Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Mobile phone image jump, the mainland supply chain superior.

In September 2000, Sharp released the world's first mobile phone, the J-SH04, which can take pictures. Sharp J-SH04 has a built-in 11-megapixel CCD camera with a 96x130-pixel 256-color LCD screen.

At that time, Chinese mobile phone manufacturers had just figured out how to make mobile phones, and most of them were in the business of branding for foreign brands like Motorola, so when products like Sharp J-SH04 came out, it was, in today's words, that none of the competitors could fight.

Fortunately, Sharp J-SH04 did not enter the Chinese market at that time, and the 11-megapixel camera actually pulled crotch, and the photos taken were mosaics, so the phone did not cause an uproar in the market, but the innovative attempt to place a camera in the phone was seen and borne in mind by competitors, and the mobile phone industry opened the ultimate volume in the image function for 20 years.

"the most important thing in a person's life is to pursue and persevere. I worked my way down and watched my 200000 change from 5 million to 10 million, and then from 5 million to 10 million. Instead of showing off, I just want to tell my friends through my own experience: the higher the pixel of the phone, the clearer the beauty selfie!"

A few years ago, this joke about the video function of mobile phone manufacturers was widely circulated in moments, and it is also a true portrayal of the rapid evolution of mobile phone images.

Play and play, now the pixels of mobile phone images have exceeded 100 million. With the joint efforts of mobile phone manufacturers, the "shooting" function has become the most concerned factor for Chinese consumers. it is far higher than the traditional publicity selling points such as processors, appearance, screens and fast charging.

Data source: iResearch Consulting Cartography: the insight behind the Didi Ling jokes of the new research agency is the painstaking exploration of Chinese mobile phones to hit the high end and establish a competitive threshold, and it is also an unyielding sample of unyielding fate made in China.

01. Why has mobile phone image become the king of mobile phone innovation? In 2019, the well-known digital blogger "Hello teacher, my name is classmate" asked such a question in one of his works: "the photos in my phone are all courseware in class and notes after class."... is today's mobile phone so obsessed with the improvement of photography, just like the end of the function phone to compare pixels, is it a reflection of the bottleneck of innovation as a communication tool? "

We all know that Apple didn't beat Nokia with better cameras, but mobile phone makers still spared no effort to focus on mobile phone images, and the most obvious reason is that phones that take pictures sell well.

2006, when Nokia and Motorola were in full swing, was the most difficult year for Chinese mobile phones. Bao Bao, known as the "fighter in mobile phones", chose to retreat strategically in that year, and Zhu Zhaojiang, who was in charge of waveguide's overseas business, left to create a voice phone specializing in the African market.

You can't beat foreign brands in China, but you can do it in Africa?

The strategy adopted by MediaTek is to carry out extreme localization innovation on the basis of MediaTek's "Turn-Key Solution" scheme, and the innovation of mobile phone images is the most representative.

In order to enable Africans to confidently take out their mobile phones to take selfies, voice phones combined with dark skin imaging engine technology, customized Camera hardware, specially developed a photo technology based on the positioning of eyes and teeth, plus the "smart tanning" cool techs, it can take better pictures of black skin even in poor light conditions, and even at night, African users can take selfies at will.

If you are an African user, can you refuse such a beautiful phone that can take pictures of yourself?

It is precisely because of this that voice-transmitting phones have gained the title of "king of mobile phones in Africa". According to IDC's quarterly mobile phone market tracking report around the world, overall shipments of voice-transmitted phones reached 197 million in 2021, accounting for 12.4% of the global mobile phone market, ranking third. Among them, Africa and Pakistan ranked first in smartphone shipments, while Bangladesh ranked second in smartphone shipments.

The success of audio transmission in Africa may only be a "sneak attack" between Apple and Samsung's "nap", which is not representative, so what is the role of mobile phone images in the Chinese market, which has become a twist?

On March 26, 2019, Huawei launched the Huawei P30 series at the Paris Convention Center in France, in which the P30 Pro was equipped with an 8-megapixel periscope telephoto lens for the first time, supporting up to 50x digital zoom, causing a sensation in the industry.

