As we enter 2020, whether it's the frequency of new phone releases under the "All in 5G" strategy of domestic mobile phone manufacturers or the "5G Taste" package advertised by carriers, we can always feel the speed of 5G penetration from all sides.
In the first half of 2020, Chinese mobile phone manufacturers have launched more than 10 5G phones, including the flagship Huawei P40 series, OPPO Find X2, vivo NEX 3S and other models, as well as the Huawei Smooth Z, Glory X10, vivo Z6, Xiaomi 10 Youth Edition and other models in the 2,000 yuan or even 1,000 yuan range, which are mainly affordable and popular.
According to Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun, Xiaomi has basically liquidated its 4G handsets at the end of last year and is fully committed to the 5G sector. "It's true that the 5G rollout has slowed down due to the epidemic, but we haven't changed this strategy and will continue to push 5G phones."
The March release of the vivo S6 is also the feng shui of vivo's full shift to 5G.
According to IDC, in the first quarter of 2020, domestic shipments of 5G handsets were about 14.5 million units, accounting for 21.8 percent of the overall market, up 64 percent from the previous quarter. If you count last year's data, the total number of 5G phones shipped in the country reached 23.8 million units by the first quarter of 2020.
With different brands, Huawei still holds more than half of the 5G phone market share, but with many headset manufacturers entering the market for different price segments and different product positioning, vivo (14.4%), OPPO (13.9%) and Xiaomi (13.3%) in the second to fourth place have also taken more than 40% of the market, and the competition between each other is becoming increasingly intense.
In addition to explosive growth, "downward price" has been the keyword since the domestic 5G market entered 2020.
IDC said the unit price of 5G phones in the country is dropping rapidly, averaging $711 in the third quarter of last year and already falling below $600 in the first quarter of this year to a record low of $557.
Specific to different brands, Huawei, VIVO, and Xiaomi have all launched more 5G phones in the $2000 or even $1000 range in the first half of this year, such as the Huawei Smooth Z starting at $1699, the Glory 10X starting at $1899, and the Xiaomi 10 Youth Edition starting at $2099.
In parallel with the development of 5G terminal sales is the construction of 5G infrastructure, after all, only a sufficiently well-developed 5G sub-build can support the increasing number of users and more extensive coverage.
China's Minister of Industry and Information Technology Miao Wei recently said that the country is currently adding more than 10,000 5G base stations per week, with a cumulative number of more than 200,000 open, but in the face of high-frequency 5G signals, the number of base stations is still far from the standard.
Xiang Ligang, director-general of the Information Consumption Alliance, a telecom industry association, previously said that the number of 5G base stations would double compared to 4G. For the next three years starting this year, 1 million 5G base stations may need to be built each year and eventually 8 to 10 million 5G base stations may need to be built.
So there's a long way to go to achieve the same coverage as today's 4G. From this point of view, the current purchase of 5G phones may be more of a "rainy day", so from the beginning of this year, we rarely see mobile phone manufacturers to focus on 5G product selling points, but rather in high refresh rate, multi-shot, and even body design to do more articles to attract consumers.
There is also a large percentage of people who use 4G phones to experience 5G.
The total number of 5G package subscribers in China has reached 50 million, including 31.72 million for China Mobile and 16.61 million for China Telecom, with China Unicom not separately announcing the number of 5G package subscribers.
When compared with the nearly 24 million 5G mobile phones sold, we can find that more than half of the 5G package users are still using 4G mobile phones, and these "fake 5G" users often cannot experience the real 5G network speed. According to China Unicom's customer service, "5G package users with 4G phones can only log into 4G networks and enjoy the same 4G package speed (up to 300Mbps downlink speed)."
Since 4G phones can't enjoy 5G speeds, why do you still offer 5G packages for your 4G phone? The reason behind this may be due to the increasingly frequent advertisements and promotions by carriers. I myself have often received advertising messages or phone calls from Unicom promoting 5G packages to "attract new customers" through promotions such as "5G upgrade without number change" and "limited time 5G traffic pack".
As for the "real 5G" users who use 5G mobile phones and also have 5G packages, it is probably less than half of the number announced by the three major carriers, after all, not all users who have purchased 5G mobile phones will choose to upgrade to the 5G package in the first place, even if the price of 5G mobile phones comes down, the expensive 5G package is still a barrier to most people.
China Mobile, for example, is currently offering its "5G Smart Package (Personal Edition)" in several price brackets, with the lowest price of RMB 128, allowing subscribers to enjoy 30GB of traffic + 200 minutes of talk time.
So in this day and age, even though the price of 5G phones is dropping and carriers are offering a variety of eye-catching 5G packages, I still don't think this is the best time to replace 5G phones and 5G packages. Perhaps 5G phones will only really become popular if mobile phone manufacturers introduce 5G as the most basic feature or not at all.
