As smart phones replace functional phones and enter millions of households, smart phones are no longer mysterious high-tech toys, but gradually become the daily necessities of the public. Most users are no longer simply pursuing the brand, performance and other conventional indicators, but more looking forward to technological innovation, such as the truly perfect "full screen" and artificial intelligence with practical application value. However, contrary to expectations, many manufacturers are unable to meet all the needs of users due to the limitations of the current technology level and supply chain. To make matters worse, the smartphone market is gradually becoming saturated, and the consumer potential of users has almost been exhausted. 77% of the market sales come from stock replacement, and the competition has shifted from competitive strategic layout to close combat.

How to win steadily? Digital fine operation with understanding and insight into consumers as the core has become the key to the survival of the mobile phone industry in 2018. [Youmeng+] based on global data resources and technology, proposed three keywords for the mobile phone industry in 2018: Iterative growth, data technology dividend, ecological operation 。

1、 Iterative growth: the market competition is dumbbell shaped, with serious loss of intermediate brand users

China's mobile phone market has entered the era of stock; The market competition is dumbbell shaped, with intermediate brand users moving to the first and third tier brands. [Youmeng+] monitoring data shows that in 2017, the number of devices in China's smart phone stock market reached 1.15 billion, and 450 million new devices were added in 2017, of which 77% were in stock for replacement. The growth of mobile phone market sales mainly came from the stock market.

*Stock replacement: the newly purchased mobile phone is the replacement of the original mobile phone; New devices: users have mobile phones, purchase new mobile phones, and purchase new smart phones without mobile phones; Total: Total number of newly activated smart phone devices

The stock market has become the main battlefield of the mobile phone industry. Most mobile phone manufacturers hope to complete the close hand to hand combat with competing products through new technologies and new models - first, reduce the loss of their own users, and then attract the users of competing products in high-speed and accurate iterations. However, after the high-speed operation in recent years, the homogenization of smart phones is serious, and mobile phone manufacturers have been somewhat powerless in "pushing through the old to bring forth the new". Therefore, while betting on new machines, we must use data to refine the operation of users and keep the stock of users.

*Iterative growth index is an index to measure the increase and decrease of the number of users in the brand stock market based on the acquisition and loss of mobile phone brand users. If the index is greater than 100, it means the size of the stock market increases, and if the index is less than 100, it means the size of the stock market decreases; Brands are ranked by brand market share in the fourth quarter of 2017.

From the iterative growth of mobile phone brands in the fourth quarter of 2017:

First echelon: OPPO、vivo、 Huawei/Glory, Apple, Xiaomi. The overall iteration index is 110, which continues to grow in the expansion of the stock market, and the strong will remain strong; It is worth noting that Xiaomi is still in an absolute leading position among Internet brands, but the total number of users in the fourth quarter shrank slightly.

The second echelon: traditional mobile phone brands represented by Samsung, Jinli, Meizu and ZTE. The overall iteration index is 60, and the number of users is seriously lost;

The third echelon: Yijia, 360, Hammer, Nubia, Meitu, etc. The overall iteration index is 104, and the share of stock users has increased rapidly, among which the expansion potential of Hammer, Yijia and Meitu users is high.

2、 Data technology dividend highlights: data becomes a rare resource

Data technology can efficiently help mobile phone enterprises to realize comprehensive and timely perception of the market and competition, agile formulation of market strategies, intelligent forecasting, and full experience and life cycle management of consumers.

The data asset management capability with data technology as the core is a secret weapon (including big data acquisition, processing, analysis and application) to help mobile phone enterprises win the stock war. On the one hand, data technology enables enterprises to quickly perceive and identify the market situation, on the other hand, through the penetration of data in the entire operating system, through intelligent operation analysis Automatic policy selection and execution enables enterprises to deploy resources in time where they need them most. Data and technology dividends are highlighted in the following aspects:

1) Fast perception of the market: 150000 computing cores analyze super volume data

In the past, the main way for mobile phone manufacturers to perceive the market was sampling data survey, which could not reflect the overall picture of the market and delayed, and was no longer suitable for the Internet. Real time data collection, analysis and mining of the whole network and the whole area can help enterprises quickly recognize the real market and flexibly make decisions in line with market trends. [Youmeng+] can call up to 150000 computing cores at the same time to process and analyze the super volume data, so as to ensure the timely analysis of data and the output of results.

For example, based on the distribution of operating systems of smart phones throughout the network monitored by [Youmeng+], domestic mobile phones have developed rapidly and iteratively, Android ecosystem becomes more and more powerful with the development of terminals.

For domestic mobile phone manufacturers, they should consider building an ecosystem around their own platforms to attract developers to participate in the brand's ecological construction, so as to promote the rapid development of brands in the post market and improve operating profits. Data technology can also be used to identify the flow direction of replacement of existing users, warn of loss and reduce loss.

Take Apple as an example. In 2017, in addition to upgrading and replacing its mobile phones, its mobile phone buyers mainly came from OPPO and vivo. Compared with inflow, user churn is more likely to flow to Vivo and Huawei. Such perception of competitive situation can be achieved daily or even real-time in the era of data technology.

In addition to the upgrade of its own iPhone users, iPhone X has attracted more upgrade users of OPPO R9, OPPO R9s and Huawei P9 within two months after its launch.

