I'm a technology creator The current imaging flagship mobile phones, that is, the photography flagships, if the lens is not hung with the camera brand logo, it seems that they can't do it at all. For example, Xiaomi mobile phone co-branded Leica, OPPO co-branded Hasselblad, and vivo co-branded Zeiss. Even Huawei, the big brother of the imaging flagship, used to be a co-branded Leica. But that trend may be receding.
Now that it's still on holiday, the famous big digital chatting station broke the news, and each company has begun to prepare its own image brand, and several of them are not renewing their co-branding. Wait, how many? Now there are only three co-branded companies, can it be said that the most serious situation is that the three companies collectively give up this kind of play?
When it comes to this topic, the comments of netizens are more interesting. "Question Huawei, understand Huawei, and become Huawei". If all this is true, then everyone is indeed following the old path of Huawei.
Back in 2016, when Huawei co-branded Leica launched Huawei P9, there were doubts on the Internet, thinking that it was marketing and grandstanding. As a result, in the midst of this skepticism, watching the success of Huawei's Mate series and P series from generation to generation has not only made Leica famous, but also Hasselblad and Zeiss have become sweets. For other phone brands, now that Huawei has proven that this path is viable, why not give it a try?
In September 2022, after years of cooperation between Huawei and Leica, Huawei finally made a new choice, no longer co-branded with Leica, but launched its own imaging brand, that is, XMAGE Huawei Image on Huawei Mate50, Huawei P60 and Huawei Mate60. Judging from the latest revelations, other brands seem to be interested in following suit.
Is a flagship mobile phone co-branded camera brand a good choice? Yes and no. In terms of successful examples, there are Huawei-Leica in the past, Xiaomi-Leica, vivo-Zeiss, OPPO-Hasselblad, each of which is well-known to everyone. But if you want to talk about the examples of failure, such as Sony Zeiss, Nokia Zeiss, Sharp Leica, Panasonic Leica, Moto Hasselblad, etc., there are too many, and there may be some unnamed ones, all of which have disappeared into the long river of history.
As for why some will succeed and some will fail, in the final analysis, it still depends on the quality of the phone itself. Putting a Leica logo on the camera doesn't make the photo quality better. The previous failed examples, without exception, all chose the way of "buying certification", simply letting camera brands certify their mobile phone lenses, and the products are more expensive, but there is no essential change at all.
As for wanting to have better photo quality on mobile phones, the premise is that the mobile phone brand itself has excellent R&D capabilities, and it must first be able to make enough optimizations to take good enough photos, and then choose to cooperate with camera brands. In this way, we can further understand our own shortcomings in cooperation and expand the space for image quality improvement; It can also introduce the camera brand's tone style to capture more users. This is also the mainstream cooperation method chosen by the three major brands of Xiaomi, OPPO and vivo today.
For example, before Huawei chose to cooperate with Leica, it had already made a lot of attempts in camera solutions, such as dual camera, triple camera, color + black and white, main camera + depth of field, RGBW sensor, RYYB sensor, etc., Huawei has tried every solution that can be used in mobile phones early on, and has accumulated enough rich experience. Before Xiaomi joined forces with Leica, it had already completed its counterattack in the field of photography, and quickly turned over from the bottom to become the leader.
OPPO and vivo have been killed early in the technology of beauty and other aspects, and won the title of "factory sister machine" early. Now it seems that this is not derogatory, after all, only if you can really shoot people beautifully, can you win the favor of "factory girls". After that, it changed from a partial subject to a general subject, whether it is the front and rear cameras, whether it is shooting people or scenery, it is good enough.
The co-branding with major camera manufacturers is the icing on the cake for them, and the biggest change is to form their own image style and open up their own characteristics. And when his style matures, it is inevitable that the cooperation with major camera manufacturers will end. The ultimate destination is to launch a brand like XMAGE Huawei Image and create a new self in the field of mobile phones.
On the other hand, the cooperation from the German camera manufacturers is not stable for mobile phone brands. For example, after Leica ended its cooperation with Huawei, did it really only choose Xiaomi? That's just what most people see at home.
Perhaps it was through Huawei that it smelled its own brand value, and Leica then started a series of crazy leek patterns. In Japan, it cooperated with Sharp to launch the AQUOS R6 mobile phone, and now the latest is the AQUOS R8 series; At the same time, it was also skinned into his own Leitz phone, which cost more than 10,000 yuan. Leica also licenses the brand to products such as action cameras, drones, and home projectors.
In addition to co-branding with vivo, another major German brand Zeiss has also licensed the brand to its old partner Sony, and the latest Sony Xperia1 Pro mobile phone is hung with the Zeiss trademark; In addition to co-branding with OPPO, Hasselblad, which is also a German brand, also has a trademark on DJI drones.
It is not difficult to see from this that the collaboration between the mobile phone and the camera is not unbreakable, and each has its own careful thinking. Mobile phone brands are slowly realizing the transformation of "borrowing chickens to lay eggs", and these German camera brands that have become a thing of the future have once again gained popularity through domestic mobile phones and found more business partners. Co-branding is meant to take what you need, and both sides are winners.
The biggest losers in this mobile phone camera co-branding carnival are Japanese camera brands, such as Nikon, Canon, Fujifilm, etc., all of which ended before the feast was served. It was previously rumored that Honor might co-brand with Canon, but now it seems that it is completely chasing after the wind. It's true that Japanese cameras don't have much value to work with – they have positioned themselves as cheap alternatives to German cameras from the very beginning, focusing on cost-effectiveness rather than the pursuit of extremes. Who will find a cost-effective brand to cooperate?
So in summary, the end of cross-border cooperation between mobile phones and cameras is inevitable, but when and which brand to start from, these have not yet been determined. At least for now, the new mobile phone products of the three companies are still trademarks of all partners, even if they break the news now, they will have an answer in the second half of the year at the earliest. So you say, Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo, who will they start with?