In the blink of an eye, 2016 is already halfway through. What unexpected changes have taken place in the mobile phone industry?

In the blink of an eye, 2016 is already halfway through. The college entrance examination and the high school entrance examination are over, and the seniors have moved out of the campus on the last day of June. Looking back on the past six months, it seems that many hot events have occurred, such as Google AlphaGo's battle with Go 9th Dan Lee Sedol, the trial of Qvod CEO Wang Xin, and Baidu's medical promotion incident. At the same time, the mobile phone industry has also been exciting and full of joys and sorrows in the past six months. Next, let's talk about the unexpected changes that have taken place in the mobile phone industry in the past six months.
Halfway through the year! What unexpected changes have occurred in the mobile phone industry?

Supply chain: Quad-core becomes a "comeback", MediaTek counterattacks, AMOLED becomes the new favorite

For upstream suppliers in the mobile phone industry chain, the actual turmoil was the greatest in 2015. Because the smartphone market has entered a stock market after rapid growth in the previous few years, the mobile phone supply chain with overcapacity immediately entered a market cleansing phase, and a large number of suppliers declared bankruptcy. However, ODM manufacturers with design and manufacturing capabilities thrived thanks to the hot thousand-yuan phone market last year. Of course, many suppliers will still face bankruptcy this year.

Here, I will not elaborate on the changes in the mobile phone industry chain from booming to reshuffle, but will talk about the changes in some suppliers of processor chips and screens that we often come into contact with.

Qualcomm launches quad-core flagship chip

I think no one would refute that Qualcomm is the dominant player in the mobile phone processing chip industry. Qualcomm's chips also account for the vast majority of the market share, and can even be said to be one of the few choices for manufacturers. At the beginning of the year, many manufacturers lined up to launch their flagship models with Qualcomm Snapdragon 820. In fact, due to the overheating problem of Qualcomm Snapdragon 810, Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 has attracted more attention, and manufacturers also need new chips to launch flagship products.

What is unexpected is that octa-core processing chips are already everywhere, and Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 finally adopted a quad-core architecture. However, the confidence of Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 returning to the quad-core architecture comes from its use of Kryo independent architecture core, and the single-core performance is much higher than the public version A72. Compared with the hurricane core, Qualcomm obviously pays more attention to the mining of single-core performance. After all, in actual experience, the performance of single-core performance is more important than multi-core performance, and Qualcomm Snapdragon 820's multi-core performance also has a good performance.

From this, we can see that chip manufacturers represented by Qualcomm have returned to rational thinking in the pursuit of processor cores. However, it is a bit embarrassing that Qualcomm needs to consider how to make the public accept that quad-core is not necessarily worse than octa-core or even dec-core.

MediaTek becomes the new favorite of mobile phone manufacturers

As we all know, Qualcomm's biggest advantage lies in baseband, and most all-Netcom mobile phones used Qualcomm's solution earlier. However, MediaTek broke this situation at the beginning of last year and launched two SoCs, MT6753 and MT6735, that support all-Netcom network standards through relevant patent authorization from VMware. Because MediaTek's all-Netcom solution is more cost-effective, it has been sought after by mobile phone manufacturers. Last year, most of the thousand-yuan phones used MT6753 or MT6735 processing chips.

However, following the counterattack in the low-end 1,000 yuan phone market, MediaTek's mid-to-high-end SoCs have also performed well this year. The Helio P10 and the first 10-core processor Helio X20 launched this year have been very popular. Currently, there are many models in the 799 to 1,099 yuan price range, including 360 Mobile N4 and Le 2, while the only Qualcomm Snapdragon 650 with a similar positioning is Redmi Note 3. In addition, MediaTek can be frequently seen even in mid-to-high-end models, such as the OPPO R9 equipped with MT6755, and the Le 2 Pro and Meizu Pro 6 equipped with Helio X25.

From this, it can be seen that after the popularization of CDMA integrated into MediaTek's chips, it has successfully seized a lot of market share that originally belonged to Qualcomm. At present, whether it is a low-end thousand-yuan mobile phone or a mid-to-high-end model, manufacturers are increasingly willing to use MediaTek's chips.