2) Agile formulates market strategy: from the unsuccessful iPhone 8 series

Timely data collection and display will help enterprises to quickly respond to the market situation, identify problems and formulate countermeasures. For example, the success of a mobile phone needs to maintain its development potential within 2-3 months after its launch. In the fourth quarter of 2017, Apple successively released three mobile phones, iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X. Comparing the trend of the activation volume of the three new phones, we can see that compared with X, the overall activation volume of the iPhone 8 series within 60 days of its release has steadily declined, and sales have not been successful. Compared with the first peak day of iPhone X, its activation peak day is one month later, and the peak value is significantly lower than that of iPhone X. For mobile phone brands, the faster they enter the sales peak and maintain the sales potential, the more likely they are to succeed. For Apple, it is necessary to reflect on where the problems of the iPhone 8 series are and develop timely adjustment strategies.

3) Intelligent prediction: Be alert if the user's change loyalty is less than 30%

The difference of mobile phone product strength is reduced, and brand differentiation is difficult to form in the short term. How to improve consumer loyalty and reduce the risk of user churn? Through data and technology, a user turnover and churn model is built. Focusing on consumer ID, users' mobile phone use behavior, service life, app use behavior, online activity and other data are modeled to warn potential user churn risks and develop personalized user maintenance strategies.

When we conduct a comprehensive analysis of the smartphone replacement circulation market in 2017, we find that:

The range of user loyalty for changing planes is huge (1% - 72%): User loyalty is not as imagined or claimed by the brand owner. The actual change behavior of users is easily affected by the external environment, and there is uncertainty;

The golden watershed of user loyalty is 30%: Brands with replacement loyalty higher than 30% are in the first echelon in the market competition. Their stock market and new market performance are higher than the market average, and their brand users are more dynamic.

*Change loyalty: refers to the proportion of users who change from the brand to the brand

In terms of prediction, the demand for the brand and the market share that the brand can harvest in the whole product life cycle are also scientifically predicted based on user demand, behavior, market environment and other factors to effectively reduce product inventory and thus reduce operating costs.

4) Full experience and full life cycle operation of consumers: data becomes the biggest threshold

In the period of low sales growth, many companies hope to improve the user experience around the consumer experience map through data technology.

According to the survey of WARC, 53% of brand owners and 58% of agency companies believe that consumer experience is an extremely important work in the process of digital transformation of enterprises. However, according to the survey by WARC and Moore Stephens, only 17% of enterprises can optimize the consumer experience through all channels and all contacts, and 21% of enterprises plan to deploy data technology with consumer experience as the core in 2018.

But the question is, where does the data come from? How to build a complete consumer insight and action system? This is not a small challenge for mobile phone manufacturers. As the media report said, "In the AI kingdom, data is a first-class citizen, algorithms are second-class citizens, and hardware is only the third class - it is difficult to open the gap between technology and algorithms, but data is unique, scarce, and has barriers." In particular, achieving full consumer experience means that it is far from enough to only use the data of the mobile phone manufacturer's own pool. It is necessary to build a multi-dimensional portrait system of consumers online and offline, gain insight into their needs and preferences, and match consumers' preferences at the beginning of product design.

Digital technology is able to integrate and link the scattered consumer experience, conduct full life cycle management with consumers as the center, run through the pre market product operation and post market ecological operation, formulate more comprehensive business promotion strategies, rapidly promote the coordination and implementation of strategies, maintain the consistency of user experience, and improve the overall operational efficiency.

3、 Ecological operation: sell products and grab attention

The hardware profit in the mobile phone market is getting thinner. According to the report of Counterpoint Research, a market research organization, in Q3 2017, among the six major smartphone manufacturers in the world, Apple's single machine profit was as high as 151 dollars, Samsung also had about 31 dollars, while the domestic handset manufacturer's single machine profit was only 15 dollars, and Xiaomi's single machine profit was as low as 2 dollars. From the distribution of single machine profits of the six major manufacturers, Apple accounted for 67% of the top six profits. Android is in urgent need of exploring new business growth points. In 2018, mobile phone manufacturers will make efforts in the app operating end to build their own ecosystem to improve operating profits and differentiated market competitiveness.

Q3 single unit shipment profit in 2017 (USD)

Data source: Counterpoint Research

When waiting for the bus, use your mobile phone to open the news app to see new things, use your iPad to catch up with dramas when taking the subway, listen to crosstalk on the audio app when in traffic jam, brush your circle of friends or raise a Buddha frog before going to bed, and search for store information in the comment app when having dinner... The spatiotemporal dispersion of users' Internet access and the fragmentation of content make mobile app operations of mobile phone manufacturers face great challenges. According to the monitoring data of [Youmeng+], users spend about 80% of their online time using apps, especially social media, mobile games, news and video. However, users' time is limited, and the competition for users' attention will become increasingly fierce.

It can be predicted that in the next 2-3 years, when 5G is truly launched, an app operating ecosystem based on smart terminals will set off a new round of user traffic dividends, which will also become the next gold mine for mobile phone manufacturers with huge stock of users.

epilogue

About [Youmeng+] mobile phone industry big data solution: With the help of global data and technology, mobile phone manufacturers can realize closed-loop operation of market perception, product/market operation, user and ecological operation, and help enterprises release growth potential. [Youmeng+] covers 700 million real active consumers every day; It reaches 1.4 billion active devices every day, covering more than 80% of new mobile phone consumers every month, and almost all iOS consumers; Integrate behavioral data and cognitive data to get through 5 million dynamic mobile phone sample data; Up to 150000 computing cores can be called for real-time data processing and computing.

In 2018, will the mobile phone industry have the next wind?

What new opportunities does the mobile phone industry have in the digital economy era?

On March 30, Shenzhen [Youmeng+] Mobile Industry Frontier Forum was unveiled for you!

Registration address: //events.umeng.com/event/phone?utm_source=wm