The cold winter for domestic mobile phones is coming: Android is the key to success or failure?

While 360, LeTV, Gree, Meitu, Li Yang and many celebrities are all trying to make mobile phones, domestic mobile phone manufacturers are experiencing negative quarterly growth. According to the IDC Global Mobile Phone Quarterly Tracking Report for the first quarter of 2015 released by market research firm IDC, the shipment volume of China's mobile phone market in the first quarter of 2015 was about 109.8 million units, a year-on-year decline of 5.6%. Among them, the shipment volume of the smart phone market was about 98.8 million units, a year-on-year decline of 4.3%. However, the first place in the domestic smart phone market was won by Apple, which is positioned in the high-end niche market, with a shipment volume of 14.6 million units (in the first quarter of 2015, Apple accounted for 14.7% of the domestic smart phone shipment market).

This reveals that as the overall national income increases and the overall smartphone market is saturated, the cost-effective strategy has become ineffective when many users own multiple smartphones. As more and more users own more than one smartphone, they are more inclined to choose a brand when choosing a new smartphone. At the same time, Apple, which has an integrated hardware and software ecosystem, is expanding its brand influence and its localization strategy is further effective. This means that the winter for domestic smartphones that focus on cost-effective strategies has arrived.

One of the reasons why domestic mobile phones are facing a cold winter is that the development of domestic mobile phones has always relied on the entire industrial chain and the supply of raw materials and assembly by foundries, which has suppressed hardware innovation capabilities. Even now, the supply chain is still a bottleneck that domestic manufacturers cannot break. When collectively striving to pursue the top hardware configuration of the "king of mobile phones", "fighting for supply" in the upstream industrial chain, such as chips, cameras and other supply chain links, has become a normal situation.

But the main reason is still at the operating system level. When almost all manufacturers turned to Android, the voice and ecosystem construction of domestic mobile phone manufacturers in the upstream of the industry chain became castles in the air, and the result of the two-way vacancy in the core control of software and hardware was that the brand has been suppressed. As mentioned earlier, in the saturation of smart phones, consumers tend to be more picky about the choice of new phones and tend to prefer brands.

Tom Kang, research director of market research firm Counterpoint, once pointed out that the current smartphone penetration rate in the Chinese market has exceeded 90%, which means that almost everyone in China already owns a smartphone. As it becomes increasingly common for one person to own one smartphone or even multiple smartphones, it is difficult to impress users with a small improvement in configuration parameters, because users do not need to periodically upgrade nearly homogeneous devices. This can only result in users having more and more electronic waste that has nowhere to go, which is also a burden from an environmental perspective. Therefore, only influential brands often become the selection criteria at this time.

In addition, we also see that as the reputation of iOS and iPhone improves, the Android brand continues to become low-end. From a genetic point of view, the Android system itself is suspected of copying iOS. At that time, Jobs angrily said that he would destroy Android with his last breath because he believed that Android was a stolen product. This was because Eric Schmidt, the former CEO and current chairman of Google, served as a director of Apple for three years from 2006 to August 2009, and the Android prototype he developed later was not much different from the iPhone full touch screen machine. In the brand competition between Android and iOS systems, Android has fallen behind.

Compared with the open Android system, the closed iOS system has better software permissions, operation and process management mechanisms, and the system experience is superior. All domestic manufacturers and Samsung and HTC brands are in the Android camp. Relatively speaking, all manufacturers, regardless of their own strength, have the Android brand on their heads. These manufacturers are all called Android phones regardless of the quality of their mobile phone workmanship, configuration, high-end or low-end. The continuous low-endization of the Android system brand has first and foremost affected the mobile phone manufacturers in this camp. Even when domestic singers, training teachers, security software manufacturers, and video websites can enter the Android camp to make mobile phones, the height of the entire Android brand is undoubtedly being continuously lowered. Therefore, when the brand at the large system level is continuously lowered, all brands in the entire Android camp are also hurt. It is even more difficult for relatively excellent manufacturers to highlight their own brands through hardware upgrades and process design.

