In the past two years, after several times of killing, the global smart phone market pattern has been formed, with Samsung, Huawei, Apple, Xiaomi and OPPO ranking the top five for three consecutive years. Vivo, the same door as OPPO, followed closely, ranking sixth. At this point, the first echelon players in the smart phone industry have been in place.
20 18 Under the attack of new technologies such as AI chip technology, full screen and 3D structured light, the competition in the smart phone market is becoming increasingly fierce. Among them, only one single factor, AI capability, will affect the pattern of smart phone industry in the next decade, and Zhi Zhi has written a paper to discuss it before (AI invasion! Smartphones will be rewritten in the next decade)
From the current point of view, the smartphone player camp seems to be being torn apart by an invisible technology gap. On one side of the gap are companies that have the core technologies of smart phones, such as Samsung, Huawei and Apple, and on the other side are companies that are relatively lacking in core technologies and are still struggling to catch up.
In the past few years, OPPO vivo has achieved good results in the forefront of the smart phone market by virtue of the advantages of offline channels, strong advertising marketing strategies and good product strength accumulated over the years. Since the beginning of this year, OPPO vivo has started to make frequent sounds in technology. It has not only introduced two innovative solutions for full screen, namely, lifting camera and dual-track periscope structure, but also is extremely active in the field of 5G. It has close ties with Qualcomm, a communication technology giant, and embraces 5G with open arms.
But behind the infinite scenery of OPPO and vivo echo each other, the risks are approaching step by step.
According to IDC data, in the first and second quarters of this year, OPPO's global market share was 7.3% and 7.6% respectively, with an increase of only 0.3%, while Huawei increased by 2.8 percentage points and Xiaomi also increased by 1.4 percentage points.
▲ Market share changes of Huami Ov 2065 438+07 and 20 18 in the first quarter (source: Aurora Big Data)
In the domestic market, the market share of OPPO in the first quarter of this year was 14.8%, which was 3.9 percentage points lower than the same period last year. In the first quarter of this year, the market share of vivo was 14.3%, which was 3.6 percentage points lower than the same period of last year.
Technological innovation with core technologies such as AI as a breakthrough is leading the spread selling point and user choice tendency of smart phones. The above-mentioned changes in market share also prove from one side that a new round of technological revolution is affecting the market structure of smart phones.
Therefore, it can be said that OPPO and vivo stepped on the edge red line of the technology gap, "the heart is heaven and the dream is hell".
The crisis behind the glory of OV market
OPPO and vivo are lucky. From obscurity in 2009, to the gradual rise in 20 15, and then to the glory of the world's first smartphone sales since 20 16, OPPO and vivo can be described as triumphant progress, once creating a good result of domestic market sales growth of about 13%.
However, in 20 18, the sales growth of OPPO and vivo gradually slowed down.
From this global sales table of smartphone TOP5 in the last three years, we can clearly see that in the first and second quarters of 20 17 and 20 18, the global sales share of OPPO has not changed much, while domestic mobile phone players Huawei and Xiaomi have maintained growth.
Left in the east corner, Sang Yu may not be able to accept it!
▲ Source: Aurora Big Data
In the domestic market, since the first quarter of 20 17, the market share of OPPO and vivo has been decreasing, and the blue-green brothers have been attacked by red and yellow forces.
At the same time, the online channel, the blue and green brothers are not satisfactory. According to the official data released by JD.COM in this year's 6 18 shopping festival, the cumulative sales volume of OPPO is only 10, and vivo ranks eighth, which is not as good as Meizu, Lenovo, 360 and even Nokia.
Behind the seemingly glamorous, OPPO and vivo are facing a crisis of prosperity.
The competition in the mobile phone industry that ushered in the reshuffle period is fierce.
Not long ago, Luo Yonghao, founder and CEO of Hammer Technology, said at a live broadcast conference that Huawei's GPU acceleration technology had technical precipitation in mobile phone black technology. For other mobile phone black technologies, he bluntly said: "I really don't mean which one can't. I mean, everyone here is a supplier. What grandchildren did you put there? We are all solution integrators. "
Indeed, the solution providers in the smart phone industry chain are very mature at present. For example, in face recognition technology, Shang Tang and ignorance are very tight. On the whole, smartphone products are more and more similar, and innovation is weak. The difference between the two depends more on the update of the software scheme.
The mobile phone market is already the Red Sea, and it is common to shuffle the rankings every three years.
Looking back at history, we can find that every time a new technology appears, it will bring opportunities for industry reshuffle, especially in the case of high-density technologies such as AI and 5G. However, if we count these core influencing technologies, we will find that they mainly include three types: hardware technologies such as camera, full screen and 3D structured light; AI software interaction technology; 5G communication technology.