You know, 2X optical zoom lenses were widely used in flagship mobile phones at that time, and 5X periscope telephoto lenses simply stood out from the crowd. In particular, the picture quality of the P30 Pro 5X optical telephoto lens was a reduced-dimensional blow for other mobile phones that used digital cutting to achieve 5X zoom at that time.

From the beginning of the P30 series, many users photographed the moon with their mobile phones for the first time.

With its leadership in mobile imaging functions, Huawei has "killed all directions" in the market. Only 85 days after its launch, sales of the P30 series exceeded 10 million units, 62 days earlier than the previous generation of P20 series. In the whole product cycle, the P30 series has sold more than 20 million units, which is also one of the few highlights of Chinese mobile phones in the high-end market.

With the development of social media, mobile phone has suddenly become the "fifth media". It is the most commonly used or even the only image recording tool in the hands of ordinary users. Taking good photos is a typical high-frequency rigid demand. Mobile phone photography can not be improved too much, because there will always be users to pay for it.

At this time, mobile phone image has become a technical means for users to connect more closely with the world. As a strong perception function, it affects users' purchase decisions and is closely related to the sales of mobile phone products.

Above is the user demand pushes the mobile phone manufacturer to carry on the innovation competition in the mobile phone image. At the subjective level, countless market experience tells the mobile phone manufacturer that because the mobile phone image innovation is similar to the chip system, it has a certain threshold, but it is not as good as the chip system, so it needs a very high threshold. Mobile phone image is one of the rare opportunities for them to make technological breakthroughs and establish technical barriers.

Mobile phone manufacturers have the ability and confidence to roll up dead friends in the matter of mobile phone images.

For example, when Huawei compared the iPhone and realized that taking pictures was an important factor in mobile phone sales, when Apple set up a video department with more than 700 people, Yu Chengdong immediately decided: we should also recruit 700 engineers for the video department, no less than Apple!

For example, when Xiaomi released its sliding-cover full-screen phone MIX3 at the Imperial Palace in 2018, Lei Jun said, "one goal of Xiaomi's camera department is whether it can turn into P20."

Behind the challenge was the MIX2s released by Xiaomi in the first half of that year, with a running score of 99, surpassing iPhone X's 97 points, but Huawei overtook Xiaomi with 102 points the next day, which upset him. This time, Xiaomi MIX3 is one point higher than Huawei's P20 in DxO's camera score.

Obviously, as long as mobile phone manufacturers do not deviate in the general direction and are willing to invest, they will certainly gain something, and it is easy to obtain the differentiated characteristics that belong to the brand, and even become a significant difference between high-end products and low-end products.

02. The transition of mobile phone images and Nokia, the superior of the mainland supply chain, have been squeezed out of the history stage by smartphones. Now the camera is facing aggressive mobile phone images and is holding back step by step.

On January 12 this year, Canon Zhuhai Co., Ltd., which has been established for 32 years, announced the suspension of production and closure.

Prior to this, Nikon closed its production base in Jiangsu in 2017 and all camera production lines in Japan in 2021, moving its business to Thailand as a whole.

Olympus had a direct showdown-no more, packaged the camera business along with the recording business and sold it to private equity firm Japan Industrial Partners.

Behind a series of actions by camera manufacturers is the shrinking image market.

According to the environmental report released by Canon Zhuhai, between 2012 and 2020, the production capacity of digital cameras fell from 10.93 million in 2012 to 1.029 million in 2020, from 3643 million lenses to 12.29 million lenses, and from 570000 to 94000 digital cameras.

Coinciding with the shrinking timeline of the imaging market is the rise of smartphones. According to IDC, global smartphone shipments reached an all-time peak of 1.473 billion units in 2016. Although the overall market is approaching saturation in recent years, global smartphone shipments are still 1.35 billion units in 2021.

When the camera can be put in the pocket, there will be nothing for Nikonka.

In the functional machine era before 2010, mobile phone photography is more the product of direct "stitching" card machine, and the competition of mobile phone images stays in the initial stage of "pixel competition".

In 2006, Samsung released the B600, which looks very similar to a card machine, with a 1000-megapixel CCD camera, 3x optical zoom and 5x digital zoom. The advent of the B600 brings mobile phones to a position "on a par with cameras" for the first time.

