2023 is a significant year for Huawei, with the Mate 60 series in the smartphone market, with shipments soaring 48% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2023, returning to the top five in the Chinese market in terms of shipments after 10 quarters.
In the folding screen mobile phone market, Huawei is even more popular with 37The market share of 4% firmly occupies the first position in the market share of domestic folding screen mobile phones. Mate X5, Mate X3, and Pocket S are the top three in terms of single product sales, among which the Mate X5 is nicknamed "Moutai in the Circle" by netizens.
Recently, Huawei has brought us a new surprise. After the market share of folding screen mobile phones is far ahead, Huawei has taken the first place.
According to the Q4 2023 China Tablet Quarterly Tracker released by the International Data Corporation IDC,Huawei surpassed Apple again after four years and became the No. 1 tablet in China's tablet market in terms of shipments.
The Year of Science and Technology in China
Source: IDC
Why does Xiao Lei emphasize that it is "again"? Because Huawei surpassed it as early as the third quarter of 2019 - the first quarter of 2020, but it was subsequently overtaken by Apple.
Judging from the specific data, although Huawei's market share in the fourth quarter of 2023 is ahead of Apple, the gap between the two sides is very small, only 03%。If we expand the scope to the whole of 2023, then Apple is still the number one tablet market in China by shipments. The rankings of the rest of the manufacturers have not changed much, with Xiaomi, Honor, and Lenovo ranking 3-5 respectively.
Huawei's ability to achieve a turnaround in the fourth quarter of 2023 is inseparable from the favorable time, place and people created by the internal and external environment.
Let's take a look at the internal environment first, Huawei has released 3 new tablet products in the second half of 2023. Undoubtedly, they are the biggest contributor to the growth of Huawei's tablet sales.
In July 2023, Huawei released the MatePad 2023 model, which highlights educational attributes and takes into account soft light and eye protection. It is mainly aimed at students and parents, and although its performance is average, it is completely sufficient.
In September of the same year, the Huawei MatePad Pro 13The 2-inch has become the first batch of tablet products equipped with the new Kirin chip, and the ultra-high screen-to-body ratio and Starlight handwriting experience have also won the love of a large number of users.
Source: Huawei.
In November of the same year, Huawei brought the MatePad Pro 11 inches, this time even the two-way Beidou satellite message was arranged, coupled with the smooth experience under the HarmonyOS 4 multi-screen collaboration, no wonder the official directly called it HarmonyOS Professional Productivity.
With the successive release of 3 new products, we can feel that Huawei has an impulse to show off its "muscles" urgently. Facts have proved that a number of innovative technologies combined with the popularity of the Mate 60 series can indeed have a positive effect, and Huawei's tablet market share increased by 9% in the fourth quarter6 %。
In addition to internal factors, the external environment is also silently boosting behind the scenes.
Apple, Huawei's biggest competitor in the Chinese tablet market, chose to directly "open" in 2023, and the iPad product line did not release a new product throughout the year. It is rumored on the Internet that Apple is reorganizing the iPad product line, and plans to launch a number of new iPad products with OLED screens and the largest iPad Air in history in 2024. No matter what the reason is, since the opponent gives the opportunity, it is natural for Huawei to achieve overtaking.
Although other manufacturers have seized a lot of market share with their flagship tablets, they still can't compete with Huawei in the domestic market.
After the competitors, let's look at the overall market**. According to IDC's Q4 2022 - Q4 2023 China Tablet Market Average Price Report, the data shows that the average price of China's tablet market is currently declining. From 3,063 yuan in the fourth quarter of 2022 to 2,707 yuan in the fourth quarter of 2023, a decrease of 116%。
Source: IDC
The average price represents the cost that most consumers are willing to spend on tablets, and the market share of high-end tablets is gradually declining, especially in the price segment above 4,000 yuan, and the proportion of users has dropped by nearly 30% compared with 2022.
