The Lord said to Moses: "I promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob with an oath:'I will give the land of Canaan to your descendants.' Now you and the people you brought out of the land of Egypt will go from here to that land. Go. I will send a messenger before you to drive out the Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, Jebusites, and lead you to the land flowing with milk and honey."— -"Exodus Chapter 33"
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On April 16, 2021, XGIMI Technology released its 2020 annual report, showing that Japan is now its largest overseas single market, and Aladdin’s shipments for several months after its launch have ranked among the forefront of the Japanese smart projection market. He also said that the United States and Europe will be the focus of the company's efforts this year.
On April 24, Hewlett-Packard held a new projector product launch conference in Shenzhen, officially announced its return to the projection market. The first stop was to cooperate with domestic companies to open up the Chinese market through authorization.
One entry and one exit conforms to the country’s basic strategy of opening to the outside world: adhere to the combination of "bringing in" and "going out."
As early as 17 years ago, HP had laid out the projection market and launched commercial projections. In 2010, the founder of XGIMI, Zhong Bo, was still soldering the board at Mstar. HP launched an ultra-portable projector for the Chinese market. However, in commercial and education , Home use many fields of experience, and finally got up early and rushed to the evening episode.
HP's attitude towards the projection industry is a typical "modern history of the projection industry". In this book, the major players are over-concentrated to compete in a narrow market segment. The consumer-grade portable products and the home market for the masses are still far away. Undeveloped, many of them have stories from well-known brands such as Lenovo and Dell.
XGIMI was established in 2012 and did not launch its first smart projection until 2014. The company has accumulated for 8 years, and the product has been "precipitated" for 6 years. Compared with Epson, which was founded in 1942, the global 3LCD controller, it has been for 10 consecutive years. The Chinese market "holds the handle", of course, the latter will not put the "little rookie" of XGIMI in its eyes.
But it is just such a post-generation, packaging the projection into the concept of "screenless TV" for the consumer market. It seems that there are more gimmicks than product development. For example, the core DMD chip comes from TI, and the laser TV lens is purchased from Japan Ricoh. In the past, telephoto optical machines were purchased from several major domestic optical machine factories. In addition, the intelligent AI was Baidu, the speakers were Harman Kardon, and the motion compensation was the old owner Mstar. . . Although XGIMI does not have so many technological innovations, it has its own unique competitiveness. Relying on the insight into the consumer experience of projection intelligence, it staged a "Exodus".
In the past ten years, smart projection products have crossed from industrial products to consumer electronics, opening a brand new category, and its prospects can be compared to that of functional phones in the past to smart phones (PDAs). Smart projection is gradually becoming the next-generation human-computer interaction carrier for living rooms and mobile offices, and an important Internet content platform. It has a synergistic effect with mobile phones and explodes huge energy.
In the years when domestic smart projectors were absent, Japanese projectors used to be the doctrine-makers of the industry. Nowadays, the "middle-aged Buddhism" Japanese brands still hold a large number of technical patents and "lie to win" the traditional business and education market. After the market dominance transpositions "post-born" XGIMI, and the sci-tech innovation board is listed, there are still many "veterans" in that field who think that projection intelligence is still a toy for a few people.
We all know the later story.
According to IDC data, the sales volume of Epson projectors in the Chinese market in 2018 was about 542,000 units, lagging behind XGIMI by 30,000 units, ranking second in sales.
In 2019, affected by the shrinking projection of the business and education market, the sales of Epson projectors in the Chinese market declined. Compared with the sales volume in 2018, the sales volume of Epson projectors decreased by 30,000 units. To 150,000 units.
The tickets of the old era cannot board the ships of the new era. In 2018, XGIMI, who has been running for a long time, took over the scepter and is still the market leader.
If
At the 2016 Shenzhen High-tech Products Fair, the laser display company Guangfeng Technology exhibited a 100-inch laser TV. In an interview with reporters, Dr. Li Yi, the founder of Guangfeng, said that this laser TV uses the ALPD laser display technology independently developed by Guangfeng. ALPD means advanced laser phosphor display technology. It solves the industry problem of phosphor thermal quenching and breaks through the traditional bottleneck of laser display such as high cost, speckle and large volume, making it high brightness, high efficiency, and long life. The application of laser display technology becomes possible.
Li Bo said that in the past, domestic companies always said that they were OEMs for certain large companies in Japan and South Korea. Guangfeng has this confidence in technology and wants giants like LG to OEM for itself.
2015 will be the first year of laser TV. "If the 80-inch laser TV can be reduced to less than 50,000, it will soon enter the family" Li Bo said, but what Li Bo said is more like throwing a smoke bomb into the field of laser TV, laser TV The wave of price cuts was much faster than he expected. In 2017, Guangfeng and "Price Butcher" Xiaomi started the "popularization" storm of laser TV. Guangfeng played the role of "vanguard", and laser TV officially entered the 10,000 yuan era. This also laid the foundation for Guangfeng Technology to hit the sci-tech innovation board two years later.
After getting rid of the light source for a while, another big mountain lay in front of many players-the ultra-short focal optical lens. In this field, even if it is as strong as the listed company Guangfeng, when it landed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board in 2019, the ultra-short-focus optical lens was included in the prospectus as an important risk warning, indicating that the ultra-short-focus lens supplier Japan Ricoh is in the price, Under the influence of business relations, trade disputes between countries and other factors, the inability to supply normally will bring important raw material procurement risks to Guangfeng's production and operation.
