Will this “gradual” design of Chinese smartphones trigger a wave of global follow-up?

At the beginning, in the era of feature phones, Nokia and Motorola gave us the impression that they are elegant and elegant. The color scheme is mostly inseparable from black and white silver, and the stunning colors such as red are rare. The reason is very simple. People didn't have a strong concept of mobile phones at the time, and their demand for functions was greater than others. With the advent of smart phones, mobile phone color matching has gradually opened the door to the new world and began to move toward a changing development path.

In 2013, Apple used the champagne gold color on the iPhone 5S. Later, it was called “Local Gold” in China. It led the trend of smart phone color matching at that time, and consumers became more sensitive to the color matching of mobile phones. high. Then, mobile phone manufacturers are innovating in the color matching of mobile phones, and various color combinations are beginning to appear. For example, last year's OPPO R11's heat red, glory 9's robin blue, red rice Note 4X's hatsune blue green and so on.

However, behind the history of mobile phone color matching, it also implies some rules of mobile phone development.

Behind the color trend of mobile phones: the “internalization” of industry development and the “externalization” of manufacturers’ discourse power

Why mobile phone color matching can be popular, there are two direct reasons.

First, the smart phone industry has entered a mature period, and consumer demand has escalated from “function” to “spirit”.

As a great human invention, mobile phones are a functional tool before the functions are perfected, and people's needs are limited to communication. After the emergence of smart phones, mobile phones began to become people's personal belongings, because they began to have more entertainment attributes, under the intelligent operation of the touch screen, people began to enjoy different fun, such as games, music, video, etc. .

With the participation of more and more competitors, mobile phones have entered a stage of homogenization development in the era of contending for a hundred schools of thought. This is actually the staged “dividend vacuum” caused by the maturity of the industry. Faced with such weak demand, manufacturers are still focusing on price wars and configuration wars in the context of difficult functional bottlenecks, only for more profit and market share. In fact, the functional requirements that are still focused on the underlying layer cannot capture consumers because consumer demand has risen to the stage of more aesthetic and value recognition. This has also gradually shifted the focus of mobile phone competition and ushered in the "big design era."

For example, the width of the phone from wide to narrow to the surface, the screen of the mobile phone from widescreen to full screen, and the color from boring to simple, these design transitions are catering to people's aesthetic changes to the mobile phone.

On the other hand, after the completion of pan-consumer education, market segments are increasingly getting the attention of vendors. As such, diverse consumers and diverse mobile phone manufacturers have formed a diverse mobile phone ecosystem, such as OPPO that precisely targets young fashion audiences, cuts the millet of the geek otaku group, and then launches a red color for the Chinese market. Apple, these targeted design, mobile phone color matching has become a must for differentiated audiences and meet the high-end needs.

Second, mobile phone color matching trends are often led by powerful manufacturers.

In the era of feature machines, Nokia and Motorola are the market leaders, and Nokia once occupied a market share of 40%. For this reason, similar button phones on the market, such as candy bars and sliders, have adopted the elegant color scheme. Of course, the limitations of technology and the focus of competition are also one of the reasons behind.

Subsequently, after the wave of smartphones led by Apple, the design and color matching of various manufacturers began to move closer to Apple. To a certain extent, in fact, Apple monopolizes the “aesthetic” of consumers with market leadership. So after Apple created a unique “local gold” color, it triggered a variety of golden follow-up in the market, which is also open. A new era of smartphone color matching.

We can find that the mainstream color matching trend in the market is actually led by the market's innumerable strength manufacturers. First, due to the trend effect brought by the market position, the second is that these leaders often form a fairly clear brand effect. It is easy to get recognition among consumers. Third, of course, such color matching also needs to be supported by the design concepts and technology behind the strength, and such design and research and development resources are usually in the hands of a few head players.

Domestic mobile phones have been on the stage of color competition?

In the past few years, under the circumstances that the user base and brand power of domestic mobile phone manufacturers have been continuously enhanced, Huawei, OPPO, and Xiaomi have launched mobile phone color matching, and began to lead the era of color matching of smart phones with foreign manufacturers such as Apple.

