Analysis the Impacting of “User Experience” for Chinese Mobile Phone’s Brands Market Changing

Abstract

Entering the 21st century, the transition of the economic form and the “people-centered” design of the force of the trend of combining people show a strong preference blurs aesthetic inclination, and experience design attention; and highlights the importance of user perception value. The mobile phone market is not exceptional also, under the lead of apple, each of big mobile phone brands have set up the user experience department, to introduce the relevant personnel. Not only in terms of visual image, interaction design, through the visualization image visual summary, show the characteristic of enterprise spirit and enterprise culture. More vivid, specific, sensitive to product characteristics, brand value, corporate philosophy, and other information to the audience. For consumers the most direct and most users and vivid brand image, create a better experience for the foundation. And, in the process of enterprise overall brand management, are often based on user experience, a good user experience has become a brand is the key to improve the image of the market. This paper mainly focuses on China’s current mobile phone market, respectively for major brands, such as Apple, Huawei, Xiaomi, Samsung, … etc., to analyze the change course of brands,and to discuss the user experience in brand building and the important role and significance in the process of communication.

1 Changes in China’s Mobile Phone Market in the Last Years

According to Suning.com released by the second quarter of China’s smartphone 2018 physical retail report: Huawei for many months to win the offline mobile phone brand TOP1, market share accounted for 28.1%, and the iPhone fell to fourth place, at any time may be surpassed by Xiaomi. Apple’s new iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max are officially on sale in China 8 o’clock in the morning September 21, 2018. However, the crowd queuing at the Apple store was a lot colder than in previous years. Compared with the iPhone4 when the sale of the year, is already momentary taekwondo. At the Apple Experience store, you can pay for the goods at the scene, even if you don’t have an appointment. A scalpers said, “Do not need to wait, now the number of machines is enough, basically want to have.” “On the iPhone sale day of previous years, this is largely impossible. Not only that, Apple after the sale of various channels prices have fallen below the offer price, even the sale of mobile phone cattle, but also shouted “big loss.” And as consumer buying enthusiasm began to dissipate, the entire smartphone industry began to enter a “cold winter” (Table 1).

Table 1. The top 10 of mobile phone

In the third quarter of 2018, Vivo, OPPO, Huawei, Glory and Xiaomi became the top five mobile phone makers in China’s smartphone market. Among them, vivo with 20.62 million sales, accounted for 19.2% of the market share, oppo sales of 20.58 million, the market share of 19.1%, Huawei sales of 17.11 million, the share of 15.9%, the glory sales of 13.62 million, the market share of 12.7%, Xiaomi sales of 12.61 million, Market share 11.7%. Earlier, Huawei’s Internet mobile phone brand Glory announced the departure from the Huawei system, the establishment of independent companies in the country. With Huawei releasing the mate 20 flagship phone series, revealing a strong signal that Huawei will focus on the high-end brand market, although Huawei is not yet able to compete with Apple and Samsung in sales, but in this move, the anti-Apple meaning is self-evident. In addition, with Oppo, Vivo this “brother Ming reckoning” data statistics are different, Huawei and glory of the main and sub-two brands are also the use of separate statistics. Also said, if Huawei and the glory of the two brands add up sales and share, the entire Huawei sales will be 30.72 million, the market share of 28.6%, more than vivo become the industry’s first.

At the same time, from the Cylon Q3 According to the China smartphone market report, we can also see that the mobile phone industry Matthew effect more and more serious. In contrast to the OV Glory of these head manufacturers against the trend, the processing of domestic mobile phone brands in the two-tier echelon has become increasingly difficult. For example, in this year’s Q3, Meizu sales slipped 53% and Jinli slipped 82%; So, The top six rankings largely accounted for 90% of the nearly domestic market share. 4%), and this gap should grow in the future. Still, domestic brands continue to sell low-end handsets, and profit margins are still far inferior to those of Samsung and Apple. As far as market capitalisation is concerned, even Huawei is less than one-fifth of Apple’s (Table 2).

Table 2. Sano 2018 Q3 overall market sales ranking.

Specifically, in the Chinese market, Apple and Samsung, the two major industry giants have seen a decline in sales, Apple slipped 16%, while Samsung has slipped 39%.

1.1 Samsung: China has a Market Share of Less Than 1%

Recently, well-known research institutions Strategy Analytics announced South Korea’s Samsung phone 2018 third quarter results of the year. Samsung phones shipped only tens of thousands in the third quarter of China, according to the report. It also says that one months of shipment of thousands of units. This is surprising compared to the total shipment of Samsung mobile phones in the world 7230 million parts!

In the third quarter of 2018, Samsung’s share of mobile phones remained at the forefront of the global market, according to Counterpoint, another research institute.

