In the past six months, he has been working on 3D printers. Smart desk, smart ball tosser, remote control shell, split keyboard... It takes a lot of time and effort to complete a lot of work. In the digital area, most up owners are doing mobile phone evaluation, focusing on the comparison of screen, memory, battery life, fast charging, processor and other parameters. Compared with them, he, who is the "top stream" in the digital area, is more like a "clear stream".
Author | huwancheng editor | Xiang Zhilin
Recent videos of Mr. He
Why do you have to work hard instead of "just" ready-made food?
He said frankly, "because there are fewer and fewer interesting products." Even if he interviewed cook's hard core fruit powder, he had to admit iphone There are fewer and fewer new features that make people feel new or even exciting.
Lack of innovation, serious homogenization, high price and low performance. Other smartphones face the same dilemma as the iPhone.
The stagnation of smart phone technology innovation is an indisputable fact; We seem to have forgotten the last time we cheered on the new technology of smart phones.
Folding screen, unable to love
If we insist on a new technology emerging in the smart phone market in recent years, the folding screen may be the first thing people think of.
Folding screen mobile phone
Since Samsung and Huawei both launched their first folding screen mobile phones in 2019, "folding screen" has become the ceiling of high-end flagship phones. The value of more than 10000 yuan makes the iPhone with the largest capacity out of reach.
Other domestic brands have also launched their own folding screen mobile phones for fear of falling behind.
Xiaomi launched mixfold in the first half of 2021, oppo launched findn in the fourth quarter of 2021, glory launched glory magicv in January 2022, and vivo launched xfold in April 2022. So far, the mainstream brands have completed the strategic balance of competitive products.
But how amazing is the folding screen? If we didn't evaluate the "awesome" acting skills of Wang Zhili, I'm afraid it would really be -- open it, um, it's very large. Open it again after folding, um, the folds are not obvious.
That's it.
In addition to "folding and enlarging", the folding screen does not seem to have many features to talk about. At the same time, its disadvantages can not be covered. Problems such as weight, portability and limited hinge life make it difficult for ordinary consumers to have a desire to buy.
I have two friends who used to use the folding screen. One is a commentator in the e-sports industry. He likes cool consumer electronics. At that time, he bought a Huawei matex2 from a scalper at a premium of 4000 yuan.
Another one is rice noodles, Xiaomi 6, which has been used for a long time. As soon as the machine was changed, a big one came and bought the mixfold, which is known as "the first folding screen for young people".
Unfortunately, both of them were replaced in the end.
The commentator was fresh and found that the Android ecosystem was still not used to it. He gave his father his mobile phone as a gift.
Within a week of using the rice noodles, there was no reason to return them because they were too heavy in their pockets. Finally, they replaced them with a more cost-effective redmi.
However, according to the data, the sales volume of folding screen mobile phones worldwide is better than the negative perception. According to omdia's smart phone model market tracking in the fourth quarter of 2021, by the end of 2021, the cumulative shipment of folding screen smart phones worldwide had reached 11.5 million.
Among them, Samsung has shipped more than 10million units, accounting for 88% of the sales of folding screen smartphones. Considering Samsung's negligible share in China's smart phone market, it is understandable that China is not aware of this trend.
Samsung folding screen mobile phone Galaxy Z flip release
Under the run of Samsung, another Unicorn enterprise in China, Rouyu, which makes flexible screens and once valued at $50billion, is now facing a life and death situation of salary arrears, work stoppages and losses.
According to the reporter from south wind window, although Ruoyu, who is in trouble, has not made large-scale layoffs, she has not been paid for nearly half a year since last December.
According to industry analysis, Rouyu, with its own technology of "ultra-low temperature non silicon process integration", has not reached supply chain cooperation with other folding screen mobile phone brands, but chose to be its own mobile phone. This makes it lack of market orders and unable to increase production.
However, the Rouyu mobile phone itself has not been recognized by the mainstream market, which is the main reason why it is difficult to survive in the market.
One more thing
Although the folding screen track was bustling, the heavyweight player never showed up - Apple.
Apple is not without the technology accumulation of folding screen. Previously, it has been exposed that it has a number of folding screen technology patents. In the past four years, Apple has invested $450million in Corning to develop new technologies, including flexible glass.
But Apple still hasn't come up with this technology, which makes people wonder whether Apple thinks that the technology is not mature and it is too early to launch, or whether Apple finds that the folding screen is not the future of smart phones in the middle?
Although Apple's real idea is not clear, from the iPhone's new product launch in recent years, its focus is obviously more and more focused on the introduction of performance, such as how good the lens performance is, how much the chip performance has been improved, and so on.
The contrast is very strong compared with the glorious years that it has led smart phones to several times.
The reason why the first iPhone can open a new era of smart phones is that it defines the smart phone face-to-face screen with the touch screen. The reason why iPhone4 has become a classic is that the industrial design, operation experience and hardware configuration of the product have greatly refreshed the upper limit of industrial technology at that time. Technological innovations such as retina display, A4 chip and gyroscope have expanded users' imagination of intelligent machines.
