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In 2013, the world economy continued to recover slowly, the global consumer electronics market maintained a small growth, and the mobile phone market situation was better than in 2012. According to market research organization IDC, global mobile phone shipments reached 1.8 billion units in 2013, a year-on-year increase of 7.3%, and the growth rate was significantly higher than that in 2012; the rapid growth of smart phones is the main driving force for the growth of the mobile phone market. According to IDC, global smart phone shipments exceeded 1 billion units for the first time in 2013, reaching 1.004 billion units, a year-on-year increase of 38.4%, accounting for 55% of the total mobile phone shipments. The expansion of the mobile phone market is accompanied by further intensification of industry competition. The competition in the mobile phone industry has evolved from the original simple product competition to the all-round competition of hardware, software and services. Faced with the continuous changes in the market and competition structure, my country's mobile phone companies have actively responded, accelerated product innovation, and improved service quality. The industry as a whole has been running smoothly, the scale of production has continued to expand, foreign trade exports have grown steadily, and the efficiency and quality have continued to improve, which has played a positive supporting role in the development of my country's electronic manufacturing, software and communications industries.
I. Basic Situation
1. Output maintained a high growth rate
In 2013, my country's mobile phone production reached 1.46 billion units, an increase of 23.2%, an increase of 18.9 percentage points over the previous year. According to IDC's estimate of 1.8 billion mobile phone shipments in 2013, my country's production accounted for 81.1% of the global shipments, an increase of more than 10 percentage points over 2012, and my country's position as a global mobile phone manufacturing base has been further consolidated. From the perspective of the annual production trend, it showed a steady and rapid growth trend. Except for the relatively low cumulative production growth in March and April, the cumulative production growth in other months was above 20%.
Figure 1: my country's cumulative mobile phone production in 2013
2. Export volume and value increased steadily
Since 2013, driven by the continued expansion of the global mobile phone market and the accelerated structural changes, my country's mobile phone exports have shown a rapid growth trend. According to customs statistics, from January to December, my country exported 1.19 billion mobile phones, a year-on-year increase of 16.9%, an increase of 1.0 percentage point over the previous year; the export value was US$95.1 billion, a year-on-year increase of 17.4%, and the growth rate was 5.5 percentage points higher than the average level of electronic information products. From the perspective of the cumulative export growth rate in each quarter of the year, the fluctuations were quite obvious. At the end of March, the end of June, the end of September and the end of December, the growth rates were 6.5%, 16.0%, 21.5% and 17.4% respectively, showing a trend of gradually rising and then gradually stabilizing.
Figure 2 my country's cumulative mobile phone exports in 2013
(III) Rapid growth in benefit scale
Since 2013, driven by the rapid growth of market demand, the economic benefits of my country's communication terminal equipment manufacturing industry have maintained rapid growth. From January to December, the industry achieved a total main business income of 1,023.3 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 30.4%; the total profit was 35.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 20.5%; the industry's revenue growth rate was 20.0 percentage points higher than the average level of the electronic manufacturing industry; the industry's average profit margin reached 3.5%, 1.0 percentage point lower than the average level of the electronic manufacturing industry, and the efficiency quality needs to be improved.
Figure 3 Performance of my country's communication terminal equipment manufacturing industry since 2013
(IV) Industry investment is running at a high level
In 2013, the fixed asset investment of the communication terminal equipment manufacturing industry for projects with a value of more than 5 million yuan was 43.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 38.8%, an increase of more than 20 percentage points over the previous year, and 25.9 percentage points higher than the average level of the electronic manufacturing industry. From the perspective of investment trends, the growth rate fluctuated significantly in the first half of the year, and remained at a high level of more than 30% throughout the year. From the perspective of investment areas, the investment focus of enterprises has shifted from production links to upstream and downstream, mainly including upstream chips, design and software development and downstream value-added services.
