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The smartwatch market saw a downturn in 2023, which has significantly impacted strategies for 2024. Manufacturers are expected to adopt a conservative approach, focusing on incremental upgrades and diversification in R&D to align with market needs, with AI becoming a crucial tool in enhancing product and service offerings.
The VR/AR sector continues to struggle with a lack of compelling content and applications, which has stalled market growth and investor enthusiasm. In response, 2024 is set to witness a stronger emphasis on technological advancements to enrich content and broaden the commercial application of devices, spurring the development of essential upstream components.
In traditional game development, there’s an inherent trade-off known as the “quality-speed-cost” triangle, where usually only two aspects can be prioritized at one time. For example, focusing on quality and speed often leads to high costs. This provides an opportunity for generative AI to benefit the industry.
Generative AI is capable of creating audio, text, and images, meaning it can accelerate the development of background music (BGM), marketing materials, non-player characters (NPCs), and background images in game production. For instance, tools like Stable Diffussion and DALL-E 2 can generate 2D images based on text prompts and have been applied in various stages of game production.
The 2023 smartwatch market reveals a new strategic direction for brands. Smartwatches have emerged as a new channel for market dynamism as the growth of established consumer electronics like smartphones decelerates. Despite a positive growth trajectory—influenced by demand transitioning from smart bracelets—an uncertain global economic climate continues to loom above. Challenges such as reduced consumer spending power and disappointing sales in 2022’s fourth-quarter peak season have necessitated a downward adjustment in 2023’s smartwatch market forecasts, now expected to reach 130 million units.
The shipment landscape for brands in 2023 largely mirrors that of 2023, indicating stability amid market fluctuations. During these unstable times, the push for innovation and the introduction of new products remain constant, showcasing the resilience and adaptability of the smartphone sector.
Development conditions for foldable phones are becoming increasingly mature due to the active involvement of smartphone brands. This report probes into the positioning, market segmentation, and hardware specifications of foldable phones, whilst examining their market competitiveness under price changes, future development trends, global market dynamics, and key component suppliers.
Today, using smartphones to take photos has become a popular way for people to record and share everyday memories. Camera performance has also become an important factor for consumers when deciding to purchase a new smartphone. However, unlike traditional digital single-lens reflex cameras (DSLRs), smartphones are designed to be lightweight and slim. Therefore, adopting a larger CMOS image sensor (CIS) or a heavier lens assembly to improve photoshoot is not practical. To overcome this physical limitation, advanced image signal processors (ISPs) and innovative computational photography algorithms are used to significantly enhance the imaging quality of smartphone cameras. These solutions can effectively compensate for the shortcoming of not being able to incorporate larger optical components into a smartphone camera.
CMOS image sensor (CIS) is the core component of a smartphone camera module, and its size and design architecture have a decisive impact on image quality. The optical format, which is the shape and size of the image sensor, is crucial for imaging. A larger optical format or optical size allows for capturing more light, thereby providing higher imaging resolution and a higher dynamic range. Hence, the larger the CMOS image sensor, the better the smartphone camera performs in low-light conditions. Conversely, a smaller optical format restricts the amount of light captured and results in a smaller pixel size. This ultimately leads to a drop in image quality.
The designs and technologies related to CIS units embedded in smartphone camera modules continue to evolve. Through innovations, CIS units now provide smartphones with more advanced and outstanding performance in terms of photography and imaging.
At WWDC 2023, Apple announced its first-ever mixed reality product, the Vision Pro, and launched the VisionOS operating system at the same time—marking its entry into the head-mounted display market. The MR headset is groundbreaking in terms of performance and price, signaling the arrival of the era of spatial computing. As Apple ventures into the AR/VR market, the challenges for the supply chain are significant, with numerous obstacles in hardware development still to overcome and costs remaining high. Nonetheless, taking a long-term perspective, this move is expected to continually drive the evolution of AR/VR products and the development of the supply chain.
Due to the decline in overall consumer demand, the market for True Wireless Stereo (TWS) Bluetooth headsets saw a slight drop in device shipments in 2022. This was despite efforts to attract consumers to purchase headsets through the release of new products. However, in the current year of 2023, factors such as the launch of Bluetooth 5.3 chips and the opening of the market for over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aids are expected to drive shipments. Hence, there is still the potential for positive shipment growth this year.
With the maturation of the smartphone market, smartphone brands face increasing difficulties in launching innovative products. At the same time, consumers lack compelling reasons to replace their existing smartphones. Looking at brands for Android smartphones, they are under pressure to offer new highlights in terms of features and designs. To give consumers a sense of “meaningful upgrade,” brands in the Android camp have introduced the most notable innovation in device appearance to date—foldable smartphone.
To build a foldable smartphone, brands have to incorporate several components that are exclusive to this design. These components include flexible display, uniquely structured hinges, etc. Due to the significant manufacturing costs of the specialized components and the relative immaturity of the related technologies, brands have been unable to keep production cost down for foldable devices. The price of the whole device has to be raised in order for foldable smartphones to have a decent profit margin. Hence, foldable smartphones have remained in the flagship segment of the market since 2019, when Samsung launched the first of their kind. Currently, foldable devices still represent a very niche market segment with limited demand.
Suppliers are maintaining their optimism towards the potentiality of future development for the AR/VR market amidst the release of new AR/VR devices, as well as the prosperity yield by metaverse-related topics, despite a lack of surging growth in the AR/VR device market over recent years. The supply chain, as AR/VR devices are gradually incorporated with new technology and components, has also started to expedite corresponding deployment in the AR/VR market in the hope of grasping on opportunities for market entry that would facilitate an occupancy in the market when it flourishes.