Wen Yi connected with Insight, written by Han Ying and edited by Li Xin.
Near the end of the year, folding screen mobile phones have become a new competition field for mobile phone manufacturers.
Recently, Huawei released the latest folding screen mobile phone, which once again stirred the market of folding screen mobile phones. Also in the same month, OPPO’s first folding screen mobile phone has also come out.
At the same time, glory, realme and vivo are also developing folding screen mobile phones. In addition, the news that Xiaomi MIX Fold2 is about to be released is also constantly coming out.
At present, domestic folding screen mobile phones are blooming everywhere. In foreign countries, Samsung, as the head enterprise of folding screen mobile phones, has released three generations of folding screen mobile phones since 2019. According to analysts’ prediction, Apple is also expected to release the first folding screen mobile phone in 2023.
If the prediction comes true, it means that the mainstream players in the mobile phone market will enter the new battlefield of folding screen mobile phones.
An obvious change is that from the perspective of the third-generation folding screen mobile phone, its price is controlled within 10 thousand yuan, and it is entering the era of parity acceptable to consumers. This also means that the folding screen mobile phone is undergoing technological upgrading and market testing.
Undoubtedly, with the improvement of technology and the downward price, the penetration rate of folding screen mobile phones will increase. But the real problem is that the folding screen mobile phone is still a niche market, and its sales volume is less than 1% of the whole smart phone market. When will the folding machine really become popular?
In the smart phone market where the market is saturated and the growth is weak, manufacturers are trying to tell a new story. This time, the new story is to buy a folding screen mobile phone at a lower price.
Different from the previous price of 10,000 yuan, after two years of market development, the price of folding machines has gradually entered the parity stage.
Whether it is Huawei’s latest folding screen mobile phone, Samsung’s latest folding machine, or the first folding machine released by OPPO, its price has been lowered to around 7,000 to 8,000 yuan, which seems to be more close to the people than before.
Last week, Huawei released the new flagship folding screen mobile phone P50 Pocket. From the appearance point of view, this folding screen mobile phone adopts the design of vertical folding, and the compact and exquisite appearance also breaks the disadvantages of heavy and horizontal folding in the past.
On the most important axis of folding screen, Huawei P50 Pocket adopts the design of water drop hinge, which has a smaller bending radius than the previous generation.Simply put, with the help of the drop-shaped screen space at the bend, the screen folding can be close to the seamless folding shape.At the same time, the unfolding thickness of the fuselage as thin as 7.2mm can realize a flatter unfolding of the inner screen.
Unfortunately, the screen cover of Huawei P50 Pocket does not use ultra-thin electronic touch glass (UTG), but continues to use traditional transparent polyimide (CPI). Specifically, UTG is a flexible glass with better performance, while CPI is a plastic material.
At the same time, as for the core processor, due to the shortage of chips, Huawei P50 Pocket is equipped with Snapdragon 888 chip and adopts 4G network.In this regard, Huawei said that with the support of HarmonyOS Smart Communications, the network experience was not greatly affected.
Huawei tried to make up for the lack of hardware such as glass and chips with images and batteries. Following the exploration of Huawei P-series images, Huawei P50 Pocket adopts a super wide angle of 120 degrees, and at the same time, fluorescence photography and other modes have also increased the effect of post-shooting. In terms of battery, Huawei P50 Pocket is also equipped with 4000 mAh battery, which supports 40W Huawei super fast charge.
On the whole, as one of the important players in the folding screen mobile phone market, Huawei is already the head player of domestic folding screen mobile phones.As early as 2019, Huawei launched Mate X, a horizontally folding screen mobile phone, and the launch of the vertically folding P50 Pocket also means that Huawei has completed a double folding layout in the folding screen mobile phone market. Huawei has also become the only brand in the industry to launch three folding forms of mobile phones: outward folding, inward folding and vertical folding.