This phenomenon reflects the growing number of professional users who are starting to become dissatisfied with the productivity of their tablets and turn to other productivity devices.
Apple focuses on the high-end tablet market, and the 2000 yuan price segment is only supported by the ninth-generation iPad, and the 64 GB version of 2599 yuan is a bit uncompetitive. The rest of the domestic tablet manufacturers are crazy about the 2000-3000 yuan price range, but they are slightly inferior to Huawei in terms of brand influence and ecological building.
In 2023, in addition to launching 3 tablet products in the second half of the year, Huawei also released** MatePad 11 and MatePad Air in the first half of the year, as well as the MatePad SE for the 100-yuan market, with a price range ranging from 899 yuan to 5999 yuan.
All-round coverage and multi-dimensional product pricing that meets market expectations are all necessary factors for Huawei to become the new "board king".
When it comes to the biggest outlet in the whole industry in the past two years, it must be AI. AI phones, AI cars, AI cameras, AI PCs...The concept of AI + everything is emerging.
As a smart device with productivity attributes, tablets naturally have great potential for AI, which has long been proven on AI PCsAlthough the main application scenarios of tablet PCs are mainly audio-visual entertainment, they are also widely used in office, business and other productivity directions. How to implement the concept of AI tablet undoubtedly leaves a huge space for everyone's imagination.
Source: Xiaomi.
And Qualcomm and MediaTek have also given great support in terms of hardware. The two released a new AI chip last year, and the chip is implanted with a powerful NPU APU, which provides super computing power support for AI large-scale model computing, and Android tablet manufacturers can integrate and fully display their AI achievements and provide large-scale model technical services on tablets.
Xiaolei** AI tablet will be one of the major trends in the tablet industry in 2024, and how Huawei can resist the offensive of other manufacturers and maintain its market leadership through self-development will be a major attraction in the tablet market in 2024.
In addition to the AI tablet concept, ecological interconnection also brings more possibilities to tablets.
Regarding this, Xiaomi gave its own answer - the whole ecology of people, cars and homes. Not limited to audio-visual entertainment, explore more potential use scenarios, and realize the interconnection between tablets and car machines, tablets and smart homes based on surging OS.
Source: Xiaomi.
The tablet is no longer an island, but forms a complete ecosystem together with other smart devices through the system.
Xiaomi has surging, Huawei has Hongmeng. Through the HarmonyOS cross-device system, HUAWEI tablets can form an overall ecosystem with various devices such as mobile phones, smart watches, lots, and TVs, and each device in the ecosystem can cooperate with each other to bring users a more comfortable experience.
In this way, the tablet can break through the narrow positioning of the original entertainment products and give more possibilities to the products.
Tablets, like mobile phones and PCs, are currently facing the dilemma of market capacity saturation and declining shipments. According to data released by IDC, the growth rate of China's tablets has been declining year after year since 2021, and China's tablet shipments will decline by 4% year-on-year in 20235%, still in a downtrend.
Source: IDC
The shrinking of the total market means that the competition between brands will intensify, and it will be difficult for products with insufficient product power to survive in the market. It is reported that new Android tablets such as vivo pad3 pro and Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro will directly use the latest flagship chips, breaking the law of using the previous generation of flagship chips for tablets. Apple will also be reinvigorated, with plans to release several products, including the new iPad Pro, in 2024.
For ordinary consumers, the fierce market competition is better, which means that we have more choices, whether it is a mid-range product of 2000-3000 yuan, or a high-end product of more than 5000 yuan, we can enjoy new products with stronger product power.
For tablet manufacturers, from hardware configuration to ecological exploration, there are still many places to roll in tablets in 2024. It's not just about the crazy stuff on hardware, it's also about opening up new technologies such as AI and ecological interconnection to redefine tablets.
Xiaolei also hopes that in the new year, we can see the slightly declining tablet computer industry regain new vitality and usher in better development opportunities.