Q4 signals a turning point for mobile phone makers

The just-ended fourth quarter marks a turning point for the domestic mobile market, as a bullish mobile market is expected and is forecast to maintain a positive growth this year.

Mobile phone shipments in the domestic market reached 31.21 million units in November, up 34.3 percent year-on-year, according to a report released by China Information and Communication Academy on Dec 27. During the Jan-Nov period, the overall shipment of mobile phones in the domestic market accumulated 261 million units, an increase of 7.1 percent on a yearly basis, of which 5G mobile phone shipments were 215 million units, a rise of 12.9 percent, accounting for 82.5 percent of mobile phone shipments in the same period, the Paper.cn reported on Wednesday.

According to statistics put together by IDC, a market researcher, the actual retail volume of domestic smartphones achieved a 0.4 percent growth year-on-year in the third quarter of 2023, and shipments are expected to show an inflection point in the fourth quarter.

The estimation on the emerging turning point was based on several key factors: The market base in the fourth quarter of 2022 was relatively low, and a flagship model released in August by Huawei is attractive enough for consumer to buy new phones, said Guo Tianxiang, a senior analyst at IDC China, during an interview.

Phone makers such as Huawei and Apple have all introduced their flagship models during the second half of last year, effectively activating the consumer market.

Huawei's return at the end of August has pulled the appeal of consumers back to the market, re-stimulating consumers' attention for mobile phones, invigorating the demand for replacement, and other brands are offering many upgrades to attract consumers to buy new phones.

According to a recent report released by IDC, the AI large model is more widely used on mobile devices.

Major domestic manufacturers have successively laid out large AI models for mobile phones. The use of large AI models on mobile phones is expected to break the situation of insufficient innovation in the mobile phone market, and the demand for higher performance hardware can prompt some users to upgrade.

Up until this day, phone manufactures from China such as Huawei, Vivo, and Oppo have all introduced their large language model.

Although most consumers rarely use relevant services on a daily bases, satellite communications will still play an important role in some rare cases and become an important choice for high-end products to create differentiation. Paired with artificial intelligent generated content, satellite communication will enhance the competitiveness of high-end products, according to IDC.