Classic iPhone 4
But after that, the iPhone's innovation step of iteration every year seems to be getting smaller and smaller.
Some people attribute the lack of innovation to the idiosyncratic differences between the two CEOs. "Qiao gang leader" is paranoid and romantic. He often racks his brains and tries his best to surprise people. He is good at creativity.
Cook is more like a top student. He is good at controlling the supply chain and assembles more powerful hardware into Apple's products at a very low price, with performance first.
Some people also believe that the "aesthetic fatigue" caused by the increasingly perfect iPhone is an inevitable thing, just as the kitchen knife still has this shape after thousands of years of development and the car has not changed qualitatively after hundreds of years of development.
Different opinions have their own reasons, but the changes in reality are indeed remarkable. When people buy iPhones, they are now more concerned with "peace of mind" than "heart beating".
It is enough to ensure stability and fluency, and not lose a share in social occasions. After all, smart phones are at best just a tool. They can't make people cooler and decent. It's not easy not to be ridiculed by others.
Yu Chengdong mocked Xiaomi's "loser"
It is unrealistic to require a commercial company to remain amazing for a long time. Even if jobs is alive, there will be a time when his talent will be exhausted. That talent can be met but not sought. If you want something more amazing, maybe you can look forward to the next challenger.
However, there is still a worrying thing that can not be ignored. Today's mobile phone manufacturers are all paying attention to ecology and closed loop. They connect all products and services to make users gather together as much as possible to form a closed loop. This kind of ecological solidification may be strangling the new forces in the industry, resulting in almost no dark horse in the mobile phone industry.
It is difficult for a person who gathers the apple family bucket or whose family is the Xiaomi ecological chain to suddenly accept another brand.
Rolled forward
Zhouhongyi, founder of 360 company, once made fun of the smart phone industry.
"The mobile phone industry is no longer a red sea, but a sea of blood. It makes headlines every week and puts a satellite every month.
Even if the CEO is not the ninth segment of the talk show, he has to seize his spare time to become a rapper, otherwise he may lose the attention of the masses. "
In the highly competitive Chinese market, various mobile phone companies still intensively launch their own new products. Some people commented that "there are too many new mobile phones, and there are not enough people to use."
Why young people don't want to change their mobile phones
According to the analysis report on the operation of the domestic mobile phone market recently released by the China Institute of information and communications, in February 2022, the shipment of mobile phones in the domestic market was 14.864 million, a year-on-year decrease of 31.7%.
The decline itself is due to both market saturation and low desire to change planes.
The sluggish growth of China's mobile phone market is nothing new. It has already changed from an incremental market to a stock market. Now it is more a fierce competition for the replacement market. But different from a few years ago, people's desire to change their mobile phones has become weaker and weaker, and more and more people have become "mobile nail households".
What's wrong with smart phones? Why don't users pay for them?
One path that can be followed is that smart phones go black after going astray in "hardware competition". Looking at the mobile phone industry in recent years, it is obvious that industrial innovation has been weak, and mobile phone manufacturers are doing more intergenerational replacement of components.
Not only that, many mobile phone manufacturers also began to rely heavily on the technical change of components and parts from suppliers to support the scene, while the brand itself lacked technical innovation, resulting in the stagnation of product experience.
Qualcomm snapdragon chips occupy the main market of mobile phone chips
On the screen, curved glass, curved screen and borderless design have almost become the standard configuration of mainstream models in pursuit of the limit of screen proportion index. Memory and chip are no longer exclusive secrets. In the era of machine replacement when the cost performance factor has failed, chip and performance are only a basic point, and it is difficult for a new product to break out of the encirclement.
In this homogenization competition, what is the competition?
That is to see who makes the most innovative and easy-to-use products when the incoming materials are basically the same.
If we put the time back to 2018, it is not difficult to find that the flagship mobile phones of mainstream manufacturers still seem to be outdated today.
After 2018, even if there is so-called innovation, from a practical point of view, it is more like an existence of innovation simply for innovation and an increase in selling points to stimulate sales. From the perspective of fundamental experience, there is no significant improvement or subversion.
The ceiling has already appeared, but the efforts of the major smartphone manufacturers to "pretend to be innovative" can not be stopped. They can only immerse themselves in a performance art about innovation, toss the battery, toss the screen, and roll on the camera.
New models launched by different mobile phone brands look more and more alike and lack obvious recognition. Some just work on color, lens arrangement and spokesperson.
The homogeneity of smart phones is serious, covering the logo. Can you distinguish the mobile phone brands in the figure?
It is reasonable to say that smart phone services originally provide users with a good experience through the interaction between cloud and terminal. However, under the unexpected strong wave of mobile Internet, the single indicator of hardware parameters has become the most important indicator.
This is an absurd but helpless reality.
To be optimistic, in the current industry environment where innovation is stuck, the next manufacturer who takes the lead in breaking through the inherent thinking and technical constraints to bring new changes will also gain the advantage of breaking through in this struggle.
But when will such a dark horse come?