But at the same time, Huawei, from China, has ranked second in shipments that have overtaken Apple by 14%. In the Chinese market, Huawei is well ahead of the market share of 23%, while Samsung is largely classified as the “other” item in the statistical table. Far less than the vivo, OPPO, millet behind Huawei. A serious 39% percent decline year earlier.

Gaodongjin, head of Samsung’s mobile business, has acknowledged Samsung’s failure in the Chinese market in an interview with android.ru in response to the virtual lack of presence of Samsung phones in the Chinese market. Gaodongjin to the interviewer: “In the Chinese market, Samsung in the entry-level and midrange smartphone market, can not compete with Chinese brands such as Xiaomi, Huawei and other Chinese companies, because China’s domestic brands of mobile phones, whether in pricing or marketing strategy more flexible.” But on the international market, entry-level and mid-tier smartphones remain one of Samsung’s most important revenues, precisely because of the sales of these entry-level and midrange smartphone devices on the international market, Samsung remains the industry leader, surpassing Apple and Huawei in global sales.”

Samsung in China in two years has been defeated to the status of no sense of existence, there are the following reasons:

• 1. Note 7 after the explosion door, because of arrogance and prejudice and the difference between Chinese consumers, after the incident, Samsung is not to reshape the Chinese consumer trust in the brand, but to dump the pot to the consumer’s behavior hit Samsung hard.

• 2. Samsung mobile phone products themselves lack of innovation, localization and cost-effective are not as good as domestic brands, although Samsung has repeatedly designed models for the Chinese market, trying to rely on “brand superiority” to let consumers pay for high-priced low-energy products, take Chinese consumers as fools, has long been China’s consumption through.

• 3. the most important is the domestic mobile phone camp no matter in the design, innovation of rapid progress, and Samsung prides itself on the photo advantage is also being overtaken by domestic mobile phones.

1.2 Apple Phone Market Sales in China

According to market research institutions IDC of data, 2018 in the second quarter of the year, Apple’s market share in China was 6.7%, down a year earlier, 5%, behind Huawei, OPPO, vivo and Xiaomi, ranks fifth in the country. The report also noted that Apple’s high product prices have already led some users to retreat, with Apple’s sales in China continuing to decline year-on-year. In fact, even on a global scale, IPhone sales have stagnated. It has been overtaken by Huawei in the third quarter of this year. For the first time in seven years, the pattern of joint dominance between Samsung and Apple has been broken (Tables 3 and 4).

Table 3. In the global smartphone market in the second quarter of 2018, the top five companies saw their shipments, market share and sales grow year-on-year

Table 4. Global handset profit share by brands-Q2 2018

Market Research Institutes Counterpoint released by 2018 the global smartphone brand’s profit distribution, data shows that Apple is still the world’s most profitable company, 2018 the smartphone market was taken down in the second quarter 62% profit, followed by Samsung 17%, while Huawei, which is ranked first in the profits of domestic mobile phone brands, accounts for only 8%.

8 o’clock in the morning September 21, 2018, Apple new products officially sold in China. However, compared with previous years, Apple’s new products are not very popular, From Apple’s official delivery time, the iPhone XS/XS Max’s delivery time is generally 1–2 weeks, and including Tmall, Jing Dong, and other third-party licensors, basically has a full spot sales, completely no previous machine difficult, fare increase to buy the scene.

Apple New product cold, one reason is the price rise, expensive iPhone XS Max 512 GB price of 12799 yuan, entry-level products are in the 6000+ range; Cutting kidney can not afford; another reason is that the main dual-card dual-stay, double-photography and other technological innovations, the market has been a long time.

Long-term accumulation of brand effect, so that Apple even if the price is high, there are always consumers willing to pay. With this underpinnings, the price increase is reasonable. It’s just that I don’t know how long it’s going to last. Since the iPhone xs/xs Max was sold, it has been exposed to a variety of product quality issues, such as some models of screen display failure, mobile phone and WiFi signal is not bad. Early apples, the pursuit of perfect products, however, after jobs, there was no subversion (Table 5).

Table 5. How much have iPhones cost since 2010?

Today’s apples, but not so harsh on the product, the loss of innovative genes of the apple, only from the price to show their unique identity, but also the pursuit of the perfect market. It is understood that the iPhone X/iPhone X signal problems, may be with the iPhone and Qualcomm patent dispute, abandon the industry’s best performance of the Gotongki belt chip, from iPhone7 began to use Intel’s baseband chip. Obviously, in the above reasons, Apple’s new iPhone wants not to encounter sales Waterloo, is a very difficult thing.

A few days ago, Mobdata released the third quarter of China’s smartphone market research report, said that Apple is still the user’s awareness of the first brand of mobile phones, but when Apple’s three new machines released this year, the number of old models has shown a state of non-decline. This means that consumers are not too happy with the new iPhone after sidelines, and instead start the old model. Among them, the iPhone 6s, 6s Plus and iPhone 7 Plus, the three old models stand out.