For Google, it has no intention to promote the Android brand, because the Android operating system does not bring Google profits at the hardware level. The only benefit is to attract users to its search base, so Google only needs to acquire enough users, which is the core of Google's profit model. It needs to form a scale of mobile phone manufacturers and then a user scale, so that mobile phone users in the Android camp can become a member of the software ecosystem with its search engine as the core. Google has no intention of excessively supporting the rise of a certain brand. It needs the checks and balances and competition of mobile phone manufacturers within the Android system to ensure its own voice and control. Therefore, when Android manufacturers cannot make breakthroughs at the system level, they can never avoid fierce fighting and price wars within the Android camp.

Thirdly, the limitation of Android operating system on manufacturers lies in the integration of software and hardware. Domestic mobile phones can catch the Android train and develop rapidly by integrating resources in the industrial chain, just like termites, eroding the low-end market. However, they cannot control software and hardware like Apple, and maintain a certain rhythm and deep integration between software upgrades and hardware innovations. This ensures the brand height and innovation capabilities, and then ensures that Apple can dominate the high-end niche market from beginning to end, avoiding the fierce competition in the low-end market. When the development reached the saturation stage of smart phones, it was time to fight for core competitiveness, but Android manufacturers found that the brand had become an insurmountable shortcoming. The risk of not controlling the system level is that there is a lack of control over the integration and innovation of software and hardware from beginning to end.

Nokia is an example of a failed integration of software and hardware. At that time, Nokia's smartphone team faced an important problem: the software team that designed the user interface and system was subject to the hardware team. The hardware team sometimes lowered the rules of the phone in order to achieve the goal of rapid sales, and even ignored the simultaneous advancement and optimization and upgrade of the software team, which led to the failure of Nokia's software and hardware integration and ultimately the demise of Symbian phones. The hardware innovation of Android phone manufacturers and the optimization and upgrade of the Android system level are also controlled by the phone manufacturers and Google respectively, which leads to the opposite result. That is, the innovation of Android hardware manufacturers is subject to the upgrade and optimization of the system level, and then lacks a kind of power for the simultaneous control and advancement of the deep integration of software and hardware innovation, which leads to the overall lack of innovation in the Android camp.

Therefore, when the smartphone market is saturated, Android manufacturers lack brand tension and can only look for emerging markets, such as India, to continue the game of hardware configuration assembly and upgrading to survive. But it is obvious that copying local strategies and hardware industry chain advantages to eat India's demographic dividend is not a long-term solution, and it is also useless for improving brand premium and innovation capabilities. With many domestic manufacturers flocking to India, India's demographic dividend will not last long. In addition, with the rise of local manufacturers in India and the establishment of barriers to India's brand protection strategy, the future may be accompanied by a continued decline in the shipments of domestic manufacturers.

In the mobile phone industry, if growth shows signs of decline or continues to decline, it will become dangerous. There has never been a precedent that once a company falls into losses, it can recover its original market share or profit. This can be seen from the development history of smart phones of Samsung, Blackberry, Nokia, and Motorola. The book "Digital Wars" says that losses are a dangerous signal for the mobile phone business. "It causes a brand to lose the support of dealers because the sales cycle is extremely sensitive to obsolete inventory. Companies that fall into losses are considered to have manufactured products that are not good enough, which makes them lose incentives, promotions, and consumer attention. This is a vicious cycle, and the past glory is useless."

Therefore, under the influence of the Android system, the mobile phone manufacturers in its camp eventually reached the current situation. On Zhihu, a netizen commented on the fact that domestic mobile phone manufacturers are crowded together: "Android has distributed swimming rings to other manufacturers in batches, so that other people can participate in this game." With this swimming ring, coupled with the maturity of the hardware manufacturers' supply chain and the participation of foundries such as Foxconn, they have been able to survive steadily at a certain level, but on the other hand, the abundant industrial chain resources have eventually made more manufacturers lose the opportunity to learn swimming skills. Domestic mobile phones have not been able to break through the framework of cost-effectiveness and brand influence have been continuously suppressed in recent years. The root cause is also the lack of control at the operating system level.

Android has created a homogeneous and completely open competitive market. In the development stage of smartphones, manufacturers can ride on the Android train to develop rapidly. However, when it reaches maturity and saturation, the entire alliance cannot escape the fierce competition of homogeneity, which makes Apple's uniqueness more dazzling. When big waves come, the water level rises, and the environment changes, how to survive in the vast ocean has become an important issue for domestic manufacturers in the future.

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.