If you looked at the global terminal sales rankings in early 2010, Tianzhou Terminals would undoubtedly be number one, with sales so far ahead they surpassed all other brands combined.
Google Terminals ranked second, followed by Apple Cp2 in third.
Although Apple insisted it wasn't a terminal and shouldn't be on this list, everyone still implicitly included Apple in the terminal rankings.
However, by early 2011, this list had completely changed. Tianzhou Terminals had dropped to eighth place, with Samsung Terminals at number one, Xiaomi at second, and vivo at third. BlackBerry was fourth, while fifth to seventh place were mainly emerging brands. Apple's Cp2 ranked ninth, and Google Terminals tenth.
Oh, and it's worth mentioning that Nokia was eleventh.
After a full four years of delay, even the stubborn Nokia finally came to its senses and began producing and selling its own terminals. Unfortunately, they had missed their most valuable time, falling from their former kingly position to eleventh place.
Motorola ranked twenty-second. Motorola had ultimately entered a phase of rapid decline.
After the emergence of terminals, Motorola, unlike Nokia, didn't stubbornly continue with their own mobile phones. Instead, they changed their approach, deciding to produce watch phones.
Motorola's new leadership believed that besides evolving into terminals, mobile phones had another direction: retaining only the communication function and making phones as compact as possible to maximize portability.
This led Motorola to invest two full years of business development into watch phones, a venture they considered a blue ocean.
The outcome was, naturally, predictable. The future market for smartwatches would be much the same. Motorola diving headfirst into producing watches with purely phone functions was nothing short of suicide.
By the time Motorola realized their mistake and returned to the terminal market, it was already too late.
This also served as a microcosm of the entire traditional mobile phone industry. Half of the traditional mobile phone companies remained stubbornly in their comfort zones. Even though Jiangnan Group completely opened up all its technical licenses and product supplies, they insisted on producing traditional phones and consequently vanished entirely.
After all, hardly anyone in the market would buy older models of phones these days; otherwise, they wouldn't even have the courage to make calls in front of their friends.
On the other hand, mobile phone companies that accelerated their full commitment to terminals seized the opportunity of Jiangnan Group's broad opening and re-emerged. For example, the top four terminal brands now were essentially the kings of the traditional mobile phone era, still occupying the peak positions.
However, Motorola didn't need to be too discouraged. Their position was actually quite high. After all, this ranking counted the sales of the top 100 terminals. At this moment, there were hundreds of terminal brands worldwide still fiercely competing, and this list changed significantly every month.
Of course, some things on this list remained unchanged: besides Apple and Google, which used unique systems, all other terminals ran on the Five Elements system launched by Jiangnan Group.
Therefore, it wasn't that all mobile phone manufacturers chose to use various components supplied by Jiangnan Group and the Huaxia Electronic Technology Industry Development Alliance to produce terminals.
As competition in the terminal market intensified, many mobile phone manufacturers began to find all sorts of ways to create innovative terminal designs and special features.
For instance, it wasn't until 2016 that Xiaomi introduced...
And such things could only be used to hold cola.
It couldn't be helped; there was too much money, and Boss Huang didn't know how to spend it all.
"Brother-in-law, even though you have money, we don't have money to the point of developing a time machine!" Leng Zhiruo, holding their child, complained from behind.
The little one was already over a year old but still insisted on being held. He was also very attached to his mother, crying whenever Huang He held him, which greatly displeased Old Man Huang.
In contrast, Zhimeng's Huang You was much better. She would happily smile at Huang He, truly proving that a daughter is a father's little warm cotton jacket.
"Yes! I was just lamenting how fast the terminal industry is developing; it's completely beyond my expectations!" Boss Huang sighed.
This was the honest truth. After all, Boss Huang, who wouldn't see a full-screen phone until 2016, found it hard to believe he was witnessing the birth of full-screen terminals in 2011.
And this situation was something Boss Huang himself had orchestrated.
Firstly, smartphones, or rather terminals, were released a year earlier under Boss Huang's promotion.
Secondly, in his previous life, the golden age of smartphone development would arrive in 2012. However, at that time, the number of manufacturers that could produce various parts for smartphones was too small, as was the number of specialized talents in this industry. Most importantly, with Apple dominating, other mobile phone manufacturers could only learn from Apple.
Therefore, even during its golden age, most phones produced were almost identical.
During that era, explosive innovation in mobile phones still had to come from Apple.
It took several more years for China's entire Android-related industry and product chain to become incredibly rich, which then gave rise to the creation of full-screen phones.
This also shifted the situation from innovation led by Apple to innovation led by the entire Android ecosystem, with Apple following suit and copying.
Some people reading this might find it utterly unbelievable, thinking, "Isn't it always Apple innovating, and Android copying?"
If anyone still holds such a thought, it can only mean they have been completely brainwashed by marketing and the market.
Yes, before 2016, the entire market was in an era where Apple innovated, and other phones were responsible for copying.
However, after the introduction of full-screen phones, the entire situation reversed.
Full-screen phones themselves are a separate topic. In fact, as early as 2011, Sharp had released the first full-screen phone. Of course, that phone was purely a concept and looked incredibly ugly, so we won't discuss it further. The phone that truly initiated the full-screen era was Xiaomi's Mix.
Subsequently, the entire Android ecosystem began to copy the concept of full-screen phones. Apple was slightly more reserved in 2016 and 2017, feeling that they shouldn't follow the footsteps of Android. Thus, the iPhone 8 remained in its original form. The result was that the iPhone 8's sales became the worst in history. Consumers voted with their wallets, and thus, the 2019 iPhone XR became a full-screen phone.
However, Apple did lead a bit of innovation here.
For example, before the iPhone XR, all full-screen Android phones tried their best to hide the front-facing camera outside the screen.
For instance, the initial Xiaomi Mix placed the camera at the bottom of the phone's front, where a black bar was present. Installing the camera there wasn't too conspicuous, but the price was that the full screen wasn't fully immersive.
Subsequent Android phone manufacturers, in order to showcase their fuller full screens, did their best to eliminate that black bar, which then led to the problem of where to place the front-facing camera.
Thus, many Android phone manufacturers came up with various ingenious ideas.
Some devised a micro-sliding design, where the camera would pop out from inside the phone body via a slider.
Others created a pop-up camera design, allowing the small camera to ascend and descend from the top of the screen via a motor, exuding a definite sci-fi feel.
Of course, some Android phone manufacturers simply cut a small hole in the screen for the camera to take pictures through. But even that was met with ridicule from users.
So, how did Apple's iPhone Xi solve the camera problem?
Instead of cutting a hole, they directly cut a "notch" into the screen, becoming the first phone brand globally to create a notched display, truly achieving a phone innovation.
Even setting aside the front-facing camera, the world's first under-display fingerprint phone was an Android phone, the world's first foldable phone was also an Android phone, and the world's first wireless charging phone was also designed by the Android ecosystem.
And after the Android ecosystem introduced these features, Apple phones would slowly announce that their phones also had these functions the following year. What was most infuriating was that many Apple fans would exclaim that Apple had once again made a great innovation, which was utterly infuriating.
Take the latest "Dynamic Island" feature, for example. As early as 2017, when Huawei launched its first punch-hole display phone, some dynamic desktop designs had already been introduced that utilized this small punch-hole to expand into intelligent desktops displaying various notifications.
This was already a minor innovation that had been extensively played with by Android phones, yet it was stubbornly hyped by Apple and its fans as a monumental invention, even given a ridiculous name like "Dynamic Island."