In terms of Apple’s specific model sales, the iPhone 6 series accounted for 16.1% of the iPhone, which currently has the highest holdings, while the iPhone 6s series accounted for 26.9% of the share. In other words, the two models together account for an astonishing proportion of almost half of Apple mobile phone users.

On the other hand, most of the Android phones released by the same era have now been shelved. At the same time, there are reports of various smartphone user portraits analyzed:

• Apple users are the largest number of young people aged 18–34, with the largest number of unmarried women, high school and below and bachelor’s degree, belong to the invisible poor;

• Huawei’s age level is 25–34 years old, college degree is the majority, male married ethnic group, monthly income between 5000 yuan to 20000 yuan, belongs to high-end business people.

• In addition, Oppo is the majority of female married people, is also 25–34 years old, college degree, monthly income of 3000 yuan to 10000 yuan, belongs to the housewife.

• Vivo’s user base is about the same as the Oppo group. Xiaomi is an entry-level white-collar, male married people, 25–34 years old, bachelor’s degree, monthly income of 5000 yuan to 10000 yuan.

2 The Theory and Development of User Experience

Today’s internet industry, including all aspects of people’s lives, social, gaming, search, e-commerce, payment, television, advertising, reading, and with the development of various types of mobile products, scope and use is still expanding, has a very large market space and development scope. The continuous progress of the Internet industry can inject a steady stream of vitality into the society and provide a broad world for economic reform, scientific and technological innovation and social development.

Under the impetus of people’s daily needs and other positive factors, smartphones, as the basic carrier of mobile Internet, have quickly replaced the popularization of traditional mobile phones after several years of renewal, not only to realize the basic functions of traditional mobile phone calls and text messages, but also to meet people’s material and cultural needs. Convenient for people to surf the internet anytime, anywhere to communicate, entertainment, reading, shopping and so on. Accelerate the progress of the industry while promoting the continuous innovation of mobile phone hardware and software technology. A good product, in order to have market competitiveness and development prospects, improve the number of users at the same time to increase user viscosity, the need to optimize the user experience to achieve product goals. As users’ standards for cell phone evaluation extend from functional and technical requirements to the need for a product experience, the concept of product design centered on the user experience begins to receive widespread attention in the industry.

The user experience (UE or UX) refers to “the parts of a product or service that users can experience, involving all aspects of the user’s knowledge of the product, search, classification, purchase, installation, service, support, and upgrade”.

The meaning of the user experience in a narrow sense represents the user’s function of the product and the appearance of the sensory experience, in a broad sense refers to the user’s use of a product before and when the use of the psychological feelings and experience, as well as the subsequent impression and evaluation of the product, but also the brand and products are compatible with the needs of ideological experience.

Scholars of different disciplines have different definitions and studies of the user experience.

Jess James Garrett, an American interaction design expert, defines the user experience in his book Elements of user experience: The user experience refers to “how the product connects and works with the outside world,” that is, how people “touch” and “use” it. He believes that user experience refers to the way products are expressed and used in the real world, including the user’s experience of brand characteristics, information availability, content, functionality, and so on.

Donald Norman, a cognitive psychologist in the United States, extends the concept of user experience to every level of interaction between users and products Donald Norman. He believes that in order to better understand the user’s technical experience, emphasis should also be placed on emotional factors, including enjoyment, aesthetics and entertainment, including three basic dimensions: physical, cognitive and emotional.

Bernd H. Schmitt in “experience marketing” through the “Human brain Module analysis” and psychological sociology said that the user experience is divided into 5 Categories: sensory, emotional, thinking, behavior, association. The user experience involves a variety of disciplines, including user psychology, behavioral science, marketing, and aesthetics, which are difficult to quantify. At present, the concept of user experience has been widely used in the field of human–computer interaction research and application, but the definition is not yet certain, scholars from their respective fields of study, put forward different theories and viewpoints, in which there are intersections and there are great differences, Uniform standards have not yet been developed.

With the rapid development of computer technology and Internet, the form of technological innovation, which is closely related to people’s life, has changed, and more and more attention has been paid to the concept of user-centered and people-oriented design. Measuring the standard of a product is not only functional and usability, but also determined by the user’s own psychological feelings and behavior. User experience is a pure subjective feeling that users build up in the process of using products. The user’s usage habits, sensory experiences, and possible modes of operation need to be incorporated into the design of the product’s use steps, information structure, and interactive approach. Although each user’s subjective feeling is different, but after defining the consumer object, through the design experiment can realize the user group’s experience commonality.

