Deep Sound Original · Written by He Li.
In the past two years, domestic mobile phone brands have shown strong resilience and long-term spirit.
Looking back at 2023, the decline in sales in the domestic mobile phone market in the first three quarters has narrowed, and in the most critical high-end flagship market, each company has shown sincerity in technology:
In August, Huawei released the Mate 60 series, which won back the public's attention without a warm-up for the press conference. In addition to Huawei, there is another choice for domestic high-end - OPPO Find X6 is selling well, and the sales of folding screen mobile phones have risen sharply year-on-year, and the newly released Find X7 this week has surpassed the FindX6 all-day sales within 5 minutes of pre-sale, and the flagship has brought the first wave of heat to the mobile phone industry this year.
According to IDC, an authoritative data agency in the industry, in the first half of 2023, OPPO ranked third in China's high-end smartphone market share of more than $600, behind Apple and Huawei. Now, more than 600 million users around the world use OPPO phones every day.
High-end is the only way for domestic mobile phones to move forward. It not only refers to higher-level product grades, but also means that mobile phone manufacturers have made all-round progress in product power, technology and brand power. This road is not easy to walk, so we also want to ask, how can we go well and go far?
Innovation is the "shortcut".
High-end is both a goal and a result. To occupy a place in the high-end market, it is inseparable from the sophistication of technology and continuous innovation.
Huawei's innovation is bloody, whether it is chips or operating systems, Huawei is constantly improving in the cruel competition. Even in terms of imaging, Huawei has also made achievements in a way that pursues the ultimate. The periscope telephoto lens, which focuses on extreme scenes such as "shooting the moon", is impressive.
The same insistence on innovation as Huawei is OPPO, which has always advocated "goodness".
In 2020, the theme of the OPPO Future Technology Conference was "Leap for Good", and the founder Chen Mingyong told a story: he lived in the countryside when he was a child, and every time it was time to plant rice, every household needed to bring water to their own fields. Something like this happens every day, and in the instinct of competition for survival, goodwill is masked, and so is the shopping mall.
The reflection on this is rooted in Chen Mingyong's later work and business management: why has this phenomenon not ended with the advancement of science and technology? Although it is difficult to change the general environment, what kind of persistence should OPPO do in it?
The result of his thinking is "good-style innovation", goodness is the goal, and technology is the means. In this process, winning users and the market is just a natural consequence.
Starting from this logic of thinking to understand OPPO's innovation path, everything becomes clear.
As early as the transition stage of the domestic market from feature phones to smart phones, domestic mobile phone manufacturers have shown their powers. Xiaomi looks at online channels and takes cost performance as the tipping point, and processor parameters and UI software data have become essential links in the press conference. The highlight of OPPO is fast charging, a sentence of charging for 5 minutes and talking for 2 hours quickly occupies the user's mind, and the fast charging technology solves the biggest pain point of the user, which is OPPO's accurate insight into the needs of users.
Observing its technological and functional innovations in recent years, it has responded in a timely manner to the new needs of users with more diversity and finer granularity. For example, OPPO's small folding large outer screen, large folding VIP mode, and Find N3 panoramic virtual screen bring convenience to office people, all of which are innovations that combine user needs.
In a noisy and uncertain business world, innovation for good is no easy feat.
American scholar Christensen asked in "Disruptive Innovation", "Although the world is paying more and more attention to scientific and technological innovation, why has the success rate of innovation not increased significantly compared with a few decades ago?" ”
The answer in the mobile phone industry is a bit embarrassing - since entering the intelligent era, the competition intensity of the mobile phone market has almost never subsided, and data competition, shouting at each other, and stacking materials have become the norm. However, fake innovations that are rolling for the sake of volume and catching up for strategic occupancy are emerging in an endless stream, but ignore the user experience.
Continuous innovation is also becoming more and more difficult, the iteration of smartphone product form seems to have hit the ceiling, and the big brother Apple's new product launch is becoming more and more difficult to generate excitement. And when the low-hanging fruit is finished, there are fewer and fewer opportunities for breakthrough innovation. In addition, workplace culture, large company diseases, and redundant decision-making processes can all affect innovation efficiency.
The importance of strategic determination is particularly prominent.
Over the past 20 years, OPPO has brought the world's first 4-in-1 pixel binning technology, the first Seiko pseudo-vertebral hinge, and the first main camera-level periscope telephoto. Judging from third-party statistics, the number of OPPO intellectual property patents has ranked among the top two domestic mobile phone manufacturers for many years, second only to Huawei. At present, OPPO has 50,000 authorized patents, 90% of which are invention patents, and the key patents are deployed in cutting-edge 5G communications, AI and other high-value fields, continuing to lead scientific and technological innovation.
At the beginning of the year, the flagship innovated again: user needs first.