Figure 4: Investment completion of my country's mobile communications and terminal equipment manufacturing industry since 2013
2. Operation characteristics
1. Overall shipment situation
In 2013, the cumulative shipments of the domestic mobile phone market reached 579 million units, a year-on-year increase of 24.1%. Among them, the shipments of 2G mobile phones were 170 million units, and the shipments of 3G mobile phones reached 408 million units. Among them, the shipments of smart phones were 423 million units, a year-on-year increase of 64.1%, and the market share reached 73.1%; among them, the shipments of Android phones were 398 million units, accounting for 94.0% of the shipments of smart phones in the same period.
(II) New product launch
In 2013, 2,861 new mobile phone models were launched in China, a year-on-year decrease of 26.7%. Among them, there were 786 new 2G mobile phone models, 2,055 new 3G mobile phone models, and 20 new TD-LTE mobile phone models. Among them, 2,288 new smartphone models were launched, a year-on-year increase of 3.0%, accounting for 80.0% of the total number of new models in the same period; 2,217 of them used the Android operating system, accounting for 96.9% of the number of new smartphone models in the same period.
(III) Development of domestic brands
In 2013, the shipment volume of domestic brand mobile phones reached 461 million units, up 24.9% year-on-year, accounting for 79.7% of the total mobile phone shipment volume; 2,691 new models were launched, down 27.2% year-on-year, accounting for 94.1% of the total new models launched. Among 3G mobile phones, the shipment volume share of domestic brands is: 89.0% for TD-SCDMA mobile phones, 52.2% for WCDMA mobile phones, and 75.5% for cdma2000 mobile phones; among TD-LTE mobile phones, domestic brands account for 54.0%.
III. Issues that Deserve Attention
1. Lack of core competitiveness
In the past two years, domestic mobile phone companies have risen rapidly and have entered the core technology research and development level from OEM production. The gap between domestic mobile phone companies and the world's advanced level in technology development is narrowing. However, due to the insufficient technical accumulation of domestic mobile phone manufacturers, compared with many foreign mobile phone companies, the overall technical level is still far behind foreign companies, and the core technology is almost entirely mastered by foreign mobile phone manufacturers. In terms of hardware, my country's mobile phone companies lack key core technologies such as chips and radio frequency components. On the one hand, it directly leads to the lack of high-end products, weak market competitiveness and low profits of domestic mobile phones in my country; on the other hand, it leads to the increasingly serious homogeneity of domestic mobile phone products, which directly restricts the healthy development of my country's mobile phone industry. In terms of software, smart phones are popular all over the world and gradually replace traditional feature phones, while domestic mobile phones are obviously lagging behind in the expansion of the intelligent field. Most domestic mobile phone operating systems are based on Android and customized services for market development. There are few truly unique and original applications. Domestic mobile phone operating systems generally have problems such as slow version upgrades and the speed of "filling leaks" and "increasing efficiency" of operating systems. From the perspective of global smartphone gross profit margins, Apple exceeds 50%, Samsung and HTC maintain around 30%, while the gross profit margin of domestic brands is less than 20%.
2. Insufficient efforts in brand building
After entering the era of mobile Internet, the smartphone market has developed rapidly, bringing new development opportunities for domestic mobile phones. Domestic mobile phones represented by "China Cool Union" have begun to dominate the domestic mobile phone market, using thousand-yuan smartphones to gain a firm foothold and seize a larger market share. However, there is a common problem in the development of domestic mobile phone companies: companies lack long-term planning to become stronger and bigger, and ignore the construction of corporate brands. As many mobile phone consumers are becoming more and more rational when buying mobile phones, mobile phone brands have a great influence on their purchasing decisions. The reason why many domestic mobile phone consumers choose foreign brand mobile phones is precisely because of the key element of their brand. Due to the lack of key core technologies, domestic mobile phone manufacturers in my country are forced to abandon the high-end product market and switch to the low-end product market, and position the main battlefield on models below a thousand yuan, triggering a price war and leaving a low-end product impression on domestic and foreign consumers. In addition, in order to meet the market demand for new mobile phone styles, some domestic mobile phone manufacturers have tried their best to shorten the time from research and development to the listing of mobile phones, resulting in unstable quality of some products, a high rate of return repairs, and increasing user complaints about mobile phone quality. The road to building domestic mobile phone brands in my country is very long, and the weaknesses of domestic mobile phones without brand support in international competition will undoubtedly be more exposed.