The birth of Apple has become the starting point of the explosion of mobile phone images.

In 2010, Apple launched the iPhone4 with a disruptive design. The iPhone4, which has a FaceTime+480P front camera and a 5 megapixel rear camera, can achieve amazing results using iSight sensors and algorithms. Since then, mobile phone image capability has become one of the core points of mobile phone design, one of the most significant changes is the increase in the number of cameras.

In 2007, the original iPhone was quite "green", with only one camera. Nine years later, the iPhone7 had two cameras.

In 2018, Huawei launched the first rear-facing 3-camera phone Huawei P20 Pro, followed by Samsung released the world's first rear-facing 4-camera phone, Samsung Galaxy A9s, but this is not the end. In 2019, the resurgent Nokia released the world's first rear-facing 5-camera phone, the Nokia9 PureView.

Mobile phone image in the foreground is the competition among mobile phone brands, and the extension of the background is the competition of supply chain, because in the process of mobile phone image evolution, from double shooting, to three shooting, and then to four shooting, the camera has gradually become one of the three most expensive components (SoC, screen, camera) in the mobile phone.

Mobile phone video not only gives Chinese mobile phones an opportunity to catch up with foreign brands, but also gives China's mobile phone supply chain a chance to get to the top.

First of all, the lens.

As early as the iPhone 3G era, Taiwan lens manufacturer Dali Liguang began to supply Apple, basically monopolizing the lens production of high-end mobile phone cameras, and existed like TSMC in the mobile camera supply chain. For a long time, both Taiwan lens manufacturer Yujingguang and Japanese manufacturer Kantatsu challenged the supremacy of Dali, but did not cause too much splash.

On the contrary, it is mainland company Shunyu Optics that has completed the primitive accumulation of technology through a series of operations such as the acquisition of Korean Power Optics and the Shanghai mobile lens production base of Japanese lens manufacturer Konica Minolta. As the lens "stacking" is close to the limit, Shunyu Optics is gradually catching up.

In March 2018, Shunyu Optics snatched the lens order for Samsung's flagship Galaxy S9 from South Korean manufacturers such as Kolen and Sekonix, and in September of the same year, Shunyu Optics shipped more lenses than Da Liguang for the first time.

The second is the CMOS sensor.

There is an iron rule in the photography circle, "the bottom is crushing to death, and the bottom is one inch of gold."bottom" refers to the area of CMOS. The larger the photosensitive area, the more pixels you can hold. However, the space left for the CMOS inside the phone is limited. After a long period of exploration, it is recognized by the industry that the best number of mobile phone pixels is fixed at 12 million for a long time, which is also an important reason for Apple's ancestral 1200 megapixels.

In CMOS, Sony successfully developed a "stackable CMOS" process in 2013, bringing down old rival US company Howie, which had a 50 per cent market share in mobile CMOS in 2010, compared with 7 per cent for Sony.

In 2016, the defeated Howie was acquired by a Chinese consortium and sold to Weir, which started as a chip agent three years later. Under various coincidences, Chinese companies stood in front of Sony in this way of "curve saving the nation".

In the 1200-megapixel era, Sony's position is unshakable. Samsung engineers have racked their brains to come up with a "small pixel" solution. Since it is difficult to increase the sensor area, then make the pixels smaller and divide more pixels per unit area. Does this mean that the overall pixel is higher?

This is a completely different technical route from Sony, which has the advantage of high image quality under limited conditions. The "small pixel" scheme tests how to cut more pixels per unit area, relying on TSMC's manufacturing process.

It is difficult for the average user to perceive the difference in the technical route, but they will vote with their feet on the choice of 100 megapixels and 1200 megapixels. When mobile phone manufacturers have a "small pixel" solution to choose from, Sony has to be stuck by TSMC, and everyone is standing on the same starting line.

Finally, there is lens modeling.

Lens modeling seems to be just the assembly of sensors, lenses, motors and other components into a module, but it is classified by the industry as "high-end precision manufacturing" because of its technology and process. Sony has been Apple's "official supplier" for a long time in the past.

