Domestic mobile phone will come to winter?

When 360, music, Gree, Mito and Li Yang, many stars have to do mobile phones, domestic mobile phone manufacturers ushered in quarterly negative growth. According to the IDC Global Mobile Phone Quarterly Tracking Report released in the first quarter of 2015 by the market research organization IDC, China's mobile phone market shipments in the first quarter of 2015 were about 109.8 million units, down 5.6% year-on-year. Among them, smartphone market shipments were around 98.8 million units, down 4.3% year-on-year. In the domestic smart machine market, it was ranked first in the high-end narrow market, with 14.6 million units (in the first quarter of 2015, Apple accounted for 14.7% of domestic smartphone shipments). Under the.

The information disclosed includes, as the overall national income rises, and the overall smartphone market is becoming saturated. When many users have multiple smartphones, the cost-effectiveness strategy has become ineffective when more and more users have one. For smartphones of more than a few models, the selection of new phones is more inclined to brands. At the same time, Apple, which has an ecological integration of hardware and software, is expanding its brand influence and its localization strategy is further effective. This means that the winter of home-made mobile phones, which are mainly cost-effective strategies, has already come.

One of the reasons why domestic mobile phones usher in the winter is that the development of domestic mobile phones has always relied on the supply of the entire industrial chain and raw materials and the assembly of foundries, resulting in the suppression of hardware innovation capabilities. Even at present, the supply chain is still the bottleneck that cannot be eliminated by domestic manufacturers. When collectively exerting “Kinghuang” to pursue hardware top allocation, it is already a “supply chain” in the upstream supply chain such as chips and cameras. Normal.

But the big reason is still at the operating system level. When almost all manufacturers have turned to Android, the voice of the domestic mobile phone manufacturers in the upper reaches of the industrial chain and the construction of the ecosystem have become castles in the air. As a result of the two-way vacancy at the core level of software and hardware, the brand has been suppressed. As mentioned earlier, in the saturated state of smart machines, consumers' choices for new machine purchases tend to be more selective and tend to be branded. Tom Kang, research director of market research firm Counterpoint, once pointed out that the penetration rate of smart phones in the Chinese market has exceeded 90%, which means that almost everyone in China already owns a smart phone. In the situation where the number of people or machines is more and more common, only a slight increase in configuration parameters will make it harder to impress users to purchase new machines, because users do not need to periodically update the near-homogenized devices. This can only cause the user to have more and more e-waste that is nowhere to be placed. From an environmental point of view, it is also a kind of burden, so often only the influential brands become the selection criteria at this time.

In addition, we also see that with the bi-directional word-of-mouth promotion of the iOS system and the iPhone, the Android brand continues to be low-end. Genetically, the Android system itself bears the suspicion of plagiarizing iOS, and Jobs once said in anger that he wanted to use his last breath of life to destroy Android, because Jobs believes that Android is a stolen product. This is due to the fact that Eric Schmidt, the current CEO of Google’s CEO, served as a director of Apple in the three years from August 2006 to August 2009. However, the development of the Android prototype and the iPhone’s full touch screen device were not too big. the difference. In the Android and iOS system level of brand competition, Android has fallen into the wind.

Compared to the Android open system, the iOS closed system has better software permissions, operation and process management mechanisms, and the system experience exceeds the others. All domestic manufacturers and Samsung and HTC brands are in the Android camp. Relatively speaking, regardless of their own strengths, all manufacturers are wearing the Android brand on their heads, regardless of the strengths and weaknesses of their mobile phones, configuration, high-end low-end , are all called Android phones. The continuous low-end of the Android system brand is borne by the mobile phone manufacturers in this camp. Even when the domestic singers, training teachers, security software vendors, and video sites can all enter the Android camp to make mobile phones, the entire Android brand is undoubtedly heightened. Therefore, under the condition that the brands at the big system level are continuously pulled down, all the brands in the entire Android camp follow internal injuries, and it is difficult for relatively good manufacturers to highlight their own brands through hardware upgrades and process design.

