Wen AnshuMarket research agency Canalys: In the third quarter of 2023, the global smartphone market fell by 1%;
Counterpoint Research: Global smartphone sales increased by 5% year-on-year in October 2023;
China Academy of Information and Communications Technology: In November 2023, China's smartphone shipments reached 2,98560,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 344%；
Canalys latest**: The global smartphone market will grow by 4% to 11700 million ......
After 27 consecutive months of high decline, at the end of the year 2023, a series of positive data seems to be writing, and the cold winter of the smartphone market seems to be finally over, and a new turnaround is just around the corner.
Chunjiang plumbing duck prophet, terminal manufacturers also took the lead in smelling this warmth, reducing prices and discounts over and over again, and frequently releasing new machines on the other side to welcome spring.
But on the other side of the macro recovery and the cold winter, the data also shows that from 2023 to 2027, the compound annual growth rate of global smartphone shipments will only be 26%。
At the same time, this growth is mainly driven by emerging markets, such as India and Southeast Asia, which will grow by 6%.
This also means that although the smartphone market has come out of the cold winter of several years, the incremental space for the next year is still not large, and for terminal manufacturers, it is still a stock market of red sea fighting, which undoubtedly puts forward new requirements for the competition in the smartphone market in the next few years.
In the long-lost spring, the chill is still going through nearly three years of shipments**, setting the coldest winter in the history of the smartphone market, especially in 2022, the double-digit decline seems to have froze the entire industry.
The second half of 2023, which is coming to an end, seems to give the market a little respite. In particular, October 2023 saw a positive year-on-year growth of 5% for the first time since June 2021, which is not easy.
Fortunately, next, the signal that the smartphone market is back to positive growth is getting stronger and stronger. But it is undeniable that the chill is still there in the coming spring.
The first is the sluggish consumer demand and the gradual growth of the replacement cycle. From the demand side, in recent years, there has been no major breakthrough in the development of the content service side, whether it is a thousand-yuan machine or a high-end flagship, they are facing excess performance.
Some data show that the mobile phones of 4 years ago can still meet the needs of current users for smartphone use, and even large-scale mobile games with high requirements for mobile phone performance are still running smoothly two or three years ago.
There has been no major breakthrough in the superposition of overperformance and application, resulting in an accelerated decrease in users' desire to change phones. If the user considers things like replacing the battery, it may be possible to wait a little longer.
According to data from analyst firm TechInsights, the global smartphone replacement rate may fall to 23 in 20235%, which means that the replacement cycle has reached the lowest point of 51 months.
Secondly, although the performance of mobile phones is excessive, the price of mobile phones is getting higher and higher in the high-end strategy of mobile phone manufacturers.
According to IDC, the average selling price of smartphones in 2023 is $438, up 5% year-over-year5%。And that's overall growth.
If it falls to the perspective of a specific brand, the flagship products of the same series are all integrating the most cutting-edge technology in the upstream, but the initial price was 1999, then rose to 2999, and now it has started at 3999.
According to the mobile phone market report released by GFK China in the third quarter of 2023, the average price of China's mobile phone market has continued to grow in recent years, and the average price has reached 3,480 yuan as of the third quarter of this year.
However, this critical moment of price increase has just hit the key node of the downturn in the macroeconomic environment and the increasing difficulty for consumers to make money, which has further led to the reduction of consumers' desire to replace their phones and the extension of the replacement cycle.
Then terminal brands should gain competitiveness in the next stock market, and involution will be the main theme in the next few years.
In fact, since the beginning of this year, including Apple, it has been inevitable that the new machine will be released, and domestic brands, although the price of a number of flagship products has continued to rise, but the release has been less than a month, and it has become the norm for more than 1,000 to fall.
Naturally, the distortion of the consumer mentality is also a practical problem that terminal manufacturers have to face. At present, domestic brands are trapped in the tactics of the sea of machines, in order to continue to make way for new products and destocking, price reduction has become a continuous operation as a last resort, which has led to changes and distortions in the mentality of consumers. For example, with the advent of the "Wait and Wait" party, every user who wants to change their mobile phone, after the release of their favorite new phone, has the mentality of "wait and see, the price will be reduced". This also means that although the smartphone market has shown signs of recovery, the various practical problems faced by the industry still exist, and the involution of terminal manufacturers in the next few years will continue, and the high-end strategic breakthrough is still a problem for manufacturers.
Stock competition, what brand should play?Stock competition means that manufacturers must enter the era of high-quality competition from reckless and brutal marketing and performance parameter competition.
In fact, starting in 2023, the posture of terminal manufacturers has also changed significantly, for example, the most obvious is the move from Android + UI to self-developed systems.
Following Huawei, Xiaomi's surging OS has also been launched, followed by vivo, which released a new self-developed operating system, BlueOS.
Secondly, Meizu also announced that the Flyme system has been officially upgraded to Flyme OS, and has completed the coverage of smartphones, AR smart glasses, and smart cars. At the same time, this system has also been officially renamed Meizu Unbounded OSIn addition, in the past two days, OPPO also announced the tidal architecture of the chip software and hardware integration technology stack. This also means that in the context of excessive hardware performance and the gradual increase in breakthrough costs, terminal manufacturers have retreated to the next best thing and will continue to improve their soft power as the focus of competition in the second half of the competition.
Of course, on the other side of the layout of self-developed systems and continuous improvement of soft power, cramming large models into mobile phones is also the biggest change that can be seen in the smartphone market in the next few years. In fact, since the second half of the year, terminal brands including Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo, and Honor have all announced their own mobile phone models.
For example, in addition to Huawei's Pangu model, Lei Jun revealed in his 2023 annual speech that Xiaomi will fully embrace the large model, focusing on lightweight and local deployment;Zhao Ming, CEO of Honor, also said that Honor is also laying out its self-developed 7 billion parameter end-side AI model and new cloud services.
Furthermore. OPPO announced that the Andean large model (ANDEGPT) based on its self-training has also been officially launchedAnd vivo also released the self-developed large model matrix Blue Heart Large Model ......
But at present, it seems that it is still unknown whether the large model will open a new round of revolution in mobile phone applications in the future. Because the large model has been booming for nearly a year, the shadow of the metaverse has appeared again, and most of the followers and ** people have appeared.
In addition to actively deploying soft power such as self-developed systems and AI large models, folding screen mobile phones are also a key direction for terminal manufacturers to find incremental markets.
Judging from the macro data, on the other side of the continuous high decline in smartphone shipments, the folding screen mobile phone market is an exception, growing year after year, especially in 2023, according to IDC's **, by 2023, global foldable mobile phone shipments will reach 21.4 million units, an increase of more than 50% over 2022.
The current folding screen mobile phone is also in the critical stage of user mentality and technological innovation position, and it will continue to output in this market, which is also an important part of the smartphone brands in the next few years.
Of course, another highlight is the layout of the overseas business, compared with mature markets, Africa, Southeast Asia, India and other markets are the key markets to promote the next few years is the smartphone market shipments.
In summary, the smartphone market has finally survived the long winter, but this upcoming spring is still facing huge challenges, such as involution, difficult breakthroughs in high-end strategies and other display problems.
At the same time, although there seem to be many breakthroughs on the whole, there are still huge uncertainties, and everyone will inevitably roll in further involution on the same starting line.