AMOLED screens are collectively praised by manufacturers

The pros and cons of AMOLED screens can be simply attributed to their bright display colors. Some people like this feature, while others hate it. However, since AMOLED screens are thinner, more power-efficient, and more malleable, they are more in line with the thin and light design and long battery life requirements of mobile phones, so more and more manufacturers tend to choose AMOLED screens. Many new models released in the first half of this year use AMOLED screens.

Recently, there is news from the Taiwanese industry chain that Samsung is currently increasing the production capacity of AMOLED screens, because this material screen is increasingly favored by mobile phone manufacturers. In addition, it is rumored that Apple will also use AMOLED screens next year, which is very likely to cause other mobile phone manufacturers to use AMOLED screens, and LCD will eventually become a marginal product.

Mobile phone manufacturers: Nokia and Microsoft have forgotten each other, old manufacturers are still embarrassed, Coolpad changed its name to Jia

Nokia and Microsoft finally divorce

Nokia and Microsoft once represented the most glorious era. One dominated the pockets of people on earth for 14 consecutive years, and the other still occupies 90% of the desktop PC market share. In 2011, Nokia and Microsoft reached a strategic cooperation agreement and started an enviable honeymoon period. However, it turns out that two negatives can make a positive, but a positive does not necessarily make a positive.

On May 18, 2016, Nokia confirmed the licensing of its smartphone business and the sale of its feature phone business on the same day. The seven-year itch that never came finally ended the marriage of the two giants in the sixth year of their marriage. Many people expected Nokia to return with Android, but in fact, for Nokia, mobile phones have become a thing of the past. In addition to the communications business, the former Finnish mobile phone giant has begun to enter the digital healthcare and virtual reality markets.

On the other hand, for Microsoft, this giant that dominates more than 90% of desktop PCs has lost miserably in the mobile market. With the popularization of smart terminals, users only need a browser interface to access the Internet under the concept of cloud computing. The mobile field is becoming more and more important in the future development of the Internet. On the other hand, the position of desktop operating systems in network terminals is gradually shaken. If Microsoft cannot embrace the mobile Internet, then the two core businesses of Windows and Office will become Microsoft's Achilles heel.

Fortunately, under the leadership of Nadella, Microsoft has taken the first step in its transformation. As for the future of Windows 10 Mobile phones that Microsoft fans are concerned about, who knows?

Old manufacturers are still embarrassed

"Either explode in silence or perish in silence." This sentence is the most true portrayal of some veteran mobile phone manufacturers.

Five years ago, when the Symbian dynasty collapsed and the giant Nokia declined, the market value of Taiwan's HTC soared to US$33.5 billion, surpassing Nokia to become the second largest mobile phone manufacturer after Apple. However, in just two years, HTC encountered multiple changes. The North American market with the largest shipment volume was attacked by Apple and Samsung and was the first to be lost. As a result, HTC entered the mainland market too late and was unable to compete with Xiaomi, which was in its heyday at the time. At this point, its former glory has disappeared.

Another example is Sony. The two words "Sony", or the four letters "SONY", have reached the point where people can "get excited at the sight of the name", but Sony Mobile is sinking deeper and deeper into the quagmire of losses.

Five years ago, the same year when Nokia was declining, shortly after the release of iPhone 4s, Sony did something that all media were not optimistic about: it acquired Ericsson. The industry believed that Sony had missed the opportunity to rise in the smartphone market. However, five months later, a "SONY" LT26i slapped all media in the face, and a year later, the L36h even achieved a good result of 4.6 million units after 40 days on the market - but the story ended there. The highly anticipated One Sony phone "Xperia Z L39h" (Z1) became the beginning of Sony Mobile's nightmare due to various product problems.

In the past few years when the smartphone industry has undergone tremendous changes, many old manufacturers including HTC, Sony, and Moto have collectively lost themselves and are sleeping in their old dreams. The lack of innovation and conservative strategies have made them unable to disrupt the market, so they can only be disrupted.

Coolpad changes its name to Jia

Nowadays, the words "China Cool Alliance" are often ironic. Once upon a time, Coolpad, one of the four largest mobile phone manufacturers in China, achieved explosive growth in the years when the 3G smartphone market exploded, relying on the strategy of low prices, multiple models and bundling with operators. Even in 2013, Coolpad ranked third in the domestic mobile phone market with a market share of 9.1%.

