Vivo is hot and cold, and there is no new story for folding screen phones

Welcome to the WeChat subscription number of “Sina Technology”: techsina

Written | Edited by Wen Lin | Yang Bocheng

Source: DoNews

A few days ago, vivo released its latest folding screen phone, the vivo X Fold+, priced from 9,999 yuan. 2K+120Hz LTPO screen, Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ flagship processor, floating-wing hinge solution, quad-camera module, Zeiss Lianming rear lens, 4700mAh battery… From the configuration point of view, this folding screen phone is in hardware It continues the previous “stacking to the top” style of vivo.

Since 2019, Samsung and Huawei have both launched their first folding screen mobile phones, and their products can always appear in the public eye, both “mysterious” and “superfluous”. In the past three years, although the folding screen mobile phone has not yet become the “main machine”, in 2022, it has also ushered in its own highlight moment. 01.

Everyone “loves” folding screens?

Looking at the entire smartphone market, mainstream mobile phone manufacturers such as Samsung, Huawei, Honor, Xiaomi, and OPPO have successively released folding screen mobile phones. Especially this year, new folding screen mobile phones have been released frequently. Huawei Mate Xs 2, vivo X Fold, Honor Magic V, etc. In the first quarter of 2022 alone, 7 mobile phone manufacturers and 20 folding screen mobile phones have entered the market.

At the same time, various mobile phone manufacturers have their own emphasis on product design, looking for their own track. For example, Samsung continues to polish the horizontal and vertical folding screens to cover different user groups; Huawei’s horizontal folding screens have two product lines: inward and outward folding; Xiaomi has changed its course to light and fashionable in its second-generation products; OPPO is aiming at Market demand for smaller size models; Lenovo tries to create business-oriented products in the name of moto.

Entering 2022, the folding screen mobile phone is not like the past for “hunting for curiosity” and “showing off skills”, and various mobile phone manufacturers really regard it as an important part of the new growth strategy this time. The reasons behind this are not only driven by trends in the market environment, but also internal needs to break the bottleneck of corporate growth.

According to reports provided by the research agency Counterpoint over the years, since 2017, global mobile phone shipments have declined for five consecutive years. Global smartphone sales fell by 7% in the first quarter of 2022, with a 14% drop in the Chinese market. On the other hand, from 2018 to 2020, the global shipments of folding screen mobile phones increased from 198,000 units to 2.8 million units, an increase of more than 14 times in two years. Counterpoint predicts that by the end of 2022, this number will reach 18.3 million units.

Obviously, today’s smartphone market is experiencing a “cold wave” in sales, and folding screen phones are expected to become a “heating” tool in this “cold wave”.

At the same time, when the mobile phone is not easy to sell, if you want to maintain revenue growth, you can only work hard to increase profits, and the most profitable place for mobile phones is in the high-end market.

In 2021, Apple’s mobile phone business revenue will reach $196 billion, which is more than the combined revenue of the next four companies, Samsung, OPPO, Xiaomi and vivo; according to Apple’s fiscal 2022 second quarter financial results, the quarter Revenue was $97.278 billion, net profit was $25.010 billion, and Apple’s gross profit margin was as high as 43.7%.

For mobile phone manufacturers, occupying the high-end market means not only the improvement of their own image and market competitiveness, but also higher profits and greater voice. With the help of folding screen products, mobile phone brands in a catching-up position are expected to achieve “curve overtaking”.

In addition, the amount of information displayed on the screen depends on the resolution and size. When the resolution reaches the resolution capability of the human eye retina, more information transmission density depends on the increase in the size of the display screen. Therefore, we can see that from 2010 to the present, the smartphone screen has grown from 3.5 inches to 6 inches, or even 6.5 inches. Calculated with a 16:9 screen ratio, the display area growth rate is close to 200%.

As more and more people obtain production, work and life-related information from smart terminal products, the contradiction between the continuous growth of screen information content and the portability of the terminal form will lead to a high probability that folding terminals will be used in the future. product to solve.

Whether it is from market data, industry trends, or business operations and user needs, folding screen mobile phones seem to be entrusted with important tasks. But the ideal is very plump and the reality is very skinny. It is far from simple to think that the folding screen mobile phone will really “fire”. 02.

Folding screen mobile phone “chicken ribs” highlights

According to the survey data of iiMedia Research, 67.5% of the interviewed users did not buy a folding screen mobile phone because they were “worried about its quality”, and 59.5% of the interviewed users did not buy it because of “high price”; their expectations for a folding screen mobile phone , 65.1% of the surveyed users expressed their expectation that the hardware or software of the folding screen phone could be improved.

On the black cat complaint platform, among the complaints about folding screens, screen creases, display failures, poor manufacturing processes, hinge damage, etc., are all the costs brought by the innovative folding form.

A complex hinge is added under the small body. Although the large screen can be unfolded, the hinge also takes up a lot of external screen space, making the external screen of the folding screen mobile phone a long strip of the opposite sex. The probability of problems of components in the long-term repeated bending cycle process is extremely high, which will also affect the experience of the product.

At the same time, the thickness and weight of the hinge also directly determine the thickness and weight of the whole machine. In order to balance the increase in the screen and the weight brought by the hinge, sometimes the method of sacrificing battery capacity has to be adopted.