Earlier, OPPO released the first folding screen mobile phone OPPO Find N, and at the beginning of this year, Xiaomi also launched the first folding screen mobile phone MIX Fold, and the concept map of MIX Fold2 is also coming out.
Not only do domestic mobile phone manufacturers keep moving in the folding screen mobile phone market, but Samsung, as the "leader" of folding screen mobile phones, has always regarded it as a heavy bet.In September this year, Samsung officially released the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3 5G in China, which is Samsung’s third-generation folding screen mobile phone.In addition, Samsung also released a product that folds up and down — — Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5G.
In the past, the folding screen mobile phone has always been a symbol of high-end. At the beginning, the price of Samsung Galaxy Fold reached 15,999 yuan, and the price of Huawei Mate X reached 16,999 yuan. Even the lowest-priced Xiaomi MIX Fold had a starting price of 9,999 yuan.
When Xiaomi MIX Fold was launched less than a year ago, its price on the e-commerce platform has dropped by more than 3,000 yuan due to poor sales.
The trend of head players can better explain the development trend of folding screen mobile phones.
At present, Samsung undoubtedly occupies an absolute dominant position in the folding screen mobile phone market. According to data from research institute DSCC, Samsung’s market share in the global folding market is as high as 87% in 2020. The price of Galaxy Z Filp 3 with vertical folding scheme reached 7599 yuan, only 60% of that of the previous generation. For this reason, this series has also become the highest-selling folding screen mobile phone in the world.
For price-sensitive users, the most intuitive change brought about by price reduction is the increase in sales. Samsung’s first-generation folding screen mobile phone Galaxy Fold sold only 500,000 units worldwide. In contrast, the third-generation folding screen mobile phone exceeded 1 million units in one month.
Compared with the mobile phone manufacturers that have already entered the market, the whole folding screen mobile phone market has been full of smoke.
Up to now, Samsung has released eight folding screen phones.In terms of mobile phone shipments, in the third quarter of this year, the DSCC report showed that Samsung accounted for 93% of the shipments.In addition to strong mobile phone shipments, Samsung also has the ability to produce screens. According to a recent report by BusinessKorea, a Korean financial media, Samsung plans to increase the output of foldable screens from 17 million to 25 million a year, an increase of more than 40%.
In China, Huawei, the first to enter the market, is the mobile phone manufacturer with the largest market share. The advent of Huawei P50 Pocket represents that Huawei has started to "walk on two legs" like Samsung, and has two models of horizontal folding and vertical folding.
Xiaomi’s exploration of folding machine is not very smooth, and its heat dissipation, screen look and feel, creases and other problems have been repeatedly vomited by users, and the price has been falling after listing. OPPO will bet on the cost performance, and launch OPPO Find N with a price of only 7699 yuan, trying to open the market at a low price.
Generally speaking, whether it is Samsung, which has been deeply involved in the folding screen mobile phone market for a long time, Huawei, which was the first to enter the market, and OPPO, a new player who just entered the market, parity strategy seems to have become the consensus of the industry.
From ten thousand yuan machines to parity machines, the road to price reduction of folding screen mobile phones is not overnight.
Undoubtedly, in the era of folding screen mobile phone 1.0, the price of folding screen mobile phone has been high, which is a huge consumption threshold. Not many people can afford and are willing to spend a mobile phone with a price of 10,000 yuan. Sales are bound to be limited.
And if you want to pursue sales and expand the audience, price reduction is the fastest way. However, before the price reduction, mobile phone manufacturers should first consider the production cost, otherwise they may "lose money and earn money".
Among the components of the folding machine, the hinge used to connect the fuselage and provide folding ability can be said to be the core of the folding screen equipment, which determines the strength of the whole fuselage. A hinge is composed of hundreds of tiny parts. Whether the hinge quality passes the standard directly affects the visual effect of the screen crease.