However, as operators stopped terminal subsidies, this was the most terrible nightmare for Coolpad, whose sales and shipment capacity were overly dependent on operator channels and subsidies. With its own offline channels weak and the absence of Internet e-commerce channels, Coolpad, whose products were almost uncompetitive, began to fall behind.

On the other hand, LeEco became the most dazzling star among domestic mobile phone manufacturers last year with its strong marketing strength and capital. However, compared with Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO and other manufacturers, LeEco's mobile phone sales of less than 10 million are actually difficult to gain a foothold in the ever-changing domestic market. LeEco's position is far less dazzling than its exposure in the industry and the market, and it can even be said that it is still in a marginalized state. LeEco itself knows that the market cannot be fooled by a few "PPTs".

Not long ago, LeEco purchased another 11% of Coolpad's shares for HK$1.047 billion. In addition to the 18% stake in Coolpad that LeEco invested RMB2.18 billion last year, LeEco now holds a total of 28.90% of Coolpad's shares, becoming the largest shareholder of Coolpad. This move is probably aimed at Coolpad's advantages in R&D, patents, channels and supply chain.

Coolpad is not weak in the field of technology. Its total global patent reserves exceed 7,000, and its trademarks and domain names have also formed a complete global layout. For LeTV, this is a huge fortune. In addition, it will also facilitate the operation of LeTV's mobile business on a global scale and reduce intellectual property disputes in overseas markets.

Market: Mid-range demand grows, the landscape changes, and VR becomes a new focus

The demand for 1,000-yuan phones is starting to cool down, and the demand for mid-range phones is growing

The thousand-yuan phone market was the focus of the mobile phone industry last year, and many manufacturers gained significant growth by relying on the thousand-yuan phone market. However, the thousand-yuan phone market in the first half of this year has begun to cool down, while the mid-range market has grown.

According to the latest data from Nielsen's smart device share monitoring platform, as of the first four months of this year, the overall share of mid-to-high-end smartphones (models above 2,000 yuan) increased by nearly 1.17% (Apple's market share fell by 1.67%, while the overall share of non-iOS models above 2,000 yuan increased by 2.84%), while the overall share of models below 1,000 yuan further declined by 1.26%. From this point of view, the current consumption in the smartphone market is still upgrading, which means that consumers are willing to spend more money to buy products with better experience.

OPPO and vivo rank among the top five in the world

In the first half of this year, the most surprising thing should be that OPPO and vivo ranked among the top five in the global smartphone market in the first quarter, while Xiaomi, which claimed to be the number one in domestic shipments last year, became others (squeezed out of the top five).

According to the IDC Global Mobile Quarterly Tracking Report, OPPO and vivo ranked fourth and fifth in terms of shipments in the first quarter of this year, following Samsung, Apple and Huawei. In addition, the year-on-year growth rates of OPPO and vivo in the first quarter of this year exceeded 100%, at 153.2% and 123.8% respectively.

However, compared with last year's market performance, OPPO/vivo's performance in the first quarter of this year is indeed surprising. It can only be said that this is the experience of OPPO/vivo's offline channels and multi-channel publicity advantages, and it happened to meet the growth of mid-range market demand.

VR becomes the new focus of mobile phone manufacturers

There is no doubt that VR is the new focus of the smart hardware field this year. The current VR market can be said to be quite "lively". The high-end market includes HTC, Sony and Oculus, while the low-end market includes Baofeng Magic Mirror, Qianhuan Sunglasses and other VR glasses are also developing rapidly. In addition, various mobile phone manufacturers have also entered the VR field.

When VR began to attract the attention of smart hardware manufacturers, HTC and Sony began to get involved in this field, and Samsung later launched Gear VR. Then, mobile phone manufacturers such as LeTV, Huawei and ZTE also released their own VR products. As of the first half of this year, almost all mobile phone manufacturers have shown signs of entering the VR field.

In addition, Google released the Daydream VR platform at this year's I/O conference. The main functions of this VR platform include providing system support for mobile VR, providing reference standards for VR hardware design, and developing content resources for the VR platform. Google's Daydream VR platform has encouraged more manufacturers to develop VR hardware products and work together to develop content resources for the VR platform.

From this point of view, VR has become a new focus for mobile phone manufacturers. Of course, the participation of mobile phone manufacturers will accelerate the popularization of VR concepts and promote the development of VR platform content.