3 The Important Role of User Experience in the Change of Mobile Phone Market

The coming of the 5G era means that the speed of mobile networks can be comparable to that of wired networks. Mobile phones and mobile internet have been completely integrated with people’s lives, in the early days of the internet because of the small variety of software, pay attention to the function of software, do not pay too much attention to the user experience. But now is very different, the same kind of function has many kinds of apps to choose from, users must pay more attention to mobile phone interface design, interactive design. In modern commercial design, user experience is gradually becoming the core competitiveness of merchants in the market competition, which is also increasingly hot.

Apple has always been the IT industry in the user experience design pioneer and leader, product design everywhere reflects the user-centric, people-oriented design ideas, is the user experience as the advantage, in order to enhance the brand image of the typical. Enterprises through the establishment of user experience Department, the market and user research, so that product development to better meet people’s needs, for corporate image and brand have a good improvement. At present, other mobile phone brands by virtue of the needs of users continue to pay attention to and continuous progress in technical performance cost-effective, market competitiveness is also increasing.

At present, in China, the perception of the user experience is relatively late, but the development is very fast. Because merchants can recognize that a product user experience is better, on behalf of the company’s industry is reasonable and successful. The success of the user experience directly related to product sales, user stickiness, consumer strength and promotion, is the key to determine the life and death of businesses. Other mobile phone brands by virtue of the user’s needs of continuous attention and continuous progress in technical performance cost-effective, market competitiveness is also increasing.

From the use of mobile phone users to analyze the benefits, although it involves price, performance, appearance … And many other aspects, but the most directly related to it is nothing more than two aspects: on the one hand, it is the consideration of its price factors, on the other hand, the consideration of user experience. This requires that in the communications and Internet industry, on the basics of consideration of value for money, but also to consider as far as possible to meet the user experience.

As a result, most of the domestic mobile phone brands focus on the following aspects, thus greatly improving the level of sales.

3.1 The Visual Interface Design of Innovative

Interface can be understood as a medium for the interaction of information exchange in human–computer interaction between man and smartphone and application software. Includes the way to interact with mobile apps, the operation process, and the design of visual effects. Excellent interface design for the product, not only to make the application stylized and branded, but also to increase the professional, usability, operational and ease of use of mobile phones and software, can give users a good first impression, can also be users to buy mobile phones, download mobile apps (application, short app) app, The reason for using the app can be one of the factors that increase the user’s stickiness.

Interface design is an important part of product design and development, mobile phones, tablets, computer systems and software interface vision, can obtain the user’s most intuitive visual experience, is the product to the user’s first impression, is the user experience with the user’s most closely integrated parts, is the product and user communication between the bridge. Interface Vision design, large to style, layout, color, text, small to every icon, button, spacing, are based on the user as the starting point, is based on the user’s psychological, perceptual, emotional and behavioral analysis. Good interface visual design, can reduce the user’s learning costs, improve user productivity, increase user stickiness, create a natural and comfortable operating environment, to optimize the user experience.

3.2 Guide User Needs

User-centric, to cater to and guide user needs. Break the user’s favorite, inherent use habits, in order to enhance the user experience, enlighten the needs of users, so that users of the use of habits in the case of inadvertently imperceptible, natural transformation, to achieve breakthroughs and innovation.

3.3 Saving the Development Cost

In the market of mobile application products, there is a lot of software in the design process, is technically very professional but lack of user interface design based programmers designed, such software often lack of user interface experience considerations, resulting in design errors and the failure of the user experience, The increased development costs that lead to the redesign of the product. For the research of mobile application Interface visual design, we can sum up some design errors, design taboos, provide design rules that designers should follow to avoid errors, help GUI designers and developers learn to design a better user vision interface, for enterprises or development teams, can save development time and cost.

3.4 Shaping and Disseminating Brand Culture

People mainly through the visual to accept external information, users through the interface vision to accept the information transmitted by the product. For enterprises, brand-based design can improve brand diversity and quality stability, but also can convey brand positioning, values, culture and other factors, so that consumers have the trust and loyalty to them, effectively strengthen the competitiveness and influence with other brands [26]. As one of the powerful media of mobile application brand communication, a good user experience has put forward high requirements for its performance and interface vision. Enterprises have recognized this point, so in the interface visual design are very important to the brand core value, brand concept and brand image into the mobile application interface of the overall design of the visual style and visual symbols to go, which is of great significance for shaping and disseminating brand culture.

3.5 Improve Overall Design Capabilities

With the development of mobile internet industry, domestic mobile Internet enterprises are very concerned about the interface design profession, has set up a product interface design department, and has the user experience designer, interaction Designer, visual designer clear function Division of functions. In the field of interface vision design, most of the research on the web side, the research on the mobile side is relatively few, has not yet formed a complete set of design process and design methods. In the process of interface visual design of APP, there is no corresponding theoretical basis. For designers engaged in the visual design of the App interface, it is of reference value and significance for the design to improve the design ability, study and summarize the design process and methods in practice. Process and method, which has reference value for future design, can improve the design ability, and is of great significance for the formation of complete design process and method.