The fierce competition in 2016 has ended. What more severe challenges will the mobile phone industry face next year?

The "balance" of 2016 is running out. In the year that is about to pass, some are happy while others are sad. This year is full of various processors, such as Snapdragon 821, Samsung 8890, Kirin 960 and Xiaomi's Pinecone processor. Insufficient production capacity of OLED screens, various black technologies, various concept phones, "bombs" and so on. The new year is coming soon. What constraints will the development of domestic mobile phones face in 2017?

CPU: 10nm process is more difficult

The latest data shows that in the coming 2017, all major CPU manufacturers will adopt the latest 10-nanometer process. The trend of manufacturing technology is to develop in the direction of higher density. The higher density of IC circuit design means that in the same size of IC, you can have a higher density and more complex circuit design. Compared with previous technologies, the integration of 10-nanometer process is continuously improved, power consumption is reduced, and device performance is improved.

Recently, @冷希Dev, an industry insider in Taiwan's mobile phone industry chain, shared the specific specifications of Kirin 970 on Weibo, which is the most complete information about Huawei's new generation processor. From this picture, it can be seen that whether it is Qualcomm, MediaTek or Kirin chips, they will all use the advanced 10nm process. It can be seen that each company wants to take a step forward to improve the performance of its own chips and its position in the industry.

The reason why the CPU of the new flagship in 2017 is tight is that due to technical problems with the 10nm process, Samsung is basically unable to meet the needs of Snapdragon 835. Samsung's 10nm process is not only used to produce Snapdragon chips, but also Apple's A11 chip and Samsung's own new flagship chip, which is very tight.

In fact, to sum it up, it is "supply exceeds demand". The 10nm process is the next mainstream process, and the only two companies that really master this process are TSMC and Samsung, and the yield rate is not guaranteed. During the peak period of domestic new phone releases, especially flagship phones, most of them will use the latest Snapdragon flagship processor. If the production capacity of Snapdragon 835 chips is insufficient, it will definitely be a major factor limiting the release of mobile phones.

OLED: Popular but low production capacity

Compared with LCD screens, OLED screens are more flexible and can be bent. And because of its self-luminous nature, OLED screens can better restore colors and make black appear purer. The AOD (Always On Display) function has received a lot of praise from users on Samsung phones. And OLED screens are very power-saving. At present, OLED screens are popular in the mobile phone industry and virtual reality devices. Many mobile phone manufacturers will definitely not miss this opportunity.

However, the biggest problem with OLED is that it is expensive, and screen manufacturers other than Samsung cannot control OLED screens very well. For example, the Xiaomi Note 2 released some time ago used an OLED screen provided by LG, which ultimately resulted in the Xiaomi Note 2 screen being too low in brightness, too low in resolution, and severely grainy.

In 2017, Samsung, the world's major OLED screen manufacturer, was out of stock due to supplying OLED screens to Apple and its own mobile phones. It is said that Huawei, OPPO, and vivo have established an alliance to invest in domestic OLED screen manufacturers such as Royole Technology to promote them to rapidly expand production capacity to meet their own needs. However, it takes time for OLED to achieve the same high quality and yield as Samsung, so the shortage of OLED screens will definitely have a great impact on the mobile phone market next year.

Components in short supply: prices rising

The growing domestic mobile phone market, although the era of simply stacking configurations over prices is getting farther and farther away, has not completely disappeared. Most mobile phone manufacturers now still use configuration as the main selling point. The most popular is dual-camera, and now mobile phones are moving in the direction of dual-camera. As dual-camera and high-pixel become standard, the biggest shortage has begun to become the shortage of lens modules, and the global lens module production capacity is insufficient. Since the first half of 2016, the price of RCD components has increased by 3 times, and by the second half of 2016, the price of memory chips has increased by more than 20%.

In fact, this is a good interpretation of "scarcity makes things valuable". In 2016, domestic mobile phones were released relatively concentratedly, and most mobile phones use dual cameras, which caused the supply of components to be insufficient. If the mobile phone market continues like this next year, it may cause more component prices to rise, and the direct impact of price increases is the increase in mobile phone prices or the loss and bankruptcy of mobile phone manufacturers. If manufacturers want to make a profit, they must adopt the method of raising mobile phone prices, but this will reduce sales. Domestic manufacturers have entered a vicious cycle.

Exchange rate changes: rising costs

The depreciation of the RMB has a huge impact on my country's economy. It has increased the costs of mobile phone manufacturers. Most of the key components of mobile phones are quoted in US dollars, including screens, memory chips, some components on the motherboard, sensors, etc., which are settled in US dollars. The cost increase will be relatively large, which has a great impact on profits.

The phenomenon of concentrated release and stacking of configurations of domestic mobile phones has caused the prices of various mobile phone components to rise. Coupled with the depreciation of the RMB, it is like adding insult to injury for mobile phone companies. The rising costs of the upstream supply chain are inevitably transferred to mobile phone manufacturers. "If the US dollar rises by 1 cent, our costs will increase by 20 yuan, which is very stressful," said Liu Jiangfeng, CEO of Coolpad Mobile Phone. It can be seen that mobile phone manufacturers are in great trouble.

In fact, the origin of all the above contradictions is the shortage of technology in domestic enterprises. Without core technology, the way of selling hardware and stacking configurations is actually assembling mobile phones in a fundamental sense. Looking at all the mobile phone manufacturers in the world, only Samsung can design and manufacture mobile phones by itself. Imagine if domestic manufacturers all have technology like Samsung and can completely build cars behind closed doors, then the impact of the market will be much smaller. This is the reality. Without core technology, it is like living under someone else's roof. Therefore, the only way to fundamentally solve the problem is to increase investment in scientific research and develop one's own core technology.

In general, the development of mobile phones in 2017 will definitely lead to the development of a number of new technologies. Whether the development of mobile phones next year will be smooth or not is closely related to the factors mentioned above. Especially for CPU and OLED screen, if the production capacity of these two core products cannot keep up with the pace, then the flagship models of next year can only become PPT models. This will make some smaller manufacturers face more severe situations, and the scene like Hammer two years ago will happen again.

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.