Products: Small-screen market is either recovering or not, 3D Touch is ignored, and innovation is insufficient

Is the small screen market really "warming up"?

With the release of iPhone SE, there has been a craze for "small-screen flagships" in the domestic mobile phone market. But in fact, the screen sizes of these so-called small-screen mobile phones are mostly around 5.0, while the screen size of iPhone SE is 4.0. In other words, these mobile phone manufacturers are just taking advantage of Apple's momentum and using the opportunity to play a marketing trick.

iPhone SE

In 2013, driven by Samsung, the global mobile phone market began to develop towards large-screen mobile phones. Screen sizes of 4.0, 4.5, 4.7, 5.0, 5.2, 5.5 and even 6.0 have been called "large screens" at different stages. Today, people's demand for screen size has begun to stabilize, basically concentrated between 4.7, 5.0, 5.2 and 5.5 inches. The concept of large and small screens has begun to blur. For consumers, what they need is a comfortable screen size and they don't particularly care about the difference between large and small screens. Therefore, the so-called "small screen reflux" is actually a false proposition.

On the other hand, the production of screen sizes in the supply chain has basically stabilized within the several sizes mentioned above. For mobile phone manufacturers, creating a "real" small-screen mobile phone (below 4.7) requires re-opening the mold for production, which increases costs a lot. In addition, most of these small-screen mobile phones are mid-to-low-end models, so this possibility is even lower. Therefore, the statement that the small-screen market is "warming up" is not accurate.

3D Touch is left out

In the past, every time Apple released an iPhone, the new technology it showcased would be followed by many mobile phone manufacturers soon after. However, it has been 10 months since Apple launched 3D Touch pressure touch technology on the iPhone 6s/6s Plus last year. Why is the entire Android camp still on the sidelines, with only a few manufacturers launching similar pressure touch technology?

Firstly, the current application scenarios of 3D Touch are really limited. Apart from serving as a "right click" function, it is not very useful. It is not as disruptive and practical as the fingerprint recognition technology that appeared on the iPhone 5s. This is the most important reason why most manufacturers maintain a conservative attitude.

Second, 3D Touch technology is not mature. Apart from Apple's self-developed pressure touch technology, there is currently only the ClearForce solution launched by Synaptics. However, judging from the few Android phones that currently support pressure touch, the switching experience is not satisfactory, and the gap is obvious compared with Apple.

Third, Google has not opened the API of this pressure touch technology to native Android, which means that each mobile phone manufacturer that uses pressure touch has a separate API. For software manufacturers, this undoubtedly greatly increases the cost of software development, especially when there is no breakthrough development in this technology. Most software manufacturers will not make separate adaptations for each brand of mobile phone.

Insufficient innovation

The year 2016 continued the pace of the previous year. The entire mobile phone market lacked innovation, and no new technology emerged that could disrupt the market - not even Apple was an exception. Under such circumstances, many mobile phone manufacturers made new attempts.

LG G5

LG's flagship phone G5, launched this year, has changed its previous design and has become one of the two star models at this year's MWC conference (the other is Samsung Galaxy S7/S7 edge) - the reason is that G5 is a "modular" phone. Strictly speaking, G5 is different from real modularity, and is not as thorough as Google's Project Ara modularity. Although it is still unknown how G5 will perform in the market, it is at least a new attempt.

In addition, customized phones seem to be very popular this year. Following the popular Iron Man version of Galaxy S6 edge last year, Samsung launched the Batman version of Galaxy S7 edge this year, which was also popular among consumers. In addition, OPPO launched the Barcelona customized version and TFBOYS customized version of R9, which are also very popular among consumers. The popularity of customized phones has, to a certain extent, covered up the embarrassment of the lack of technological innovation.

Summarize:

In general, the mobile phone industry has undergone many subtle changes in the past six months, and has also left many regrets. For example, Nokia, which everyone expected to return, finally announced that it would give up the mobile phone market. More unexpectedly, OPPO and vivo ranked among the top five in the global smartphone market in the first quarter. In terms of products, although the innovation is still insufficient, there are still some eye-catching products, such as the modular design of LG G5. Finally, we look forward to a new pattern in the mobile phone industry in the second half of the year, and more amazing products.

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.