Driven by the three core technologies, the technology gap is dividing smartphone players into two categories: enterprises with a large number of new technologies and players who lack core technologies and are still in the stage of catching up and making up for shortcomings. OPPO, vivo and Xiaomi, which are located in the first camp of smartphone players, are on the edge of both.
But there are different opinions about the reshuffle of the industry. Cherie Sun, deputy general manager of BCI Communication Research, believes that it is difficult to re-rank the smart phone market with the increasingly perfect industrial chain and mature solutions.
What is the core technology of smart phone?
The three core technologies mentioned above, if dismantled, will mainly focus on five capabilities: a new generation of mobile phone chips with AI blessing, the next generation communication technology with 5G as the core, the hardware definition and design dominated by full screen, the hardware definition and algorithm optimization of multi-lens and structural depth cameras, and the AI function and software ecology at the system level.
Blue-green brothers rarely have unique skills to build a technical moat.
1, Chip-The top three smartphone manufacturers are all developing their own products.
Chip is the brain and soul of a mobile phone, and it is a collection of hardware foundations of CPU, GPU, DSP, communication module and other functions. It is also an important indicator of the high and low grades of smart phones. As the underlying foundation, the chip also determines the imagination space of smart phone performance.
With the gradual landing of AI technology in smart terminals, the new generation of mobile phone chips blessed by AI has become the focus of competition in the smart phone market. Samsung, Apple and Huawei, the top three manufacturers in the smart phone market, have chosen self-developed chips to get rid of the situation that technology research and development is subject to people.
At present, Samsung has six series of Exynos chips, and Apple has used its own A series chips since the iPhone 4. The AI chip A 1 1 was launched last year, and the A 12 chip will officially debut tomorrow. The AI chip Kirin 970 also promoted Huawei Hisilicon to the first echelon of mobile phone chips. This year, Huawei Hisilicon's new AI chip Kirin 980 has also been officially unveiled.
Many smartphone manufacturers, such as OPPO, vivo and Xiaomi, have thin stories about chips. Therefore, the research and development of cutting-edge technology will have to wait for chip providers Qualcomm and MediaTek to solve the computing power demand in the chip field first.
However, Xiaomi also developed a mobile phone chip and launched 2855438+0. Recently, it is reported that PengS2 chip will be launched soon. However, at present, the surging S 1 "sinks into the sea, and there is no news", while the surging S2 "only hears its voice, but does not see its shape". It can be seen that the self-developed mobile phone chip is not that simple. In February last year, after Lei Jun shouted "a narrow escape" in high profile and put into the field of chips, this topic has not been mentioned publicly for a year and a half.
2. Communication technology-5G has become the core of the next generation communication technology.
As the most popular communication equipment, communication is the most basic function of mobile phones, and it is also the basic demand of users for mobile phones. In 20 18, which is called the first year of 5G, chip manufacturers, mobile phone manufacturers, communication equipment manufacturers and operators have set off a wave of 5G industry.
Just like smart things (Huawei Qualcomm kills red eyes, Apple Samsung makes efforts, and the 5G shopping war starts! It is mentioned in the article that since the establishment and launch of the 5G industry standard in June this year, the whole communication industry seems to have broken out, and the enthusiasm of the 5G industry chain was instantly ignited. From the mobile phone factory to the chip factory, various highlights of the 5G industry have been released. The greater the density.
Huawei has all-round advantages in 5G standards, communication technology and chip technology. At the launch site of Kirin 980 on August 3rd1,Yu Chengdong said that Kirin 980 can cooperate with Ba Long 5000 baseband chip released by MWC to create a "5G ready" scheme, which can support operators' 5G field test and friendly user commercial test–this is almost the last crucial "acceptance link" before large-scale deployment of 5G.
Due to its advantages in the whole industrial chain such as chips and monitors, Samsung also released the signal that it will release the first 5G mobile phone in March 2065438+2009.
In the aspect of 5G, OPPO vivo cooperated with chip giant Qualcomm, such as integrating millimeter wave antenna array into mobile phones, measuring the wireless air interface of the whole machine, testing the terminal prototype, etc., to prepare for the application of 5G technology in mobile phones.
Baseband chip lays the foundation of mobile phone communication ability. At present, this technology is in the hands of a few core upstream communication devices, such as Qualcomm, Huawei, Samsung, MediaTek and Spreadtrum.
Therefore, the communication ability of smart phones depends largely on the provider of baseband chips.
▲ Data source: China Mobile 20 18 Intelligent Hardware Report (Phase I).
In June this year, China Mobile evaluated 53 mobile phones with different price points in the domestic market (OPPO Find X and vivo NEX were not included in the evaluation because they were released late). The evaluation content includes antenna performance, voice call quality, data throughput, network adaptability and international roaming ability.
