The landscape after the dividend: a detailed analysis of China's mobile phone market in 2017

This article contains the key content of GfK's "2016 China Mobile Phone Market Annual Report", which is divided into four parts: the overall market, channel changes, product trends, and operators. The sharing and interpretation are as follows:

1. Overall market: Weakened dividends, rising costs, and structural upgrades

The rapid growth of China's mobile phone market in 2016 was beyond many people's expectations. The reasons behind this include consumption upgrades, product upgrades and other factors. According to GfK's monitoring data, domestic mobile phone retail sales in 2016 reached 471 million units, a year-on-year increase of 12.2%. Rapid growth often brings dividends for the next year. It is estimated that the retail sales volume in 2017 will reach 495 million units, a year-on-year increase of 5.1%.

As a subsidiary of GfK, Sino predicts a growth rate of 4.0% in 2017. My view is that the Chinese mobile phone market is already saturated, and after the structural replacement bonus is over, there will be no significant growth from 2017 to 2019, and the year-on-year growth will be within 5%.

One manifestation of overdrawn bonus is that the surge in shipments has made it difficult for raw materials to keep up, resulting in tight supply. This situation has already occurred in the second half of 2016 (I will analyze the rise in raw material prices in a separate article). One of the competitive strategies of large brand manufacturers is to place large orders to monopolize core components. In fact, several manufacturers did this in 2016, with great results.

Chips, screens, lenses, and storage account for 50%-70% of the cost structure. Key manufacturers are all overseas. Affected by the depreciation of the RMB, costs have further increased, and manufacturers' profit pressure has increased. For small and medium-sized brands, the ability to obtain goods from upstream determines life and death. If they don't stick together in 2017, they will be doomed.

The trend of consumption upgrading is still continuing, so the pace of product upgrading of mainstream brand manufacturers will continue, and the mid-to-high-end range of 1,000-4,000 yuan will further expand, accounting for 62%. This proportion is similar to the market share of less than 1,000 yuan when operators popularized smart terminals four years ago. It can be seen that different industry dividends will bring similar changes in the pattern.

2. Channel changes: offline driven, slowdown in low-end retail, and retail battle

In 2016, Huawei, OPPO and vivo achieved rapid development and once entered the global top 5, especially the latter two, which benefited from the rapid development of offline channels. This momentum will continue in 2017, but will decline from 17.9% in 2016 to 8.3%, while the online market will decline from 6.8% to 3.6%.

Regarding online and offline trends, different research companies have different monitoring data. According to IDC data, the online market is experiencing negative growth. Sino believes that the growth rates of both online and offline markets in 2017 were both below 5%. What they have in common is that offline is still the main driving force for overall market growth.

Starting from the second half of 2015, operators launched a campaign to popularize 4G in low-tier cities. As a result, the market for T4 and below mobile phones led the year-on-year growth rate, reaching 30% at one point. This made OPPO and vivo, which had a good layout, the biggest winners. Small brands such as Bailifeng, which followed the pace of operators, almost made it into the top 10 in the domestic market. In 2017, the low-tier market gradually became saturated and the growth trend slowed down.

Here, I am reminded of a sentence from a senior executive of a mobile terminal company: Knowing one day in advance will bring you wealth and prosperity for ten years. In fact, in making mobile phones, polishing is important, but understanding policies and seeing trends are also required courses.

From the layout in 2016, it can be seen that operators, national agents, retailers and brand owners have all targeted retail stores, especially independent communication stores. It was once difficult to get goods, but now it has become a battleground. Whoever can gain the support of more small and medium-sized stores in 2017 will gain the right to speak in the industry chain.

3. Product trends: Dual cameras are becoming more popular, wireless charging is breaking through, and fingerprint recognition is upgrading

There will be many highlights in the flagship models in 2017, but none of them are new. Just take a look. In fact, the entire mobile phone industry is in a period of lack of innovation, including Apple. From the perspective of the development of mobile phone shooting technology, 2000W pixels is the node of single camera, which has basically been reached. 2016 became the first year of dual camera, and 2017 will be further popularized.

Battery life has always been a pain point for users. Before there is a breakthrough innovation in battery materials, large-capacity batteries and fast charging have become the highlights for manufacturers to attract users. Due to the demand for portability, wireless charging will become a development trend and will have a breakthrough in 2017.

After the fingerprint recognition technology is fully popularized, more advanced biometrics, including iris and eye pattern recognition, will focus on the security market, especially the government and business markets. However, it is worth mentioning that security awareness needs to be gradually cultivated. At present, security is not a big pain point for promoting user consumption.

4. Operators: Three Lows, Card Slot Competition, and NFC

The battle for 4G popularization among operators is still going on, and the "three lows" have become the focus of policy. From the perspective of products and channels, they are low-end and low-line, that is, attacking the rural market with machines below 1,000 yuan and promoting the upgrade from 2G/3G to 4G. In addition, low-frequency terminals such as China Telecom 800M, China Unicom 900M, and China Mobile Band8 will also become a focus of subsidies.

In 2015, China Telecom promoted full network access, followed by China Unicom and China Mobile, and all network access rose rapidly. In the second half of 2016, operators fully liberalized, and the card slot competition became fierce, impacting the traffic value structure of operators. In 2017, the card slot customization policy was promulgated, driving the differentiation of the full network access structure, and 94% of Android phones were affected. The post-full network access era will test the resource game between manufacturers and operators. (There is not much to say about the policies of operators here, and a special article will be analyzed later)

China Telecom and China Unicom jointly promote the full network access, while China Mobile cooperates with manufacturers in a strategic, deep cooperation and cooperative manner, and initiates the card slot competition with customized phones. Compared with the previous two years of just talking, this time it is serious. I believe everyone has seen the public opinion war launched by China Telecom and China Unicom recently. Is the customized phone strategy right or wrong? I think this is an inevitable choice for market competition. Those who talk about historical regression and affecting industrial development are all flag-wavers of the public opinion war.

Regarding NFC, operators have been promoting it for a long time, but it has developed slowly without scenarios. Apple Pay and the pay of major manufacturers that followed suit have formed a development trend. Operators have taken this opportunity to increase subsidies and develop rapidly. However, scenario-based payment is still a factor that restricts development. With the competitive development of WeChat Pay and Alipay offline, NFC payment will also be subject to certain restrictions. The rule of the Internet industry is that when the boss and the second fight, the third one is often the one who gets hurt.

There are two more Ps about marketing, by the way:

First, press conferences are no longer centralized. Since 2016, they have shown an Internet and multipolar trend, and press conferences may occur at any time.

Second, there will be more cross-border marketing, looking for common fans from different fields, creating product tone and promoting sales at the same time.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.