With big brands so powerful, what is the future for small mobile phone manufacturers?

The release of new mobile phones in the first half of the year is probably coming to a temporary end. In the past few months, major manufacturers have taken turns to launch new phones every month and keep surprising consumers. Consumers have also received a long list of 5G flagship phones to choose from.

But at the same time, the presence of small manufacturers is becoming increasingly weak. Nowadays, whenever you walk into an offline mobile phone store, the prominent positions in the store are always occupied by a few companies such as "Huami, OV, and Apple", while small brands can only occupy a corner, and even their signboards are dim.

This is even more true for the data reflected in various mobile phone industry reports. Only the top few companies can appear on the list, and their positions have been fixed for many years. The remaining brands are often integrated and counted and placed in the "Others" column.

Small factories are gradually being forgotten by consumers, even if they have not actually disappeared.

How much market is left for "Others"?

The inverted pyramid structure of China's mobile phone market has become increasingly obvious. As early as the end of 2017, the top five brands had taken more than 80% of the market share. More than two years later, this situation has not only not reversed, but has become even worse.

According to reports from multiple analysis agencies such as IDC and Counterpoint, by the first quarter of 2020, the top five mobile phone manufacturers had captured more than 90% of the market.

Even though due to the epidemic, the shipment volume of mobile phone manufacturers in the first quarter of this year showed a year-on-year decline, but the data shows that the market share of the leading manufacturers has not changed much. On the contrary, the "Others" camp has shrunk from 10%-15% two or three years ago to 7-8% now. The figures given in some reports are even less than 4%.

The gap between large and small manufacturers is also widening. According to the 2019 global mobile phone market shipment data provided by Counterpoint, currently only six manufacturers, Samsung, Apple, Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO and vivo, have the ability to ship more than 100 million units per year.

As for Lenovo, LG and other companies that rank behind, their figures have generally plummeted to around 20 to 30 million. There is a huge gap in between, and no single manufacturer has managed to make it into the group.

Narrowing the scope to the domestic market, according to the 2019 data provided by CINNO Research, the total shipments of the top three Huawei (including Honor), vivo (including IQOO), and OPPO (including realme) accounted for 73.6% of the total.

There is also a huge gap in market share between the top five and the manufacturers classified as "Others" at the end, and it will be almost impossible to catch up in a short period of time.

Speaking of 5G, two years ago, we said that 5G would be a good breakthrough for small manufacturers, but at this stage, in addition to faster Internet speeds, 5G also brings higher product prices and package charges. Coupled with the impact of the epidemic, it will still take some time before the real 5G replacement wave arrives.

According to IDC statistics, Huawei alone accounts for more than half of the 5G mobile phone market share in China, and the 2nd to 4th place have a total of more than 40% of the market. The chances of small and medium-sized manufacturers to rise to the top are still slim.

It is difficult for small factories to learn from the strength of big brands

The mobile phone industry has become highly mature. An obvious phenomenon is that it is difficult for mobile phone companies to make innovations in appearance and configuration of their products. The only difference between them may be the brand logo.

But differentiation is still the most important part of the product. In fact, the major mobile phone manufacturers at the forefront of the market can still come up with something of their own. The words "customization" and "first release" often seen at press conferences are the best proof of this. To some extent, it also reflects their control over the supply chain.

For example, OPPO and vivo, which used to focus on marketing and rarely talked about parameters, are now very active in the use of new technologies. Vivo chose to mass-produce waterfall screens last year, and OPPO has also successively introduced periscope photography, 120Hz high refresh screens, and 40W wireless charging technologies, and the number of technical communication meetings for the media is also gradually increasing.

Huawei has gone further in differentiation. In addition to the Kirin chip, Huawei has long sought customized designs with Sony for cameras, which has now become the most important differentiated selling point for Huawei's flagship phones; and the multi-device collaborative ecosystem established by EMUI, or the mass production of foldable screens, further highlights its strength in production and technology.

Betting on new technologies is actually a gamble. The huge scale means that large manufacturers have more opportunities for trial and error, allowing them to test new technologies such as screen fingerprints, waterfall screens, folding screens or periscope cameras in the consumer market to see if they can stimulate new user needs.

But for small factories, any rash attempt at new technology is likely to turn into an act of digging their own graves.