The turnaround occurred in 2016, when Apple installed dual cameras for the first time on the iPhone 7 plus. In order to ensure supply, Sony built a new dual-camera factory in Kumamoto prefecture ahead of schedule to expand production capacity. A sudden earthquake disrupted all Sony's plans.

Sony's new factory was forced to shut down and LG took orders from Apple that Sony could not fulfill as a substitute.

Sony suffered heavy losses in the earthquake, selling the iPhone front-facing camera modeling production line in Guangzhou to Chinese modeling company Oufeiguang for $234 million in 2017.

Behind this deal, Ofeiguang acquired the most advanced FC (Filp Chip) packaging technology for lens modeling, and successfully entered Apple's supply chain the following year. With its strong ability to control "management efficiency", Ofeiguang has become the world's largest manufacturer of camera models, taking all the high, middle and low end of the market.

The evolution of mobile phone images at the physical level is close to the limit. On the eve of the sprint towards the end, China's optical supply chain has completed its position, and a number of Chinese mobile phone brands have grown at the same time.

03. There is no ceiling in the evolution of mobile phone images. After 20 years of crazy mobile phone images, mobile phone manufacturers suddenly find that the stacking of hardware seems to have reached the physical limit, such as the later models such as Xiaomi 11 Ultra and Huawei P40 Pro +. Although they are well received in terms of image capabilities, their weight is difficult to be controlled within an ideal range, and users' comprehensive experience is not added.

Since it is difficult to break through from the front, make a detour from the side.

In the past two years, mobile phone manufacturers have begun to cut in from software algorithms to open up the second battlefield of "computational photography" and make the photos look better through later tuning of the algorithm.

In a media interview with Glory Magic 4 series of press conferences, Glory CEO Zhao Ming brought the importance of computational photography to a new height. "the image experience of Glory flagship must be comparable to or even surpassed Apple, so this competition is by no means a simple competition at the hardware level. The core is the deep coordination of hardware and software."hardware only determines the lower limit of image foundation. Glory's algorithm and ability determine whether Glory can truly provide consumers with flagship image value and a better-than-expected experience. "

In fact, as early as 2010, Apple put forward the concept of single-shot multi-frame fusion, which uses algorithms to improve the dynamic range and detail performance of images; Glory proposed single-focus dual-shot fusion in 2016. Fuse the pixels of the two cameras to enhance the image quality.

Limited by the overall computing power of mobile phones, the changes brought about by the above algorithms are not obvious. The solution that Chinese mobile phone manufacturers come up with is to use self-developed chips to cooperate with the SoC of Qualcomm and MediaTek to obtain their own exclusive selling points in images.

In March 2021, Xiaomi launched the self-developed ISP professional video chip "surging C1" and configured it in its first folding screen mobile phone, MIX Fold. The chip significantly improved autofocus, white balance, automatic exposure and other aspects.

In the same year, vivo carried the self-developed ISP chip V1 in its newly released flagship product vivo X70 series, and this year's vivo X80 series was equipped with an upgraded version of V1, upgrading from image chip to independent display chip, the effect of night vision was improved, and its imaging effect was pure enough in very low light extreme night environment.

OPPO's action is a little later, but in February this year, it also launched a new flagship Find X5 Pro with self-developed NPU chip "MariSilicon X". Similar to ISP, NPU is also an image chip, except that NPU has the ability of deep learning and has stronger performance in data processing and algorithms.

The release and application of MariSilicon X is the first time that OPPO has realized full-link vertical integration in the field of computing images, which will fully serve the needs of OPPO customized computing images. OPPO CEO Chen Mingyong said publicly: MariSilicon X is a small step in OPPO's self-research chip, and OPPO will continue to invest resources in the future, using a team of thousands of people to do self-research chip in a down-to-earth manner.

Glory has also customized a HONOR Image Engine graphics engine for this year's flagship Magic4 series, and with a great balance between software and hardware, Glory Magic4 scored an all-time high of 146on the DXOMARK.

The upper limit of the physical stack of mobile phone images is easy to touch, and once the competition turns to software algorithms, there are more variables that can be generated, because the evaluation of the quality of the image is a very "metaphysical" thing, in many cases, the hardware runs out of high parameters, and the effect of the image is not satisfactory. At this time, the personal aesthetic of the engineer who designs the software algorithm has become the key.