At present, domestic mobile phone manufacturers, Huawei and OPPO all adopt the method of hinge self-research. Interestingly, at the recent press conference, whose patent is the water drop hinge also caused a confrontation between Huawei and OPPO.
On the one hand, the research and development cost of hinge technology is high, on the other hand, there is no cost sharing in mass production of mobile phones, which undoubtedly requires a lot of money for the research and development of hinges. At the press conference of OPPO, Liu Zuohu, senior vice president of OPPO, revealed that the cost of this small hinge on Find N mobile phone reached $100, which was 1/10th of the final selling price, while the hinge quotation of other mobile phone manufacturers was generally 200 yuan.
In addition to the mobile phone manufacturers themselves, upstream suppliers such as Huawei hinge supplier Yian Technology and OPPO hinge supplier Amphenol are also worthy of attention.
Recently, some investors have asked questions to Yian Technology, a domestic hinge supplier, on the investor interaction platform. The question pointed out that besides supplying Huawei, which customers are Yian Technology? Yi ‘an Technology responded to this, and the company’s liquid metal hinges have been cooperated by five customers.
It is not difficult to see that with the price reduction of folding screen mobile phones and the increase of sales volume, the cost reduction of upstream suppliers is also an inevitable trend.
In addition to the hinge, the flexible screen is also the key to the competition of folding screen mobile phones.Compared with the straight mobile phone, it is more expensive to adapt to the components in the bending scene. At present, there are two kinds of folding screen mobile phone covers on the market, CPI (colorless polyimide) and UTG (ultra-thin flexible glass). The former can be understood as a plastic material, while the latter is a flexible glass with better performance than AMOLED.
In the whole folding screen mobile phone market, flexible glass, such as UTG, which has difficult research and development technology and high cost, has been monopolized by giant Samsung, which is also the reason for the high price of folding screen mobile phones.
Just this year, Samsung opened the supply of external UTG ultra-thin glass, which is also the key to Samsung’s capital to reduce the price of folding machines. The OPPO Find N screen used UTG glass supplied by Samsung.
Obviously, this is a sure-fire business. At present, the folding screen mobile phone is a new trend in the mobile phone market. For Samsung, which is firmly in the top position of folding screen mobile phone sales, cooperation with domestic mobile phone manufacturers can not only increase its own sales, but also share the production cost by increasing sales, and also find new growth curves and broaden income channels.
At the same time, domestic electronic suppliers are also speeding up the production of UTG glass. Side Semiconductor, Kaisheng Technology, Hui Jing Display and other manufacturers have announced the research and development progress or plans of UTG glass projects this year.
In the glass cover, the mobile phone display screen is also a difficult problem that needs the homework of mobile phone manufacturers. According to online Insight, the flexible OLED screen of Huawei P50 Pocket was provided by domestic manufacturer Visionox. Data show that in the third quarter of this year, global smartphone OLED panel shipments were about 170 million pieces. Among them, Visionox shipped about 6.3 million pieces, ranking fourth in the world, second only to Samsung Display, JD.COM and LG Display.
Admittedly, although China companies such as BOE, Vinozin and Rouyu have made great breakthroughs in screen technology in recent years, they still have a long way to go compared with Samsung.
It is foreseeable that as Samsung opens the supply of UTG glass and the production capacity of domestic suppliers increases, the production cost of folding screen mobile phone screens will further decrease.
Generally speaking, the reduction of production costs of core barriers such as hinges, glass covers and screens directly lowers the market price of mobile phones with folding screens. In the future, with the popularization and mass production of folding screen technology, the price of folding screen mobile phones will be lower.
All along, there have been endless arguments about "folding machines are chicken ribs" and "losing money to make money" in the market.
Yuan Bo, a senior communication engineer, once told Time Finance that the folding screen is not just needed, but meets the marginalized demand, but it is a symbol of the technical strength of mobile phone manufacturers, and even represents the manufacturers to enter the high-end threshold.
