How much time does a person spend on his mobile phone a day? As of September this year, the figure was 6.6 hours. In contrast, in 2013, the night before 4G was launched, nearly 80% of Internet users used mobile phones for no more than 4 hours. The screen is always the most important sensory entrance in the process of user residence time from short to long. Looking back on the development history of the mobile phone industry, in order to meet people's growing demand for life and entertainment, mobile phone manufacturers have made many attempts around the screen. In one round after another, they make the screen large enough and make the screen share higher and higher. In the past two years, mobile phone manufacturers rushed to the high-end, and the folding screen came into their vision as a new species. However, since its birth in 2018, the folding screen has fallen into the dilemma of "applauding but not popular". At least so far, its market potential is far from breaking out. The folding screen has also fallen into the dispute over the authenticity demand. People with a negative attitude question whether it is necessary to lose the original convenience of the mobile phone in order to have a larger screen, not to mention paying a higher price. This controversy can be perfectly summed up in four words: flashy. In the past, the controversial issue of body and back was 8848. It was once the price ceiling of the global mobile phone market. It pursued "practical luxury", paid attention to rare materials and handicrafts, and positioned high-end people. However, this positioning deviated from the market demand and ended in a dismal end. So the question is, is the folding screen mobile phone "flashy"? Will it be the next 8848? 01 inner volume: screen warfare In the early stage of Smartphone development, the screen was not an important selling point. At the press conference of Xiaomi 1 in 2011, Lei Jun focused on two selling points: first, the best Android mobile phone hardware, domestic dual core 1.5 core, and the fastest dominant frequency in the world; 2、 MIUI, the first mobile phone operating system developed in Internet mode, has a changeable theme and the first changeable lock screen. For another example, during that time, the main selling points of vivo were sound quality + Photography. The main selling points of Jinli, who had not died, were endurance and ultra-thin. After 2016, the global smartphone market ended its high growth, and the compound growth rate of sales fell from 22.4% in the previous years to 5.7% in the next five years. This means that the mobile phone market has entered a mature stage and entered the stock stage, and the industry also reflects new characteristics: First, the homogenization of products tends to be serious. Lei Jun told the media in 2015 that the innovation of smart phones has reached a bottleneck period; Second, the differentiated selling points of manufacturers have disappeared, the competition has really entered the stage of bayonet competition, and the core selling points on the product side have collectively turned to user experience. As the core entrance of human-computer interaction, the screen directly affects the user experience, and the war on the screen is becoming fierce. We can divide the screen battle into two kinds: one is the dominant battle, which is reflected in the screen size, shape, screen proportion and so on; The other is the hidden war, which is mainly reflected in the display panel. Let's first look at the explicit screen war. The first stage is the trend of large screen mobile phones. Samsung released the 5.3-inch Galaxy note at the end of 2011. It is positioned as a mobile communication product between large screen smart phones and tablets. With large screen phones, Samsung has established its flagship position of Android. In September 2015, Apple released the 5.5-inch iPhone 6S plus, and the large screen mobile phone officially ushered in spring. The iPhone 6 series also achieved record sales growth due to its full embrace of the large screen. Soon, a number of mobile phone manufacturers accelerated to catch up with the trend of large screen. Soochow Securities pointed out in a research report that in 2015, mobile phones with more than 5.5-inch screens accounted for less than 20%, and now this proportion is nearly half. The second stage is that the comprehensive screen has become a new focus. Xiaomi mix is a trend leader, and its screen share is 91.3%. There are two mainstream schemes in the market to improve the proportion of screen: optimizing ID based on screen display scheme and realizing borderless through curved screen. In the optimization of ID, mobile phone manufacturers can be described as "Eight Immortals crossing the sea, each showing their magic power". For example, the camera module is placed under the screen, hidden camera, sliding design, dual screen version, bangs screen, water drop screen, hole digging screen, etc. However, after these attempts, most of them did not realize product iteration. Only banged screen, water drop screen and hole digging screen have become more mainstream market choices. The pursuit of curved screen has become the standard configuration of mobile phone manufacturers, which goes back to the "hidden war" - the dispute over display panel. As we all know, the development trend of display technology is from LCD (liquid crystal display technology) to OLED (organic light emitting diode display technology). At least until 2016, LCD dominated mobile phone screens, while OLED is mainly used in small-size display devices such as players, digital cameras and walkmans. OLED panel has one of the biggest advantages. It can realize surface display. After 2010, Samsung SDC vigorously promoted OLED technology and was widely used in its own high-end mobile phone field. In 2016, Apple announced the adoption of OLED screens and signed a contract with Samsung to purchase 100 million OLED panels every year. OLED began to replace LCD as the mainstream display technology solution. Since then, AMOLED screens have been commercially available on a large scale in the mobile phone industry. Of course, Apple has not yet launched a curved screen mobile phone. It focuses on the better display effect of OLED screen, but domestic mobile phone manufacturers aim at the curved screen market. At that time, Samsung almost monopolized the whole AMOLED screen market. In 2016, 99% of the AMOLED panels in the market came from Samsung, especially the flexible screen. This year, the total number of flexible screen AMOLED screens in the world was 60 million, and Samsung used one fifth of them. It also has to supply some flexible screens to apple. In the situation of short supply, manufacturers with loopholes in supply chain management soon encountered a crisis. A typical example is Xiaomi. Because the person in charge of the supply chain offended Samsung executives at that time, the other party decided not to supply screens to Xiaomi, which delayed the release of Xiaomi curved screen mobile phone note 2 for one year and chose other suppliers instead. Results after the release of this mobile phone, there were screen quality control problems such as dark spots, yin-yang screen and side light leakage. Lei Jun later personally accepted that Xiaomi was at a critical juncture of life and death. 