NOMADIC LIFESTYLE
NOMADIC LIFESTYLE SMARTPHONES Smartphone & Wearable Purchasing Habits Consumers get more performance for their money, according to latest study by GfK RF FRONT END – AN IMPORTANT ASPECT TO CONSIDER IN NEW SMARTPHONES Today, consumers on average spend a higher amount for a smartphone than they did one year ago. However, a clear improvement in device specifications means those who went for the latest devices still received value for their money. These improvements include larger screens, more storage capacity and processing power, longer battery life time, as well as features such as IP certification for water and shock protection, and superfast charging. The camera function also enjoyed significant improvement across most models. Consumers benefit from video recordings in 4K quality, a dual camera at the rear side, and increasingly better resolution of the selfie camera on the front. As a consequence, despite the 7% rise in ASP globally, consumers have better value for money today than in the past. On the other hand, under the influence of the smartphone boom, global demand for traditional feature phones fell by 8% to 191 million units in the first half of this year. Adding the two together, total sales of mobile handhelds (smartphones and feature phones) were up by 2%. WEARABLES GAINING POPULARITY The demand for wearables is also showing positive growth. This product group includes smart watches, health and fitness trackers and wrist sport computers such as GPS pulse watches. Connected watches (traditional wrist-watches with Bluetooth functionality), “earables” (headphones with sensors) and locators for finding children or seniors using GPS, are also smaller segments within wearables. Demand for wearables in Western Europe increased by 22% year-on-year in the period from January to June 2017. In terms of sales value, the market grew by 33%. This compares to Asia, which saw an increase of 21% in unit sales and 26% in sales value. In this same period, Smartwatches accounted for 31% of the sales volume of all wearables sold in Western Europe, making up 50% of its revenue. So in terms of value, this category is by far the leading sub-segment. Compared to first half 2016, smartwatch sales grew 33% in Western Europe, and 18% in Asia. The offer and competition in this product category are steadily increasing, as growing number of vendors from the sports and fashion industry is entering the smartwatch market Most smartphone users today aren’t even aware of what the RF (radio frequency) front-end is, but it has remained one of the most critical aspects of mobile handset design since the product’s inception. IHS Technology’s Senior Analyst Brad Shaffer and Principal Analyst Wayne Lam says that without an adequate RF front-end, a device simply wouldn’t be able to connect to mobile networks and would be essentially useless to today’s mobile users. A properly designed RF front-end is critical to the recent innovations occurring in regards to a phone’s performance, features, and industrial design. The RF frontend (RFFE) is the functional area of a mobile handset between the RF transceiver and the antenna, comprised mostly of components like power amplifiers (PAs), low noise amplifiers (LNAs), switches, duplexers, filters and other passive devices. More than RF: slimmer bezels, bigger screens, better battery life RFFE components such as modem-assisted antenna tuning solutions have become common place in premium tier smartphones. Without these components innovative designs, such as the “Infinity” display on the Samsung Galaxy S8, would be nearly impossible to implement on a usable smartphone due to the challenging RF environment created by the placement of the antennae and their physical characteristics. The Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ were the first high-volume commercial smartphone to support Category 16 LTE or “Gigabit LTE” 42
NOMADIC LIFESTYLE SMARTPHONES CURRENTLY FOCUSED MORE TOWARDS THE FITNESS MARKET, WE EXPECT TO SEE THE WEARABLE WORLD EXPAND AWAY FROM THIS, FOCUSING MORE ON HEALTH, PHYSICAL SECURITY AND MOBILE PAYMENTS Michel Assadourian CEO, Wiko Making Design and Technology Accessible to the Masses Wiko was created in February 2011 in Marseille, France by Laurent Dahan, its current President and Founder. It’s a French success story born of the association and the complementarity between the technological expertise, the industrial capacity and the capital power of Tinno Mobile, the company’s Chinese partner, with the French savoir-faire in terms of R&D, design, marketing and communication of Wiko. We met with Michel Assadourian, the company’s CEO, and asked him to tell us a little more. Wiko’s promise is to make technology and design accessible. User-centric to the core, it caters directly to consumer usages by offering a complete ecosystem of smartphones, wearables, accessories and a tailor-made user interface. Wiko sold 10 million mobiles in 2016, twice as many as in 2014. Wiko has a presence in more than 35 countries in Europe, Africa, Middle East and Asia. In 2017, the brand is expanding with special attention to the German market, where it is deepening its focus on proximity to users. What is WIKO launching at IFA? Smartphones featuring wide screens which deliver an immersive viewing experience on accessible devices. No matter what you’re watching, our new smartphones optimise your screen with more useful surface area on compact smartphones. Consumers will see more content while browsing and read more text on their screen. Our smartphones will be more convenient while watching movies, playing games and viewing pictures. Users will enjoy extra space for split screen multitasking in 2 perfectly square side by side windows. To compliment the stunningly immersive displays, the new smartphones range features an outstanding user experience built around sensational selfies, striking photos and videos worth watching. In addition, other novelties are also exhibited at Wiko’s IFA booth. Take a walk through the evolution of the Y range. Some of the latest models democratise NFC technology and bring the convenience of mobile ready payments, easy pairing and more within easy reach. Which kind of retailers are you targeting? We are not targeting retailers so much as consumers. Our mission is to offer the best smartphones accessible to everyone, where ever and whenever you are. We started our business in 2011 with mass merchandisers, especially with pure players, but we very quickly developed our activities with consumer electronic stores, telecom retailers and operators. Today, our products are sold by all French operators and major European telecommunications carriers. In 2016, we launched our B2B entity (Wiko Business Solutions) and we also opened our own e-commerce website, so consumers can buy our products anywhere, at any time. How important is IFA to WIKO? What are you hoping to achieve in Berlin? IFA is very important for us. IFA gives us the unique opportunity to present our latest products and innovations in the heart of Europe’s most important regional market. This year, IFA is even more important than ever, as Wiko is expanding with special attention to the German market, where it is deepening its focus on proximity to users. We hope to attract as much as possible the attention of key retailers, buyers, media and general public in order to increase our sales. How will products in the future differ from products on the market now? Devices will be thinner, more immersive, faster, smarter, more convenient, more fun and have more memory and greater capabilities than ever before in order to enrich the user experience. Wearables will be optimised. Currently focused more towards the fitness market, we expect to see the wearable world expand away from this, focusing more on health, physical security and mobile payments Hall 25 Stand 208 www.ifa-international.org IFA International • Friday 1 st September 2017 43
