The phone market is like a besieged city. People outside the city desperately want to rush in, and people inside the city desperately want to rush out. The phone market will encounter the coldest winter in ten years in 2022. Phone manufacturers such as Huawei and Xiaomi are making cars, while car companies such as Nio and Geely are making phones. Release this year.
In 2022, China’s smartphone sales will drop by 13% to 14% year-on-year, the largest decline since the records of the international data company IDC. Throughout the year, China’s smartphone market shipped about 286 million units, falling back to below 300 million units after a lapse of 10 years.
Why are consumers reluctant to buy phones?
Don’t blame the general environment. The epidemic affects the economy, and the purchasing power of ordinary people has declined, and so on. The epidemic is just worse. The Chinese smartphone market has been in continuous decline since five years ago, and the decline occurred before the outbreak of the epidemic in 2020. At its root, market saturation is the main reason, product quality is getting better and better, and the replacement cycle is getting longer. The lack of innovation in phones is another important factor. 5G, which has the most high hopes, still lacks killer applications, driving consumers to change; folding screens are still a luxury, and the bottom line price is still as high as 5,000 yuan, which is not necessarily affordable. It can be repaired, but the downward trend cannot be fundamentally reversed.
Optimistic analysts believe that China’s phone market will usher in a rebound in the second half of this year. However, judging from the information on the supply chain side, manufacturers have not increased orders or raised their annual targets. At least in the first half of this year, the Chinese phone market will not rebound much.
Judging from this year’s two global consumer electronics events, CES and MWC, phone manufacturers are still betting on folding screens, and even satellite communications that are not just needed have become a battleground. It is foreseeable that the phenomenon of weak innovation will continue, and the economy and The recovery of consumer confidence will have a greater impact on the phone market in the second half of this year.
Can going to sea save Chinese smartphone manufacturers?
Does not. The global phone market resonated and entered the lowest ebb at the same time. According to IDC data, global smartphone shipments will decrease by 11.3% in 2022, the lowest level since 2013. Even if it is as strong as an apple, it can’t hold it.
Back in 2021, when Xiaomi announced its entry into the auto industry, most people could not understand why Lei Jun would invest 10 billion US dollars in building cars in the next 10 years, or sweat for Lei Jun. Nowadays, most people can understand that Xiaomi builds cars not only because it wants to be a pig that does not fall into the limelight, and Huawei builds cars not only because phone chips are stuck, but because the phone market is really saturated.
Nokia, HTC… Standing in the cemetery of phone brands and looking back, the first to enter the trend may not necessarily survive to the end. Phone manufacturers are well aware of this. When they entered the automotive industry, they were based on the belief of survival.
With the news that the sales of phones have fallen into a ten-year freezing point, the design drawings of Xiaomi cars are suspected to be exposed, or it may be sold for 260,000 yuan; Nio phone said that it will never make money from advertising. It will start internal testing in the second quarter of this year and is expected to be released in the third quarter. .
Isn’t this a typical “siege effect”.
Why do car companies such as Nio and Geely want to enter the phone market? The decline in sales can’t rebound in a short time. Aren’t car companies rushing to make money?
Businessmen are naturally profit-seeking, but car companies are not rushing to compete with Huawei and Xiaomi, but to play with the ecology and keep their own cars from “siege”.
Li Bin, CEO of Nio, who is the most eco-friendly among car companies, once said: “If you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy a car, and then spend a few thousand dollars to buy a phone, the decision-making process will be shorter. You spent thousands of dollars to buy my phone. Can you buy hundreds of thousands of cars again? Apple may be the only one in the world who can do that.”
Li Bin wants to sell phones to his own car owners, in order to realize the interconnection of phones and cars, and finally realize the connection of everything in cars, of course, to tell another story to the capital market.
After the capital is in place, there is no threshold for technology, and the car-machine system is also Android; there is no threshold for manufacturing, and the domestic phone industry chain is very mature; channels can be reused, Huawei can sell cars in stores, and NIO can also sell phones in stores. In Li Bin’s view, everything is a matter of course.
Tesla makes phones, Musk releases satellites, and Geely follows suit. The original intention of releasing satellites is to build the infrastructure of the Internet of Vehicles, but car companies have discovered that even if the car is made into a huge phone, it can meet various needs such as office, social, entertainment, etc. in the car, but the people who never leave the body phones will be an important entry point. Then why not build your own phone, share your own satellite communication, and build a closed-loop ecology that will never lose contact on the earth?
According to public data, as of 2022, Geely’s online vehicles will be about 3 million, Tesla’s stock in China will be about 500,000, and Nio’s stock will be close to 240,000 by August 31, 2022.
Even if all the car owners of these three car companies come to buy their own phones, this volume will only account for 1.3% of the phone market with an annual sales of 286 million units.
Car companies making phones can’t stir up any splashes for the time being. It’s just that with the release of Nio and Geely phones this year, the purpose of car companies to enter the “besieged city” of phones will become more apparent.