This is why Chinese mobile phone manufacturers are keen to co-operate with well-known camera manufacturers.

Huawei established a partnership with Leica a long time ago. Huawei not only uses Leica-certified lenses, but also matches Leica in imaging effects, and strives to show Leica's unique "virtue" through algorithms. As a result, Huawei has established a professional image of photography in the mass market.

The later story is that OPPO chose Hassel to adjust the color directly on the sensor to achieve a more realistic natural color effect through Hassel's natural color scheme.

Vivo and Zeiss co-signed, in addition to the lens and Zeiss joint development of optical lenses, equipped with Zeiss T * coating, vivo X80 Pro even used Zeiss lens bag, color restoration and Zeiss further cooperation in adjustment.

In May this year, Xiaomi took over Huawei and reached a strategic cooperation with Leica.

As Zhao Ming said, the joint name and certification of mobile phone manufacturers and well-known camera manufacturers determine the basic lower limit of the image at the hardware level, and pursue to establish an aesthetic standard for engineers at the algorithm level.

After all, even if the same hardware CMOS is in the hands of different manufacturers, or with different algorithms, the final effect may be very different, testing the aesthetic reserves of mobile phone manufacturers in the pre-background of "engineer aesthetics".

Just like "there will be a thousand Hamlets in the eyes of a thousand readers", the exploration of the upper limit of images at the software level is endless. On the road to the inner volume of mobile phone images, there will always be mobile phones with "stronger photos". Not the phone with the strongest picture.

Conclusion with the evolution of mobile phone images, it is the Chinese mobile phone brands fighting for their fate that push China's optical supply chain to the top.

When the dual-camera models initially equipped with high-end models such as the P9 and iPhone 7Plus, and even the subsequent three-camera models were gradually lowered to the middle and low-end models, the brand image of Chinese mobile phones continued to improve in the minds of users, and China's optical supply chain also gained huge room for growth.

But today, Apple is still standing like a mountain, and the competition for mobile phone images continues, and we may have to focus on two aspects besides developing our own chips and computational photography.

One is the frivolous trade-off. now many models are getting farther and farther on the road of stacking materials, the rear lens modeling is getting bigger and bigger, and the back panel of the mobile phone is often protruding a large chunk. This pain point tests the mobile phone manufacturer's ability to do the ashram in the "screw shell". Which functions can be chosen and which hardware can be replaced, so as to achieve the balance of comprehensive experience.

The second is the ability to roll videos. At present, the focus of attention is still on mobile phone photography. In the 5G era, video is a knot that cannot be bypassed. Especially as more and more young users change from consumers of video content to creators of video, this also puts forward higher requirements for the video ability of mobile phones.

In the past, we hoped that taking pictures on mobile phones could be comparable to professional cameras, but now mobile video is faced with the same requirement.

Mobile phone video began with Apple, thrived in Huawei, and the follow-up of Rongmi OV has led to the rise of Chinese brands, which can also be seen as a microcosm of made in China, and it is precisely because of the unremitting progress of Chinese mobile phones and made in China that we have more choices in addition to iPhone.

references

1. IResearch Consulting, 2020 White Paper on artificial Intelligence phones in China

2. ZEALER, the tide is receding, and the periscope telephoto lens is swimming naked all the time?

3. China Business Daily, voice-transmitting mobile phones: 100 million a year behind the dominance of Africa

4. Tiger sniff, Xiaomi: my phone has 100 million pixels, not the kind that is rounded up.

5. Tiger sniff, it is necessary for Chinese mobile phones to win global respect.

6. Yuanchuan Research Institute, the counterattack starts with the camera: a typical sample of manufacturing anti-involution.

7, Society 10, from mosaics to computational photography! Full Analysis of the Evolution of Mobile phone Image Technology

8, one observation, after Huawei, who won the new voice right of mobile phone images?

9. Alter talk about technology, smartphone image competition, can you escape the inside trap?

10. Zhihu netizen "Ted said", what do you think of the fiercer and fiercer image war of domestic mobile phones year after year?

* the image is from the Internet. Please contact to delete the infringement.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: Dongbianxin Research Society (ID:DJXYS-0309), author: Wei Qiyang

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