The reporter learned from the recently held "Counterpoint Industry Dialogue: Insights into the Rising Cycle of China's Mobile Phone Market" themed salon that the Chinese smartphone market has rebounded, with a year-on-year increase of 4% in smartphone sales in the first half of this year. It is expected that the annual sales volume will rebound to over 270 million units. Counterpoint is a market research firm. Qi Yingnan, the head of research for the China region of the organization, introduced that in the first half of 2024, the top six smartphones in the Chinese market were vivo, Honor, Apple, Huawei, OPPO, and Xiaomi. According to the agency's data, the sales of Vivo and Honor smartphones increased by 5% and 9.6% year-on-year, both higher than the industry average. Only when users are satisfied can vivo have the ability and possibility to continuously satisfy its employees, partners, and shareholders Cheng Gang, Vice President of Vivo and President of Vivo China, said. Apple's smartphone sales decreased by 13% year-on-year. Through price reductions and promotions, Apple maintained a market share of over 16% in both March and June. Qi Yingnan introduced that in the Chinese smartphone market, OLED (organic light-emitting diode) screens account for over 70%, and more than half of smartphones use a 50 megapixel main camera. Domestic brands are promoting the popularization of large capacity batteries. It is worth mentioning that artificial intelligence, foldable screens, and other technologies have become new competition tracks for Chinese smartphone manufacturers. Honor, vivo, OPPO, Xiaomi and other manufacturers have all launched self-developed large models for mobile devices, while vivo, OPPO and other manufacturers are still developing large models for voice and image processing. Counterpoint predicts that the growth momentum of Chinese smartphones in 2025 will mainly come from the improvement of product strength. Qi Yingnan said that based on observations of leading manufacturers, it can be found that with the upgrading of user consumption concepts and demands, cutting-edge technologies such as high-end and artificial intelligence have demonstrated strong driving forces for brand growth in practice. In this context, mobile phone manufacturers have increased investment in flagship product matrices, product form and function innovation, brand building, and other aspects to seize new growth opportunities. For example, many mobile phone manufacturers are making efforts in the field of imaging. The image may seem like a photograph, but it actually involves multiple aspects such as algorithms and models. Its updates and iterations may seem like an improvement in performance, but they are actually meeting the consumption needs of mobile phone users. Experts attending the meeting believe that with the popularization of generative artificial intelligence application scenarios, consumers are expected to recognize the concept of artificial intelligence smartphones, which will help increase the willingness of mid to high end mobile phone users to switch devices. (New Society)