However, with the gradual maturity of technology, the new folding machines of mobile phone manufacturers are intensively launched, and the superimposed prices are pushed down one after another, and the penetration rate of folding screen mobile phones is expected to accelerate.
Market research firm Strategy Analytics predicts that in 2025, the shipment of folding screen mobile phones will reach 100 million units.Counterpoint Research, another research institution, also predicts that by the end of 2022, the global shipment of folding machines will reach 18.3 million units.You know, last year, the global shipment of folding screen mobile phones was only 2.8 million. If the agency’s prediction is accurate, the shipment of folding screen mobile phones will increase exponentially in the next two years.
It is worth noting that Samsung, the head player, has been brave enough to "blood" on the folding screen mobile phone. A few days ago, according to Korean media reports, Samsung will stop the Note series and will take out more cost space to embrace the folding screen mobile phone. In addition to capacity expansion, Samsung also increased the marketing expenses of the folding machine to twice that of the Note series. Samsung also said that the chip supply gives priority to the folding machine, which shows its emphasis on folding mobile phones.
Although many players bet and the market is promising, it is not easy for folding screen mobile phones to be popularized.
The problem facing all players is that the price of the folding machine is almost the same as that of flagship machine, but there are still many restrictions on the configuration, which does not meet the standards of flagship machine.
For example, there are few built-in telephoto lenses, the internal and external screens have not yet been high-brushed, and they can’t meet the high-frequency fast-punching, which have all become constraints for the development of folding machines. At the same time, it is still difficult to achieve unity in the adaptation of screens and applications. At present, the application adapting to folding screens has only increased from 75% to 90%. "The software workload is six times that of ordinary flagship models," Liu Zuohu, senior vice president of OPPO, mentioned at a media communication meeting.
In addition, the current users of folding machines are still concentrated in the business crowd, and it is even more difficult for new players like OV and Xiaomi to get a slice of the business crowd.
In this regard, Samsung and Huawei have taken the lead in targeting female users. This time, Huawei’s P50 Pocket has added the function of detecting sun protection. According to Huawei’s official introduction, Huawei Mirror provides an intelligent sun protection reminder function, and uses a hyperspectral imaging system to provide users with sunburn detection services. Earlier, the compact and portable design of Samsung Flip series was also suitable for female users.
However, the time for folding screen mobile phones to enter the market is still short, and it will take time to test whether they can be bought by female users.
In addition, when the technical difficulties of hard power such as hinges and screens are still being broken, the high maintenance cost has become a factor affecting the popularity of folding screen mobile phones. According to Huawei’s official website, Huawei’s P50 Pocket costs as much as 4,379 yuan only for screen maintenance, even exceeding some domestic high-end flagship machine. Other repairable components include the motherboard, upper battery cover (including external screen) and rear-view lens, and the prices are 3399 yuan, 579 yuan and 999 yuan respectively.
Obviously, immature technology and imperfect user experience have become a mountain in front of folding screen mobile phone manufacturers.
Don’t forget that in the field of folding machines, Apple, a heavyweight player in the smartphone market, has not yet finished. If Apple joins, it will become a "killer" player and further expand the overall market of folding machines.Guo Ming Ti, an analyst with Tianfeng International who has been paying close attention to Apple for a long time, believes that the first Apple folding screen mobile phone will be available in 2023, and Apple is ready to increase the shipment of its first folding screen iPhone to 20 million units.
However, if Apple also introduces folding screen phones, the competition in the whole market will be more intense, and the pattern may also change.
There is no new story about smart phones, which is a commonplace topic. It is reasonable that the imagination space brought by folding screen mobile phones attracts mobile phone manufacturers to compete.However, the real problem is that the folding screen mobile phone has been born for three years, but its shipment volume is far less than that of other smart phones, and it is still relatively deserted in the China market. Whether the price reduction tide can make the folding machine catch fire in the China market will soon be answered.