Take the Samsung folding phone Z Fold 3 as an example, the battery capacity of this product is 4400mAh, and the battery capacity of the candy bar phone S21 Ultra released earlier in the same year reaches 5000mAh. The larger the display screen, the greater the power consumption, but the smaller the battery capacity, the product performance is in a dilemma, and the battery life experience is not satisfactory, which directly affects the experience and popularity of folding mobile phones.

Under the convergence of many problems, the folding screen mobile phone has often become an experiment that cares about one thing and the other. In addition to product design, the price and application scenarios of folding screen mobile phones are also two obstacles that prevent them from expanding the market on a large scale.

Previously, when Xiaomi released the folding screen mobile phone Mix Fold 2, it also announced the price of its after-sales maintenance. It costs 4,899 yuan to replace the internal screen, which is equivalent to replacing the internal screen once, and almost one iPhone13 is gone.

But this can’t blame Xiaomi for “the lion’s big mouth”. According to official reports, Xiaomi Mix Fold2 is an exclusive customized ultra-high screen-to-body ratio screen. The cost is double that of ordinary flexible screens. The inner screen also adopts new technology. Low power consumption results in a low yield rate. The cost can be said It is a further improvement. The simple cost of the two screens inside and outside is more than 4,000 yuan.

Coincidentally, the hinge equipped with OPPO Find N is the first drop-shaped hinge to achieve hovering, and the single cost is nearly 800 yuan, which is three times the cost of the current folding screen hinge on the market.

Due to the low yield rate, the need for separate design and development of hinges, and the need to explore the solution of the folding cover, the material cost of the folding screen mobile phone has been greatly increased. And some mobile phone manufacturers are still pursuing “excellence” in some components, which makes the overall cost and price of folding screen mobile phones remain high.

Although many companies have begun to balance their configuration and reduce their sales prices, the current price of folding screen mobile phones is mostly around 10,000 yuan, which is at the highest end of the smartphone price gradient and beyond the affordability of most consumers.

In addition to the second, whether the folding screen mobile phone can reach more users also depends on whether it can provide a “soft ecology” for the corresponding scenarios and potential needs. To put it simply, there must be better operating systems, application software and more suitable application scenarios, so that the user experience of folding screen mobile phones can be differentiated from ordinary mobile phones, so as to increase the user stickiness of folding screen mobile phones. Back then, Apple was able to redefine the form of smartphones in a short period of time, and the key was that the operating system it ran combined with hardware to create an experience together.

At present, the most easily perceived by ordinary users is the multi-tasking experience that presents multiple applications at the same time through split screen + small window. In theory, multitasking can bring about improved efficiency, but such a change alone is difficult to make people’s eyes shine, and it is probably still far from changing the interaction in the true sense and innovating the form of smartphones. 03.

How to reform the whole industry?

In fact, the overall downturn in the mobile phone market is not just caused by the external environment. The real headache for mobile phone manufacturers is the significant slowdown in smartphone demand in recent years. According to the latest data from industry analysis company Counterpoint, the average replacement cycle for mobile phone users has exceeded 31 months.

A consumer trend report released by China Mobile Terminal Lab also showed that 78.6% of users replaced their mobile phones because of passive replacement of old models due to damage, slow running speed/stutter, insufficient memory and other reasons. Because only 15.5% of users like to try early adopters and change their mobile phones regularly.

To stimulate consumers’ desire to buy a phone, it is obviously not enough to rely on “micro-innovation” in terms of existing images, fast charging, and screen size.

Under such cognition, the form of folding screen mobile phone is sufficiently recognizable, and some usage scenarios can indeed bring a better experience category. From a demand point of view, it can stimulate consumers’ demand for replacement phones. Technically speaking It can promote the accumulation of research and development of manufacturers.

So we can see that in the hinge alone, OPPO Find N uses the drop-shaped hinge technology to make the crease in the middle of the screen relatively flat; in order to create an aerospace-grade floating wing hinge, vivo invested three A design and R&D team with twice the number of people; the Honor Magic V is equipped with the industry’s thinnest ultra-thin floating water drop hinge, achieving the industry’s smallest bending radius…

The folding screen market has suddenly become very lively. It was originally just a few brand exploration directions. By this year, it has become a mainstream brand with high-end positioning and entering the market space they are aiming at. No matter what product form consumers like, and what kind of pursuit they have for thickness, function, and shape, they can find a folding screen that is more suitable for them.

However, it should be noted that in order to do a good job in the product upgrade of folding screen mobile phones, it is not only necessary to make concentrated breakthroughs in various technical bottlenecks such as screens, hinges, structures, software systems, etc., but also to upgrade hardware, software collocation, and application ecological layout. Do a good job of synchronization. And these are not something that one or two mobile phone companies can do. Participants in each link need to have innovative breakthroughs in order to drive the entire industry forward rapidly.

For mobile phone manufacturers, while launching more new folding screen products, they should start to fill the gap between the experience upgrade of folding screens and market expectations. After all, how the folding screen mobile phone differentiates itself from smartphones in terms of application experience, feel and functionality is the key to forming a real growth momentum in the future. It is foreseeable that there is still a very difficult way for folding screen mobile phones to develop from “featured phones” to “main phones”.

(Disclaimer: This article only represents the author’s point of view and does not represent the position of Sina.com.)

This article is reproduced from: http://finance.sina.com.cn/tech/csj/2022-09-27/doc-imqmmtha8933289.shtml
This site is for inclusion only, and the copyright belongs to the original author.