It is precisely this insistence on "good innovation" that OPPO's long-termism can gradually blossom: judging from the new products of the new flagship Find X7 series released this time, OPPO has come up with a technology portfolio that can open up the high-end market, and has achieved breakthroughs in key areas such as performance, AI, imaging, communication, and privacy and security.
oppo find x7
In terms of performance, the Find X7 has achieved the first place in a number of performance, battery life and stability tests, thanks to OPPO's self-developed Tidal architecture (chip energy efficiency technology, which makes chip scheduling more accurate and efficient) and the ability release of MediaTek Dimensity 9300, and the two parties have started a number of cooperation based on product requirements.
In terms of AI technology, OPPO has realized the industry's first 7 billion parameter model for device-side applications on the FindX7 series, and enhanced AI capabilities through the advanced deployment of device-cloud collaboration. In terms of specific functions, the image editing experience empowered by AIGC has been put on the machine, and functions such as subject elimination and real-world repainting have been implemented. AI large model language summary is launched, which can directly help users sort out the main points of the call content, and accurately output the main points with topics and points, and Xiaobu's service capabilities have also achieved all-round advancement.
2023 is a year of full-scale explosion of large models, and it is inevitable that large models will become the flagship standard. At a time when a number of mobile phone manufacturers are in full swing to increase the size of large models, OPPO still adheres to the essence of "good-style innovation", putting user needs first, and allowing advanced technology to be implemented in practical applications.
Liu Zuohu, Chief Product Officer of OPPO, demonstrated the AI large model voice summary at the press conference This function is fully intelligent and fully automatic to generate summaries and to-dos.
In terms of imaging, the Find X7 is equipped with a new generation of ultra-light and shadow imaging system jointly developed by OPPO and Hasselblad for the first time, which adopts a new ultra-light and shadow triple main camera system. The Find X7 Ultra is the first to create a Hasselblad Master lens group with dual periscopes and four main cameras, realizing powerful multi-camera zoom capabilities for mobile phone photography, and matching with a super light and shadow image engine.
It is not difficult to find that OPPO's technological breakthrough is not to compare data and comrades-in-arms, but to combine software and hardware, emphasize picture quality, color, style and aesthetics, and make truly useful progress from the user's point of view.
Find X7 Ultra close-up periscope telephoto 6x zoom shot.
In terms of communication, user experience is also the main line of product improvement. The Find X7 Ultra Satellite Communication Edition can ensure hands-free dual-mode satellite calls with the handset, which solves the pain point of the traditional solution that the signal is poor when using satellite communication, and you can only make hands-free calls instead of using the handset. Super Signal Engineering is to comprehensively improve the communication experience of the FINDX7 series in all scenarios through the three major technical sections of antenna technology, intelligent communication, and near-field communication.
And OPPO's first-of-its-kind outbound travel package of services, International Getaway, also brought surprises. This function allows users to quickly use the free traffic after landing without purchasing a ** card in advance, and contact local information through the getaway function and Xiaobu to solve problems in real scenarios.
With the launch of Find X7, the starting point of technological innovation is very clear - to actually help users solve problems.
Liu Zuohu, Chief Product Officer of OPPO, said: "Whoever understands users best and truly understands the product will be able to maintain differentiation in the competition and always have core competitiveness." ”
With good products, OPPO has won a place in the high-end market that domestic mobile phone manufacturers must compete for. In the overseas market, OPPO is the only brand that can wrestle with Samsung; Looking at China, OPPO and Huawei are competing head-to-head with Apple in the high-end market.
High-end flagships have entered the era of multiple choices.
The good news is that the mobile phone market, which has been sluggish for a long time, may usher in a turnaround.
According to Counterpoint data, global smartphone sales in October 2023 increased by 5% year-on-year, and market shipments showed positive year-on-year growth for the first time after 27 consecutive declines. According to Sandalwood monitoring data, in the first half of 2023, China's mid-range market (** 2,000-4,000 yuan) and low-end market (** below 2,000 yuan) sales both showed a year-on-year downward trend, but China's high-end mobile phone market (** more than 4,000 yuan) sales achieved a year-on-year increase of 17%.
The contrarian growth of high-end machines is the inevitable result of domestic manufacturers' deep technical capabilities and brand power, and will also bring a magnificent future to the entire consumer electronics market.
A trend has been clear, Apple and Samsung are no longer the only choice, and the high-end flagship market has entered the era of multiple choices. Although Huawei and OPPO are innovating with different ideas, their core direction is the same, which not only provides users with more choices, but also drives the positive development of the entire mobile phone industry.
Sun Kai, CEO of Sandalwood China, said in an interview: "From the perspective of market competition, Chinese brands have actually competed with Apple at the price point of 4,000-6,000; In the hinterland of 6000+ Apples, domestic manufacturers have also entered the ultra-high-end market through sufficiently differentiated folding screen products, so they are still full of hope."
James Cass begins "The Finite and the Infinite" by saying, "There are at least two kinds of games in the world. One can be called a finite game and the other is an infinite game. A finite game aims to win, whereas an infinite game aims to continue the game. The finite game follows the rules and competes within the boundaries, with the winner coming with a clear score. Infinite games, on the other hand, are playing with boundaries and constantly pushing the boundaries of this game.
Broaden your horizons, the fiercely competitive mobile phone market is far from the endgame. For these infinite gamers, there will always be opportunities.