facing a "return attack" from domestic mobile phones.
"The cumulative sales of Honor Magic3 in the 4K-8K price range has reached the third place after its launch." On the evening of September 22, Honor CEO Zhao Ming said at the Honor Magic3 series imaging technology conference that currently Glory's overall market share has recovered to 16.2%, and the high-end market is ushering in a full recovery.
The glory after leaving Huawei began to accelerate the exploration of hardware technology differentiation after undergoing the reorganization of the supply chain. At the press conference that day, Honor launched a multi-camera fusion photography technology based on the HONOR Image Engine computing platform.
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From Kuaishou to Douyin, from the small video of Moments to the up-host of station B, to vlog, and now live sales, users’ requirements for image processing on mobile phones have changed. Getting higher and higher. For mobile phone manufacturers, the ever-changing demands of consumer scenarios are forcing them to build stronger underlying software and hardware capabilities.
Sorting out the perspectives of various mobile phone manufacturers, vivo and Huawei previously focused on self-developed chips, and jointly developed and upgraded the photosensitive components and other devices with international giants such as , Leica and Zeiss. The technical direction of Honor this time is mainly to improve the system from the software algorithm to reduce the constraints on the chip.
In Zhao Ming's view, computational photography has always been the main direction that domestic mobile phone manufacturers have overcome in the past few years. The challenge lies in the limitations of hardware upgrades. "The bottom-level first-level crushing people" is the core criterion for measuring the camera's imaging capabilities, and for the space of an inch of gold mobile phone, the contradiction between the upgrade of the sensor size and the layout of the whole machine can never be perfectly balanced.
How to improve the imaging quality of the main camera without increasing the sensor size? Zhao Ming said that domestic mobile phones have experienced technically from single-camera multi-frame fusion to single focal length multi-camera fusion, and now Magic3 series full lenses participate in full focal length fusion.From the perspective of technological iteration, computational photography technology has successfully broken through the limitations of traditional imaging.
"Mobile phone space and hardware limitations, image capability upgrades are facing great challenges. The hardware indicators of sensor size and lens specifications are destined to be incomparable with traditional SLR cameras. Therefore, in order to make up for the limitations of mobile phone shooting hardware, we adopt The acquisition of multi-dimensional information based on multi-sensors, through the computing platform, complete the software optimization at the bottom of the technology, and then use the software algorithm to disassemble to achieve RGB, grayscale, spectrum, depth and other data optimization." Zhao Ming said at the press conference At present, the demand for images of high-end market users is still increasing, and R&D investment in photography will continue to increase.
's share returned to the same period last year
At the beginning of this year, Honor's market share fell to single digits. According to the research firm Counterpoint’s monthly smartphone data (Market Pulse), Honor’s share of the Chinese market was only 5.1% in January this year. In June last year, Honor's market share once reached 16.7%. From the data point of view, it has gradually approached the level of the same period last year.
But the market share growth does not mean that it has been "safe landing." Zhao Ming believes that for mobile phone companies, there will never be a stable security line. "The most powerful companies that year once accounted for 20 to 30% of the global market share. They collapsed faster than anyone at the top of the peak, and they couldn’t even pull them back. There is no top-topping game in the mobile phone industry. The end is the long march of technological innovation competition."
Zhao Ming said that if the time goes back to the beginning of the year, Honor will be more "bold" in its R&D investment than it is now.
"At present, the number of Glory employees has reached 10,000, and the manpower budget for next year has been used in advance. Glory will maintain more than 50% and even 55%-60% of R&D personnel." Zhao Ming said that the Magic series will persist every year in the future. Iteration does not rule out the appearance of folding and other forms in the future.
However, judging from the current overall competitive trend in the mobile phone market, Apple's "price reduction" approach to the full range of new products will undoubtedly create certain competitive pressures in the mid-to-high-end market.
The head of a domestic head manufacturer in China told reporters,Under the dual pressure of rising supply chain costs and downward pressure on Apple prices, the market above the waist will usher in variables. However, it can also be seen that since the beginning of this year, 5G mobile phone shipments have been 151 million units, and the overall market is up, especially in the high-end market, and there is still room for improvement.
"Domestic brands generally account for less than 10% of the high-end market." The above-mentioned person in charge said that the Android flagship mobile phone will usher in a technical "harvest period" in the second half of the year, and early technical investment will gradually emerge through product strength.
Zhao Ming told reporters that Apple is its biggest rival in the high-end market. If Chinese brands want to become a global technology company, high-end breakthroughs will be a tough battle for Chinese brands to face directly.
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