For example, Huawei's glory in 2017, together with the famous fashion magazine VOGUE, introduced the color of the robin blue, and the back cover glass is a 3D curved surface with 15 layers of special optical coating, which makes the color of the robin blue more. Be unique.

For another example, in 2017, Xiaomi launched the Xiaomi MIX with the white color and the full-ceramic version of the mobile phone millet MIX2. The millet MIX2 uses the ceramic material to show the gentleness and fineness of this color.

There is also a typical representative who seems to prejudge the importance of consumers' aesthetic needs earlier than other manufacturers. Since entering the mobile phone industry, they have been "beautiful". Everyone knows that this is OPPO. Indeed, OPPO has a long history of power matching, as early as its earliest OPPO N1 mini, there are "glacier blue" and "clear yellow" color.

In the last year's explosion of the R11, it also launched the "Bargain Edition" of the "Beat Color" aesthetic. It has three special features. The first is the color matching of red and blue contrast, and the second is the 18K gold-plated team embedded in the back. The emblem, the third is a series of complex processes of the integrated fuselage back shell after three times of anodizing and coloring, micro-slit antenna glue, and solving the diffuse reflection of the front frame.

For the original intention of launching the "Barcelona Limited Edition", at the "Color is Thought" design salon held by OPPO on March 31, Fan Xiaoyu, design director of OPPO Industrial Design Center, shared, "The Barcelona team is playing art football, they It is not important to win or lose. It is important to play beautiful football and enjoy this process. This is in line with our philosophy of making products. We hope to produce beautiful art design."

It can be found that the difference between 2017 and the previous ones is that the color schemes of domestic manufacturers have begun to be welcomed by the market. This has to be attributed to the growing domestic mobile phone manufacturers who have promoted their leadership position in the global competition. The color of the mobile phone has more voice.

In 2018, we found that the pursuit of mobile phone color matching by domestic mobile phone manufacturers has not stopped, and the gradient color system has become popular. OPPO R15 and Huawei P20 have all begun to move towards a gradient color scheme.

Will this wave of “gradient” design trigger a global wave of follow-up?

In fact, the "gradual" that made people shine in the first place appeared on the star screen of the OPPO R11s red version. The upper and lower edges of the R11s star screen have a faint red gradient, starting from the red on the back and spreading to the front. Come on the black screen.

This gradual change consists of countless tiny red particles that are hard to detect by the naked eye, which is the first appearance of the “gradient” element on smartphones.

But now, the "gradient" wave seems to be more fierce. On the one hand, domestic mobile phones have been reshuffled in a new round of competition, and their voice in the global market has increased significantly. On the other hand, it is the double blessing of international model design and technological innovation.

As shown by the data of a number of research institutes, OPPO and Huawei, the two major domestic mobile phone manufacturers that launched the “gradient” color scheme this year, are leading the global smartphone market with a share of nearly one-fifth of the total, and the growth rate is even more It is 12% and 9.9% far beyond the stagnant Samsung and Apple.

According to data released by Yu Chengdong at the Huawei P20 conference, Huawei’s global mobile phone shipments in 2017 were 153 million, ranking the top three in the world, and overseas sales accounted for about 33%. OPPO has now entered more than 30 overseas countries. IDC data, OPPO sales reached 111.8 million units in 2017, successfully entered the Japanese market at the beginning of this year, and will enter Europe in the second half of the year.

The baton of designing the right to speak in 2018 seems to have been passed on to domestic mobile phones.

On the other hand, it is the design concept and technical strength of domestic mobile phones.

Take OPPO, the pioneer of Gradient Color, as an example. It is reported that the R15 and R15 Dream Edition mobile phone color matching is not only the result of the efforts of OPPO's internal team, but also invites international color master Karim Rashid (Kerim Reis) personally. Participate in the design, and this master has the title of "the superstar of today's American industrial design community."