From the results, Huawei, which has its own baseband chip, is far ahead in communication performance among mainstream smart phone products. Although Xiaomi's products without independent research and development of communication technology also made it into the top three, it still relied on the technical strength of chip tycoon Qualcomm.
Using different baseband chips will bring different communication capabilities to smart phones. Among the products with the price of 2000-3000 yuan, Xiaomi 8 uses Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 chip, OPPO R 15 standard edition is equipped with MediaTek P60 eight nuclear processor, and vivo X2 1 is equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 AIE processor.
3, full screen-iPhone X has not been surpassed.
From the second half of 20 17, full screen has become the focus of smartphone manufacturers' layout, and in order to achieve the consistency of the whole screen border, it is necessary to adopt the design idea of folding circuit. Therefore, the definition and design of hardware dominated by full screen has also become a technical difficulty.
However, this year, OPPO vivo did have innovative ideas in the design of full screen: the lift camera design of vivo NEX and the dual-track periscope structure of OPPO Find X, but then Huawei and Xiaomi also announced that similar full-screen mobile phone products will be launched soon.
Although Liu Haiping's design has been criticized in the past year, there has been no breakthrough in its full-screen technology, and similar products have basically maintained a wide chin, such as the special-shaped screen and beauty sharp screen used by mainstream products in the market, the water drop screen on the latest OPPO R 17, or the camera module has to be separated from the screen. OPPO Find X and vivo NEX belong to this category.
4, camera ability-head players began to do optical element differentiation.
At present, smartphone manufacturers are competing in every detail of their camera ability, such as optical lens differentiation, multi-lens definition and ISP (image signal processing unit) and image processing algorithm optimization. Recently, the camera with deep structure has also become a new technology trend in the industry layout.
In terms of hardware, the CMOS imaging components of mid-to high-end smartphones are mainly Sony, and Apple iPhone is no exception. On the optical lens itself, Huawei and Leica cooperated to adopt the optical technology introduced by Leica from P9. Samsung can achieve a large aperture of F 1.5, such as S9+ and Note 10, which is unparalleled in the industry. Ov has made many schemes in form, including up-and-down sliding cover and left-and-right rotating lens such as OPPO N 1.
In the definition of multi-lens, although Apple is not the first player to introduce the concept of dual cameras, it has pushed dual cameras to the popularity of smart phones. Huawei is the first in the industry to launch a three-camera solution based on Huawei P20 Pro. It is said that technology research and development is extremely difficult.
In DXOMARK official website, Huawei P20 Pro, which joined the third camera, topped the list with a score of 109. Xiaomi's mobile phone camera ability has been criticized. Now Xiaomi's best-performing product is Xiaomi 8, which went on the market in May this year, focusing on the high-end market, but its performance has not exceeded three figures. In terms of OPPO and vivo, there is only 90 points of vivo X20 in the list. OPPO products do not have this machine in this list, and it is not excluded that there is no possibility of evaluation.
5, AI capabilities-the top three enterprises have established a sound ecology.
On the whole, the contest of AI capability is the comprehensive strength of smartphone manufacturers, which falls on three points:
1. Hardware should provide strong support for AI. The AI chip and structured light lens components mentioned above are the basis of hardware.
Samsung, Huawei and Apple all have their own chips and have AI computing power. At present, the high-end flagship machine of OPPO, vivo and Xiaomi are all Snapdragon 845 in Qualcomm.
2. The system itself should have strong enough AI benchmarking applications, such as optimizing the camera performance of mobile phones with AI, system-level voice interaction ability and more single-point functions, such as AI translation.
In the system-level AI application, mainstream smartphone manufacturers are doing it, and AI photography has become the focus. The AI translation that comes with the mobile phone is also the direction that the player is laying out.
3. Let developers develop more applications with strong AI attributes on their own hardware, or smartphone manufacturers support more AI applications in a compatible way, thus creating an open environment and attracting developers.
Apple has 45 AI-related startups, attracting a large number of developers with ARKit development platform. Huawei launched the HiAI platform for third-party developers, and attracted many third-party applications to access the HiAI platform, such as Aauto Quicker, JD.COM, Tik Tok and Meituan. Samsung, on the other hand, takes Bixby as the entrance to carry out the ecological construction of AI applications such as voice, vision, reminder and homepage.
Other mobile phone manufacturers in the Android camp, OPPO, vivo, Xiaomi, etc. Ecological construction is relatively scattered and imperfect.
Among the five core technologies mentioned above, OPPO vivo is lacking in chip level, and it is not perfect in AI ecological construction, while efforts have been made in other fields.
In terms of full-screen design, OPPO vivo has provided new ideas for the industry. However, in terms of 5G, OPPO vivo still needs to rely on upstream industry chain companies, and it is also in the trial stage on the camera with deep architecture.
OPPO vivo's way to catch up with technology
From the above comparison, the five core technical fields are the shortcomings of OPPO and vivo, but OPPO and vivo are also trying to catch up technically.