3. International competition becomes increasingly fierce
In recent years, developing countries such as India and Vietnam have adopted various preferential policies to vigorously support the development of their own industries. As these countries have abundant cheap labor and increasingly complete supporting facilities in the industrial chain, the trend of orders for mobile phone electronic products shifting to these countries is becoming more and more obvious, and they are gradually seizing the order share that originally belonged to my country in the international mobile phone market. Take Samsung's investment in Vietnam as an example: Since 2008, Samsung has invested US$670 million to build its first mobile phone factory in Bac Ninh Province, Vietnam; in 2012, Samsung invested another US$700 million to build its second mobile phone factory in Thai Nguyen Province in northern Vietnam; in 2013, Samsung once again increased its investment in Vietnam and planned to spend US$2 billion to build a third production base in Vietnam for the manufacture of mobile phones, cameras and laptops. According to preliminary estimates, the shipment volume of smartphones from Samsung's Vietnamese factories in 2013 will reach 240 million units, accounting for more than half of its total output and accounting for about 20% of the global smartphone shipment volume in the same period. It can be seen that the development of my country's mobile phone industry is facing fierce international competition. More developing countries have joined the mobile phone manufacturing industry by taking advantage of cheap resources and labor advantages, resulting in increasing international competition.
4. Development Trend
1. The expansion of the global mobile phone market will slow down
According to IDC data, in 2013, global mobile phone shipments reached 1.8 billion units, a year-on-year increase of 7.3%, 6.1 percentage points higher than in 2012; the rapid growth of smartphones is the main driving force for the growth of the mobile phone market. In 2013, global smartphone shipments exceeded 1 billion units for the first time, a year-on-year increase of 38.4%. In response to the rapid growth of the global mobile phone market in 2013, JPMorgan Chase made a forecast for the global mobile phone market in 2014. Its report shows that in 2014, the growth rate of global smartphone shipments will be significantly lower than that in 2013. The main reason for this trend is that the high-end smartphone market is gradually saturated, and the number of first-time buyers is decreasing; in addition, the functions of existing mobile phones are sufficient to meet the needs of most users, and the demand for mobile phone upgrades is also decreasing. Against the background of gradually saturated market demand, the technical competition of mobile phone products will become more and more fierce, and several technologies such as multi-mode 4G chips, 2K high-definition screens, optical image stabilization shooting, NFC (near field wireless communication), flexible screens and batteries, and dual operating systems will become development trends.
(II) 4G deployment drives the growth of the domestic mobile phone market
At the end of 2013, the government issued 4G licenses to domestic mobile operators. After the 4G network is launched, the shipment of 4G smartphones in my country is expected to reach 120 million in 2014 to meet the huge demand for network access. The industry promotion of the upcoming issuance of 4G licenses and the implementation of the broadband strategic deployment policy are promoting the rapid development of 4G communication services. In addition, from the perspective of user development and revenue, the development speed of 4G will be much higher than the record at the beginning of 3G network deployment. In the next three years, the domestic 4G market will show an explosive growth trend, rather than the gradual growth in the early stage of 3G.
Taking the above factors into consideration, it is expected that in 2014, supported and driven by positive domestic factors, the production and sales scale of my country's mobile phone industry will continue to grow to a certain extent. However, due to unfavorable factors such as the saturation of global market demand and the increasing competition in the industry, the growth rate of production and sales will slow down slightly compared with 2013. |