In industrial design, Karim Rashid's design idea is to express the inner personality of the people, and his works are very broad, and mainly for the middle and high-end consumer groups. OPPO will choose to cooperate with the master, there are two points that can not be ignored. First, OPPO is eager to use the international design concept to impress consumers in more markets around the world; second, OPPO in the brand upgrade, it is inevitable to think about product innovation from an international perspective. It is believed that based on these two needs, the OPPO that is consistently focused on the United States will also become the norm in the design.

At yesterday's OPPO "Color is Thought" design salon, Karim Rashid said in sharing the color perception that "there is no absolute solid color in nature, and the gradient color is the form of color in nature. In other words, the appearance of gradient color, In fact, the concept of solid color matching has been broken, and the inspiration is more resorted to nature. This kind of design perspective is actually one of the landings of domestic mobile phones in brand positioning.

Of course, the support of technology can not be ignored.

Color matching has always been one of the effective ways for OPPO to communicate with young people at the core target audience. However, the "gradient", which is more in line with the eclectic concept of today's young people, is closely related to technology.

For example, in 2012, Apple suffered technical sorrow in the carbon black version of the iPhone 5 main business group. At that time, due to the use of the anodized aluminum technology, although the coloring route was provided, the "painting door" incident caused by the immature technology caused the apple to cancel the color directly in the follow-up model of the iPhone 5, and replaced it. The dark ash is relatively close in color to the primary color of the metal.

Therefore, at the same time, when the ideal is full, it is also necessary to consider whether the reality is skinny, and now the domestic mobile phone seems to be ready.

When referring to this R15 gradient color process, OPPO mentioned OPPO's original “Laminated Streaming Dot Color Process”: under the glass back shell, there is a dot color layer, and the dot color layer consists of many small different colors and textures. Composition, these particles are very small and need to be seen with a microscope to control the rhythm of the gradient and the delicateness of each gradient process. In addition, there is a streamer layer that makes the opal texture. The double layer superimposition realizes the flowing color under different light, and visually forms a changing gradient band.

Huawei also passed on the technical support behind the color: vacuum nano-plating process, and the first color-plating technology applied to mobile phones, and behind this is Huawei's engineers testing and polishing tens of thousands of pieces of glass.

In summary, as a Chinese design, the gradient color is expected to lead the new era of mobile phone color matching.

First, the maturity of the smartphone market. At present, the smartphone market can be said to have entered a differentiated development path. Xiaomi, Apple, Huawei, OPPO, etc. are following different brand development routes. More importantly, major brands also have a considerable user base. Based on the concept of differentiation, the gradient color system may become a new competitive track. Selecting the gradient as a new color can find new brand breakthroughs, and secondly, it can gradually improve the brand's differentiation in the market to acquire more users.

Second, the diversified needs of consumers. From the history of the development of mobile phone color matching, consumers have now regarded mobile phones as a work of art, and the constant changes in color matching have stimulated consumers' high sensitivity to mobile phone color matching. As a new color matching concept, gradation has its own novel and wonderful attributes, so it will first attract the most sensitive consumers in the market, and their actions will undoubtedly drive new consumption trends.

Third, the market leader of the head manufacturers. OPPO's user base enables OPPO to lead the new consumer trend in the smartphone market after every innovation, thanks to OPPO's long-standing experience. The gradient color introduced by OPPO will obviously become a new label for young people based on the original large user group.

Unsurprisingly, this color design has been recognized by consumers. On the first day of the R15 series, the three-day platform of Tmall, Jingdong and Suning Tesco won the full-price segment sales and sales champion. It is foreseeable that as OPPO's global market leadership and voice rise, the gradient will trigger another round of follow-up.

In any case, as a new color matching system for smartphones, and as a new representative of “China Design”, in the ever-changing smartphone market, it is easy to set off new consumer trends, but more importantly, in more smartphones. Following the manufacturers, this new color scheme will continue to bring new sensory experiences to consumers, and will also bring new competitive vitality to the global smartphone market.

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