The advantages in terms of volume do not stop there. New technologies like Qualcomm chips that can be used by all companies can still gain greater say in negotiations with suppliers, and get components earlier or in larger quantities than small factories. This is not uncommon in the industry.

Take Xiaomi 10 as an example. Although it is not the only flagship phone equipped with the Snapdragon 865 chip, its earlier launch time has given it a certain first-mover advantage in the market and indirectly made it a "comparison reference" for this year's new batch of 5G flagship phones.

Even the not-so-cost-effective price of 3,999 yuan was shown to be reasonable after multiple rounds of price comparisons with competing products, allowing consumers to wait and see before coming back to take a few more glances.

Meizu, on the other hand, could only recently launch its own 865 flagship, which was later than many major manufacturers, but with little difference in configuration specifications. In the end, it could only seek competitiveness through lower pricing; Lenovo's new Motorola Edge+ flagship directly gave up the plan to launch it in China; as for the Nut phone, the first 5G phone will probably have to wait until the second half of this year to be unveiled.

It can be said that in such a market where size and technological strength are the key factors, it is already difficult for small mobile phone manufacturers to compete with large manufacturers for resources around new technologies on the supply chain side. It is even more difficult for them to "overtake on curves" and surpass top-ranked manufacturers in hardware.

The mobile phone industry is not able to grow in scale, and small companies seem to be unable to enter other fields. Especially in the current hot IoT field, large companies can develop devices that have strong linkage with mobile phones, such as smart watches, TWS headphones and even TVs, or cooperate with other third-party home appliance brands to further improve user stickiness.

In contrast, small companies are still unable to afford such initial investment due to manpower or financial issues. Simply relying on a few charging heads, or accessories such as clothing, bags, and mobile phone cases can only be used to maintain relationships with core fans, but it is difficult to drive and feed back the sales of the mobile phone itself.

The future of small factories may not lie in pleasing the public

In order to pursue large-scale mass production, several major mobile phone manufacturers have adopted a "big and wide" strategy, not only with numerous product lines, but also covering high, medium and low price segments.

But no product can please everyone, and those niche areas that cannot be reached have become the breakthrough point for small manufacturers today.

Gaming phones, which have been frequently mentioned in the past two years, are an example. Brands such as Black Shark and Nubia Red Magic have successively entered this market. In addition, chip manufacturers such as Qualcomm and MediaTek have also begun to launch chips specifically for mobile game players, proving that there is indeed a considerable user base in this market.

Since they only need to target this specific group, gaming phones can be more open in product and function design. Therefore, the appearance of the phones of these two brands tends to be tough. In order to solve the heat dissipation problem, Nubia also stuffed the cooling fan into the phone, while Black Shark chose a central motherboard structure.

This kind of "unconventional" attempt is basically unlikely to appear on a popular flagship phone that is balanced in all aspects. In fact, it is very similar to the women's phones that focused on selfies a few years ago. Both make design trade-offs to satisfy niche users.

The question is whether the mobile game market segment alone can support the continued development and survival of two or three brands.

However, these small manufacturers are not fighting alone. For example, Nubia is backed by ZTE, and Black Shark also maintains close ties with Xiaomi. This frees them from concerns about component procurement, product debugging, and even production and after-sales service, and they share resources with large manufacturers in the supply chain.

Small companies that rely on large companies for survival have also become a new trend in the current mobile phone market competition. Most of the time, they focus on niche areas to avoid the edge of large companies, and also to take over the original audience of the parent brand, allowing the parent brand to better impact the high-end market.

The competition for users in niche areas is also reflected in software. Some "Others" brands do regard the system as a product differentiation. After all, this is also the "different" part.

For example, Meizu's Flyme, Nut's Smartisan OS, or OnePlus' "Hydrogen OS", these systems often have a strong brand style and often have some interesting functional points.

To this day, there are still many "die-hard fans" who will buy mobile phones from small brands because of these customized systems. It is not easy for other large manufacturers to pry open these loyal users.

A market dominated by a few companies eventually loses its variables and fun, but in the face of the cruel commercial market, it is indeed difficult for a "niche" in the absolute sense to survive. How to use their own differentiation and uniqueness to find a space that suits their own development may be what small mobile phone manufacturers have been thinking about. Whoever can find this answer earlier may become the next big manufacturer.