The mobile phone industry is highly mature, but why is it becoming more and more "boring"?

As the mobile phone market matures, more and more old giants are being eliminated. Of course, not making mobile phones does not necessarily mean that you will not survive:

LG plans to transfer 4,000 employees from its mobile phone division to its home appliance and battery divisions next week. After all, home appliances have always been an important growth point for LG.

Apple, Samsung and other mobile phone manufacturers still have to pay Nokia a considerable amount of patent fees every year. After all, Nokia's patent application proportion in 5G technology has reached 10.5%, ranking second in the world in terms of patent application volume.

Motorola has been operating products including intercom systems, public safety networks, and video analysis software. Although Motorola no longer has a foothold in the mobile phone industry, it still has a dominant position in the private network industry.

It can be seen that even if these brands withdraw from the mobile phone industry, they are still doing well, and even without them, there will still be up-and-coming brands in the mobile phone industry.

This is indeed the case. We can see that the concentration of the mobile phone industry is increasing year by year, the industry chain is becoming more mature, and the production standards are becoming more similar. In recent years, mobile phone giants are keen on "high-end" and product prices have been raised again and again. From the perspective of the industry, this is a positive development trend.

However, because of this, today's mobile phones are all the same with touch screens, candies, and side buttons. Occasionally there are innovative functions and designs, but they are impossible to be as eye-catching as Apple's in the past.

This situation can't help but make people often miss the era of feature phones when old giants gathered: Nokia's sliding N95, Motorola's folding phone, LG's ice cream flip phone... That was really an era with rich and colorful mobile phone styles. Even though mobile phones could only make calls and send text messages at that time, the constantly emerging creativity and endless variety still made the mobile phone industry "flourish".

It is true that the fall of the giants is due to taking the wrong path in the process of development, with more and more shortcomings, which eventually led to falling behind. In theory, the development of the industry should be more and more mature, but this maturity is also mixed with regrets. "Now the competition among the top players in the mobile phone industry is becoming more and more fierce, and at the same time, it is becoming more and more boring," said Shen Yiren, former vice president of OPPO.

While large manufacturers have almost "monopolized" the mobile phone market, small brands have been squeezed out and have no room to survive. Interesting innovations often come from these small brands, such as Xiaomi and Hammer, which were very interesting in the past, but Xiaomi has gradually grown and is making every effort to enter the high-end market, and it seems that it has become less "interesting", while Hammer is directly submerged in the fierce competition from large brands, and it seems that there is almost no possibility of turning around.

Big-brand mobile phones have become mainstream and are competing to enter the high-end market. The direct consequence is that mobile phone prices are becoming less and less "affordable".

This is mainly because mobile phone manufacturers are willing to work hard on hardware, but this also leads to increasing costs year by year. If they want to make a profit, raising prices is one of the effective ways. In addition, as the brand awareness of mobile phones increases, consumers will recognize the brand more, and the price will also rise accordingly.

Nowadays, mobile phones have become an indispensable part of people’s daily lives. Judging from the development trend, more mobile phone brands will flood into the high-end market, but it is inevitable that they will become more "boring". This boredom may be regarded as a "side effect" of the maturity of the mobile phone industry. Therefore, although the mobile phone industry has a promising future, it will eventually make people feel a bit "regrettable".