02 folding screen: is it the best form? The experience Optimization of screen display is not over here. On the one hand, manufacturers want to achieve nearly 100% screen share through technological innovation, such as the off-screen camera scheme of Xiaomi mix 4, which has been mass produced. On the other hand, on the premise that the screen size hardly increases space, their choice is to add a screen. After Ruoyu technology released its first folding screen mobile phone flexpai in 2018, Samsung released its first folding screen mobile phone Galaxy fold in early 2019. Just four days later, Huawei also released its first folding screen mobile phone mate X. In the same period, Xiaomi, apple and even Microsoft have been storing relevant technologies of folding screen. At that time, some analysts in the market said that 2019 would be the first year of the outbreak of folding screen. According to the current progress, the optimistic expectation of the outside world for the folding screen is a misjudgment. According to the data predicted by DSCC, the shipment of folding screen mobile phones is expected to exceed 9 million in 2021. It also predicts that the global shipment will increase to 18 million to 20 million in 2022. Even so, the market penetration of folding screen is still only 2%. How slow is this penetration? We can make a simple comparison: Since the popularity of OLED screens in 2016, by 2018, the production area of OLED screens accounted for 30% of the total production area of mobile phone screens; This proportion is expected to reach 50% by 2023. There are three reasons for the slow progress of the folding screen Market: First, the technology is not mature; The folding screen schemes on the market are roughly divided into several schemes: out of screen folding, in screen folding, down screen folding and three folding. In order to realize 180 degree bending of the screen, there are two key points: the screen itself and hinge technology. At present, the flexible OLED panel is the only screen scheme of the folding screen, but the flexible screen will also produce irreversible damage under the bending of high frequency and long time, which will affect the service life of the screen. In addition to the thin and multi-layer structure of OLED screen module itself, in order to achieve excellent foldable function, it is necessary to increase the structural strength of each layer on the premise of reducing the thickness of screen module as much as possible, such as polarizer, screen cover plate, film, OCA glue, etc., which is more difficult than before. The biggest problem faced by the hinge is how to ensure that it can still maintain good working effect under the use of higher frequency. Second, high cost and low yield; On the one hand, the cost of AMOLED panel itself is high. According to DSCC data, Samsung display7 The current production cost of 3-inch AMOLED foldable panel is close to $180 and is expected to drop to $90 by 2022. Manufacturers' different design languages also determine that display manufacturers can only develop for one brand once, and the model can not be reused, which further increases the cost of screen development. On the other hand, the production rate of OLED screen decreases gradually from straight screen to curved screen and then to folding screen. Some media reported that the high yield of domestic OLED panels is about 80%, the curved screen is about 40% - 50%, and the yield of folding screens with higher difficulty coefficient will only be lower. For example, in the third quarter of 2018, the yield of 6.39-inch QHD + flexible AMOLED panel was only more than 10%, which improved to 30% in the fourth quarter. These are also the main reasons for the high price of folding screen mobile phones. Third, the problem of application adaptation has not been completely solved; Shen Yiren, former vice president of oppo, once mentioned that the mobile operating system has not fully kept up with the optimization of split screen applications, high-resolution applications and multi information processing. As a result, if the folding screen mobile phone lacks sufficient shipment, the application developer is likely to lack the power to optimize the folding screen, which further affects the use experience of the folding screen mobile phone. Once the folding screen lacks the software ecology suitable for the hardware, it will become its biggest weakness. 03 supply and demand: who is the lifeblood of folding screen? In the second half of this year, the folding screen mobile phone market began to become hot. First, oppo released its first folding screen mobile phone findn in mid December. Then, glory announced on December 22 that it would soon launch its first folding screen mobile phone Magic V, and Huawei's new generation folding screen mobile phone P50 pocket would also be released on December 25. In addition, the news of Xiaomi mix fold2 continues. Vivo reports that it will release its first folding screen mobile phone early next year, and apple is also expected to release its first folding screen mobile phone in 2023. So far, mainstream players in the mobile phone industry have joined this new screen war. However, it is likely that in the short term, it is not mobile phone manufacturers but suppliers upstream of the industrial chain that affect the war trend and the penetration rate of folding screens. We mentioned above that technical problems, high development cost and low yield are important reasons restricting the development process of folding screen mobile phones. These problems are concentrated on the production side. In other words, the biggest pain point of the current folding screen mobile phone is not whether it can be sold, but whether it can stabilize the supply, improve the quality and reduce the price. The core of folding screen mobile phone lies in the screen, and the flexible OLED panel is the only screen scheme at present. Therefore, the OLED panel industry will become the key. This involves two variables: one is how the industry supply pattern changes, which affects the production capacity; The second is how fast the yield climbs, which affects