In 2012, Ricoh launched a new patented technology projection product called "Built-in Separate Reflective Ultra-Short Throw Optics", which was able to project a large screen of 80 inches at a distance of 20cm, which was unimaginab
le back then. At this point, Ricoh also took advantage of the trend to jump from behind the scenes R&D manufacturer to the front stage, and officially announced its entry into the consumer market. It made a big hit in the country. It quickly deployed in the short-focus and high-end engineering fields. It married with Digital China and launched a series of new products. It monopolized in just 3 years. The market share of China's ultra-short throw market is more than 90%.Domestic ultra-short focal lens industry chain companies have not failed to work hard. Many listed companies in the optical field have launched an assault in this field. Although they have gained some gains, they have failed to break through Ricoh's design patents. 2016, the eve of the explosion of laser TV. The world-renowned optical design expert Dr. Wenzong Li, the head of Hisense Laser TV R&D, left Hisense to establish Shengyang Optics and devoted himself to the research on the localization of ultra-short focal lenses. For more than 3 years, he continued to fail and improve. Until 2019, the verification of the entire set of patented technologies was finally completed, and Ricoh's patents were finally bypassed, and the mass-produced products broke through the technical problem of ultra-close projection "stuck neck". The following year, Shenzhen Shengyang Optics brought the patented technology "Reverse-axis telecentric ultra-short-focus optical architecture" and the module to the Shenzhen High-tech Products Fair. The quality of the module is the same as that of Japan's Ricoh ultra-short-focus lens. Under the premise, the volume is smaller, the yield rate is higher, and the price is lower. This signifies that "from 2020, all ultra-close-range projection companies in the world have a second choice in lenses", and with the soaring demand for ultra-close-range projection market, brand owners finally usher in a bumper harvest in 2021.
Secret
In April of this year, the advent of Huishi P9 opened the prelude to the ultra-short-range reform of the domestic smart projection market. This product uses LED light source, 0.26:1 projection ratio, 1080P resolution, and 5000mAh external lithium battery module. After three years of sharpening a sword, Huishi relies on its parent company Chengdu Jinghua Optoelectronics' decades of experience in optical design and lens manufacturing, and the ecological layout of the entire industry chain from the glass melting chain to the projector machine, from the lens to the machine. Self-production has created this revolutionary product that takes into account the cost-effectiveness, and it is reported that this year Huishou will release a variety of ultra-short throw products to intensively cultivate in the field of ultra-short-range projection.
In mid-April, the Nut Smart Wall O1 was released, innovatively equipped with self-developed leading ultra-close projection technology, making its projection distance to screen width ratio (projection ratio) as small as 0.25:1. Users only need to place it only 27cm away from the wall, that is, less than one-tenth of the projection distance of the current telephoto projector, and can enjoy the same or even better quality projection effect as the traditional projection.
Where does the projection industry stand next? At this point, the rise of Huawei has given inspiration.
There are two key time points for the rise of Huawei mobile phones. One is that the high-end Huawei Mate7 has been a great success. Since then, the Mate series has been invincible, and each generation has sold very well. Another predicted the user's demand for photography, incorporated the Pureview pure scene imaging technology team, launched the Huawei P20, and won the number one position in the DXO global camera phone rankings. Since then, Huawei has established a firm foothold in the field of high-end camera phones.
On the supply side, after the projection industry has entered the color competition, the performance of the picture depends more on the in-depth capabilities of the optical lens; on the demand side, the housing economy spawned by the epidemic has ushered in an outbreak of home projection, and the ultra-close projection brought about The convenience and audio-visual experience upgrades, and it is difficult to return after use. In the next ten years, ultra-short throw products will become "a battleground for military experts."
The land of milk and honey China's projection industry chain has rapidly increased its international discourse power. In addition to the "world factory" advantage in the supply chain field, more importantly, it comes from consumers, that is, a broad and rich market. China has a vast territory and abundant resources. Compared with the common prosperity of Europe and America and the general poverty of Africa, China has a complex and diverse consumer demand. It is precisely because of the rich domestic demand market that Chinese manufacturers have the insight ability to deal with different consumers. IDC predicts that the compound growth rate of China's projection equipment market will reach 14% from 2020 to 2024.
Secondly, the improvement of China's communication infrastructure can enable Chinese manufacturers to chase cutting-edge technology more quickly. Compared with the third world countries, China's Internet penetration rate has already surpassed the world average level, and with the advent of the 5G era, China, as an "infrastructure madman", has gradually tied the developed countries. In particular, the Internetization of Chinese consumers in all aspects of life such as shopping, games, videos, etc., allows manufacturers to quickly grasp the functions of home and entertainment projections to adapt to consumer changes, which provides a good opportunity for domestic brands to develop entertainment functions. conditions of.
Thirdly, the local competition in China's projection industry is very fierce, which makes the "micro-innovation" of China's projection product functional building blocks continue to be vigorous. Looking back at the rapid development in the past ten years, CoolTV, Shenhua, Lenovo, Micro Whale, Hisense, Nuts, XGIMI, Fengmi, Big Eye Orange, Dangbei, etc., are in a field with only tens of billions of market space. There are no less than a hundred brands that have risen and disappeared. It is also such a fierce environment that has bred frequent micro-innovation and differentiated competitive advantages of domestic brands.
Domestic projectors must not only compete with "friends" for technological innovation, but also "break the circle" to educate consumers, and always beware of international giants chasing and intercepting them. They are painful and happy, just like many people's QQ signatures many years ago. Killing me or not will make me stronger". The road to the rise of domestically produced projections will continue to be accompanied by setbacks, glory and dreams. And it is this roughness that made it complete the transformation from copycat and imitation to independent research and development, and innovation leading in the great voyage. Now it has "crossed the Red Sea" and sailed into the new world.