▲OPPO Find X double adjustment periscope structure
When the whole smart phone industry followed suit and pursued Liu Haiping's special-shaped screen, OPPO and vivo innovatively introduced the dual-regulation periscope structure and potential camera lifting design, which provided the industry with a new idea of comprehensive screen.
Previously, OPPO developed VOOC flash charging technology. At the same time, "charging for five minutes and talking for two hours" also successfully brainwashed the public. With the launch of Find X this year, OPPO's flash charging technology has been able to fill a smartphone in 35 minutes.
In terms of 5G, OPPO and vivo are also very quick and active. They cooperated with Qualcomm on 5G technology and announced that they would be the first mobile phone manufacturers to launch 5G mobile phones in 20 19. However, despite actively embracing 5G, OPPO and vivo are not dominant in core technologies, and their most prominent advantage lies in offline channels.
In terms of patents, according to official data, OPPO granted 1222 invention patents in 20 17, ranking eighth in the national patent application ranking, while vivo and Xiaomi did not appear in the top ten list. According to the analysis of the staff of an intellectual property protection company, OPPO's patents are more concentrated in the fields of taking photos, rotating cameras, and VOOC flash charging. It is easy to obtain patent authorization.
In terms of R&D investment, OPPO and vivo have never disclosed the relevant amount, while the R&D investment of other benchmark enterprises is traceable. According to the financial report data, it can be calculated that Apple's R&D investment in smart phones is about 46.5 billion yuan, and Huawei's R&D expenditure is about 35.6 billion yuan. (Note: Based on the financial report data of Apple and Huawei 20 17, R&D investment is estimated according to the proportion of business income, among which Huawei adopts the proportion of consumer business. According to Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's consumer business, "the R&D expenditure we invest every year is 10 times that of our domestic counterparts, and it is not a little better than them, but a lot."
How do OPPO and vivo cross the technology gap?
Over the past few years, Ov has achieved good results in the smart phone market by relying on the advantages of offline channels, strong advertising marketing strategies and good product strength accumulated over the years.
Under the tide of technological innovation, the differentiation of market forces is inevitable. Only by following the technological trend and quickly adapting to market changes can we maintain our advantages in the competition. OPPO, vivo and Xiaomi, which are still in weak core technologies and are trying to catch up, should pay more attention to the following aspects:
1, really began to pay attention to technology research and development.
At present, the research on cutting-edge technologies such as AI, 5G and 3D structured light is in full swing. In these fields, OPPO and vivo should be more active, pay more attention to independent research and development, have their own technological achievements in core technologies, and build their own core competitiveness.
2. Do better as a technology integrator.
The smart phone industry is a huge industrial chain. No one can cover all the technologies in the chain, and more or less some technology integration is needed. In this regard, OPPO and vivo should more actively interact with more mature and excellent enterprises in the industrial chain, integrate the most solutions in the industry, and hone their technical strength in the process.
3. Consolidate the existing technology and form its own technical barriers.
OPPO and vivo currently have unique advantages in fast charging technology and camera tuning algorithm. They need to be consolidated on the basis of their original advantages, iteratively optimized according to user needs, and form their own technical barriers.
4. Make a comprehensive layout on the integration of soft and hard.
Judging from the current development trend of smart phone industry, the future smart phone industry will test the comprehensive strength of players in software, hardware and ecological construction. At present, this trend has appeared in the field of chips, and the research and development of chips is becoming more and more integrated and customized. Smartphone manufacturers will have better product experience and follow-up service if they can have strength in software and hardware such as chips and realize independent research and development.
Conclusion: The core technology is to reconstruct the market structure of smart phones.
At this stage, the popularity of smart phones in China has been completed, and China mobile phone manufacturers have begun to rise in the global market, impacting the mid-to high-end market. At this point, the user experience driven by core technology has become the focus of competition. While the Matthew effect is becoming more and more obvious, an invisible technical gap is tearing the player camp. On the one hand, there are companies that have the core technology of smart phones, and on the other hand, companies that are still struggling to catch up with the lack of core technology.
Judging from the market data in the past two years, the growth performance of OPPO and vivo in the global market is not as good as that of domestic manufacturers such as Huawei and Xiaomi, but their share in the domestic market is also being eroded. At this stage, OPPO and vivo are on the edge of the technology gap. However, we also saw the efforts of OPPO and vivo in developing flash charging technology, embraced Qualcomm's research and development of 5G, led the industry to launch comprehensive screen innovation solutions, and actively adopted 3D structured light solutions. ...
At present, the smart phone industry is on the eve of the core technology rewriting the market structure. If OPPO and vivo want to consolidate their position in the first echelon of smart phone industry, they need to strengthen research and development on core technologies, have their own core technologies and form technical barriers.