For Google, it is also not intended to promote the rise of Android's brand, because the Android operating system does not bring hardware-level profits to Google, the only advantage is to allow users to flow into its search base, so Google only needs to get enough users This is the core of Google's profit model. It needs to form the scale of mobile phone manufacturers and then form the scale of the user, so that mobile phone users of the Android camp can become a member of the software ecosystem whose search engine is at the core, and Google does not intend to over-support the rise of a certain brand, it also needs Android. The internal checks and balances of mobile phone manufacturers within the system can ensure their own voice and control. Therefore, Android manufacturers can't avoid the tragic strangling and price war in the Android camp at the system level.

Again, the limitation of the Android operating system to the manufacturers lies in the integration of software and hardware. Domestic mobile phones that take the Android train can integrate the resources in the industry chain and can erode like the termites and develop rapidly at the low end. However, they cannot control the software and hardware as Apple does. They can maintain a certain pace in software upgrades and hardware innovations. The deep integration ensures the brand's height and ability to innovate, and then ensures Apple's adoption of the high-end niche market avoids the low-end fierce fighting. When it comes to the saturation stage of smart machines, and when it is necessary to compete with the core competitiveness of the game, Android manufacturers find the brand head-on to become a shortcoming that cannot be broken through. The risk of not having control over the system level lies in the fact that there has been a lack of control over the integration of software and hardware.

The case of failure of software and hardware integration can be seen in Nokia. One important problem faced by Nokia's smart machine team was that the software team that designed the user interface and system was subject to the hardware team. The hardware team sometimes reduced the rules of the mobile phone in order to achieve rapid sales, even without regard to the software team. The simultaneous advancement and optimization and upgrade resulted in the failure of Nokia's software and hardware integration, and eventually led to the end of the Symbian mobile phone. Android mobile phone manufacturers' hardware innovations and Android system-level optimization and upgrades are controlled by mobile phone manufacturers and Google, respectively. This results in the reverse, that is, Android hardware vendor innovation is subject to system-level upgrades and optimization. Then there is a lack of a combination of software and hardware deep integration innovation and the power of synchronous control, which led to the overall lack of innovation in the Android camp.

Therefore, when the smart machine is saturated, Android manufacturers lack the brand tension and can only look for emerging markets, such as India, to continue this kind of hardware configuration assembly and upgrade game to survive. However, it is clear that eating India’s demographic dividend by replicating the advantages of local strategies and hardware industry chains is not a long-term solution. This has no effect on brand premiums and innovation. With many domestic manufacturers gathering in India, India’s demographic dividend will not last long. Coupled with the rise of local Indian manufacturers and the establishment of barriers to Indian brand protection strategies, the future may be accompanied by the continued decline in domestic manufacturers’ shipments. .

In the mobile phone industry, growth is in decline or continues to decline, it will become dangerous, and there has never been a precedent for returning to the original market share or profits once it has fallen into a loss. This can be seen from the history of the development of the smart phones of Samsung, Blackberry, Nokia, and Motorola. The book “Digital Warfare” states that loss is a dangerous signal to the mobile phone business. "It has caused a brand to lose the support of dealers because the sales cycle is extremely sensitive to outdated inventory, and the companies that have lost money are considered to be not good enough to make products, which makes them lose their incentive, promotion and consumer attention. This is A vicious circle, the glory of the past has no effect."

So, at the level of the Android system, the mobile phone manufacturers in the camp finally reached the current situation. In fact, there are netizens who commented on doing so to get together and make mobile phones: “Android has put swimming rings on the market to other manufacturers. Let this game have other people to participate in.” With this swimming circle, coupled with the maturity of the hardware vendors' supply chain and the addition of Foxconn and other foundries, they have been able to survive at a certain water level, but in turn, However, abundant industrial chain resources eventually let more manufacturers lose the opportunity to learn swimming skills. In the past few years, domestic mobile phones have not been able to break through the framework of cost-effectiveness and brand influence. The root cause is also the lack of control at the operating system level.

Android builds a homogenized and completely open competitive market. During the development phase of the smart machine, manufacturers can use the Android train to develop rapidly, but the stage of maturity and saturation has developed. The entire alliance cannot escape from the fierce homogenization. Competition, which makes Apple's uniqueness more dazzling. When the big waves strike, the water level rises, and the environment changes, how to survive in the vast sea has become an important issue for domestic manufacturers in the future.