Structural opportunity in smartphones.

With the progress of smartphone technology and the gradual weakening of 4G mobile phone innovation cycle, and the gradual extension of user replacement cycle, the domestic mobile phone shipments reached the peak in 2017, and the industry has experienced three years of sales decline. Under the impact of the epidemic, the domestic mobile phone shipments in 2020 were only 308 million, a year-on-year decrease of 20.82%, and the industry fell into a period of trough. In terms of penetration rate, the penetration rate of domestic smart phones has reached 97.4%, and the room for growth is very limited. The smart phone industry will enter the stock market. However, in the stock market, the US technology sanctions have led to drastic changes in the competition pattern of the global mobile phone market.

Global smartphone competition has changed dramatically under U.S. sanctions. After HUAWEI was hit with US chip sanctions in the second quarter of 2020, the chip shortage caused its smartphone shipments to fall off a cliff since q3 2020. According to IDC data, The global market share of  HUAWEI's mobile phones once reached 20.0% in q3 2020and then continued to decline, until the second quarter of 2021,  HUAWEI's mobile phone market share was only 2.8%, falling out of the top five in the world, and the majority of the vacated high-end mobile phone market was occupied by Apple, becoming the biggest winner in the high-end mobile phone market. The global market share reached 23.4% in q3 2020, 3.5 percentage points higher than the same period in 2019.

Smart phones have entered the minimally invasive era.

With the technological development of smart phones in the past decade, the innovation from hardware performance and operating system has gradually slowed down, and various performance parameters of flagship models launched by major mobile phone manufacturers have become very close. The industry has gradually entered the era of micro innovation. In the case of continuous reduction of performance differences, appearance design and product cost performance will become increasingly prominent.

Apple doesn't charge extra for new iphones.

In terms of hardware configuration, all iPhone13 series are equipped with 5nm A15 bionic chip, which improves CPU running speed by 50% and GPU running speed by 30%. In terms of appearance, the new iPhone has made a corresponding improvement in the face-recognition area, with a further reduction in space footprint, resulting in the bangs of all four models taking up 20% less space. In terms of screen, iPhone13Pro supports Adaptive refresh technology, which can support 120Hz refresh rate, and can display screen content more smoothly. The battery life of iPhone13mini and iPhone13Pro is 1.5 hours longer than that of the previous generation, and iPhone13 and iPhone13ProMax are 2.5 hours longer than that of the previous generation. Camera-wise, the iPhone13 has a new ultra-wide-angle lens, a larger module and aperture. But overall, compared with previous products, the iPhone13 is not a big innovative upgrade, basically in line with market expectations. In terms of price, the overall price reduction exceeds market expectations, which will significantly improve the cost performance under the background of new machine micro-innovation.

The industrial chain has entered the peak season of pulling goods.

At present, Apple's new product inventory actively, the industry chain has entered the traditional peak season. According to TSMC's data in August, benefiting from apple's new iPhone models entering the peak season, its revenue in August was NT $137.43 billion, up 10.3% month-on-month and 11.8% year-on-year, a record high for the same month, verifying the industry chain's high business logic. New iPhone shipments are expected to reach 85 million to 90 million units in 2021, driving overall iPhone shipments to 220 million to 223 million units, up about 13% year on year.

Smart wearable devices become an effective supplement.

In recent years, the domestic smart wearable device market has grown very rapidly. The market size in 2016-2020 increased from 17.52 billion yuan to 63.22 billion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of 37.8%. It is expected that the industry market size in 2025 is expected to reach 144.16 billion yuan, with a five-year compound growth rate of 17.9%. At present, the main forms of wearable smart devices are wireless earphones, smart watches and smart wristbands, accounting for more than 95% of the total market, and wireless earphones are the main ones, accounting for about 50.7% of the market. Meanwhile, VR products have exploded since last year, led by Facebook's Oculus Quest 2, and are expected to become the biggest growth point in the consumer electronics industry in the future.

TWS shipment growth slowed.

TWS earphones have an obvious downward trend and the market competition is becoming increasingly fierce. The penetration rate of Android TWS earphones is still at a low level and will become the main growth point of the market. After the explosive era of wireless earphones from 2017 to 2019, since 2020, affected by the rapid rise of domestic brand manufacturers, the share of Apple TWS earphones has been squeezed, driving the growth of the industry to slow down. However, in terms of penetration rate, according to IDC data, the global penetration rate of TWS wireless earphones has rapidly increased from 0.62% in 2016 to 18.20%, and the industry penetration rate is still at a low level. In terms of segmentation, although the penetration rate of Apple's AirPods has exceeded 50%, the penetration rate of Android phones' TWS earphones is still less than 20%. There is a broad space for the industry to grow in the future. Driven by Android wireless earphones, the industry is expected to maintain rapid growth.

Smartwatches are still growing at a high rate.

The smart wristband market is gradually shrinking, and smart watches will become the main device of wristband, driving the global wearable wristband market to maintain medium-high growth. By the second quarter of 2021, wristband watches accounted for 62% of global shipments of wearable wristband devices. Wristband watch shipments still maintain a high growth trend, 2021Q2 basic watches and smart watch shipments reached 25.4 million, a significant increase of 37.9%, partially offset the decline in the smart bracelet market, driven 2021Q2 global wearable wristband device market growth 5.6% year on year, shipments reached 40.9 million.

VR recovery is here.

Since 2018, with the innovation of core technology of hardware equipment, the problems of vertigo and window screen effect have been solved with high brush rate and resolution, and the constraints of industry development have been preliminarily solved. The VR product iteration speed of head manufacturers has accelerated, and the VR industry has gradually come out of the trough. Significantly different from the outbreak period of the industry from 2012 to 2016, this recovery is mainly driven by the improvement of hardware performance and the continuous enrichment of VR content. The VR industry has gradually formed a virtuous cycle of "increasing users - increasing income of device developers/content developers - increasing device experience/continuous enrichment of content - continuous increase of users". This recovery is highly sustainable. At the same time, with the advent of Facebook's explosive Oculus Quest 2, it has greatly boosted the rapid growth of hardware device shipments. In 2021, the annual sales of Oculus Quest 2 are expected to reach 5-9 million units, which is expected to drive the global VR device shipments to break through 10 million. The singularity of the industry is coming.

Adhering to the aim of bold innovation and excellence, the Consumer electronics show in 2022 will promote the development of the industry. There will be more fresh and fresh highlights and gather global wisdom and technology to create a better life. For more information, welcome to Appliance&electronics World Expo (AWE) in 2022.