Since the beginning of this year, the policy of exchanging old for new consumer goods has continued to drive the recovery and improvement of consumption. According to data from the Ministry of Commerce, as of May 31st, the five major categories of consumer goods trade in this year have driven a total sales revenue of 1.1 trillion yuan, with approximately 175 million direct subsidies issued to consumers. Among them, 53.529 million consumers purchased 56.629 million digital products such as mobile phones. According to data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, in the first four months of this year, the domestic market shipped 94.708 million mobile phones, a year-on-year increase of 3.5%. Among them, there were 80.932 million 5G mobile phones, a year-on-year increase of 5.6%, accounting for 85.5% of the mobile phone shipments during the same period. According to Zhang Yi, CEO and Chief Analyst of iMedia Consulting Group, although the growth rate is relatively limited, it is already not easy in the current market environment. Relying on the continuous efforts of subsidy policies and the natural renewal momentum brought by the replacement cycle, the domestic smartphone market has moderately recovered. At the same time, the industry landscape presents obvious top features, and the market concentration of the top five brands has further increased. Wang Qiongjie, Deputy Director of the Information Technology Research Office at the Information and Software Industry Research Institute of CCID Think Tank, believes that from the perspective of product price structure, the proportion of China's mid to high end market is increasing, while the proportion of low-end product market is decreasing, resulting in a certain degree of consumption upgrading. The steady growth of smartphone sales is mainly due to several reasons, according to Wang Qiongjie: firstly, the national subsidy consumption policy. In January of this year, mobile phones were included in the scope of national subsidy policies for the first time. For phones under 6000 yuan, a subsidy of up to 500 yuan will be given based on 15% of the product price. Combined with the peak season of e-commerce platform activities before and after the Spring Festival and the sales strategy of "high-end and low-priced" by manufacturers, more consumers will be stimulated to upgrade their devices. The second is to unlock new intelligent experiences. Major manufacturers have released AI smartphones equipped with end-to-end models, with real-time call translation, intelligent image removal, article summarization, and other AI functions and cross terminal interaction methods becoming important selling points. The fresh user experience has to some extent stimulated the demand for phone replacement. The third is the continuous innovation of physical form. The wide variety of foldable and ultra-thin screen phones provide new choices for consumers who pursue differentiated experiences with their portability and fun gameplay. Currently, the average replacement cycle for smartphone users has been extended from the past 18 months to about 40 months, which means that the device update demand formed by the previous wave of centralized replacement is entering a release window period. At the same time, the improvement of the economic environment has injected consumer momentum into the market. With the overall economic expectations improving, consumer willingness to consume has gradually rebounded, coupled with manufacturers optimizing inventory levels and marketing innovation, jointly promoting terminal sales growth. ”Zhang Yi said. In this context, domestic mobile phones are actively innovating, innovating in various aspects such as artificial intelligence, imaging, and battery life to seize the market. AI technology is accelerating its penetration into mobile phones, and mainstream manufacturers are actively building their own AI big model systems, focusing on optimizing the entire chain from the bottom chip to the upper layer applications, accelerating the integration of AI capabilities, deeply integrating big model technology and AI algorithms into smartphone systems, and achieving functional upgrades in scenarios such as voice assistant interaction, image recognition processing, intelligent recommendation services, and anti harassment phone recognition. Regarding the direction of the smartphone market, Wang Qiongjie believes that on the one hand, the smart experience will continue to upgrade. With the accelerated implementation of end-to-end large-scale models, AI technology will reconstruct user experience, covering scenarios such as imaging, voice interaction, and personalized services. Mobile phones can accurately "understand" consumer intentions, plan multi-step tasks, execute tasks across applications, and achieve seamless connection and interaction integration between different devices such as mobile phones, tablets, and computers. On the other hand, the high-end market landscape will also undergo changes. Although Apple still holds a dominant position in the high-end domestic market, its leading advantage may be reduced by local brands due to its weak intelligent functions and the rapid development of domestic mobile phones. Product innovation will still revolve around the core pain points of users. ”Zhang Yi believes that breakthroughs in battery technology are included; The deep integration of AI technology and terminal devices will extend to a wider range of application scenarios; The upgrade of imaging functions will go beyond the simple comparison of pixel and optical performance, and will be finely polished in areas such as virtual background generation, portrait beauty algorithms, and shooting stabilization technology; Folding screen smartphones, with their increasing technological maturity and gradually decreasing costs, demonstrate strong potential to promote brand high-end development. Overall, the Chinese smartphone market is at a critical stage of technological iteration and structural upgrading. The multiple combination of policy dividends, consumption cycles, and technological innovation will drive the industry to evolve towards a more valuable and profound direction. (New Society)