"4 million people are scrambling online to buy a foldable phone." why is this such a hot purchase?
2024-09-19
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the huawei mate xt, known as the triple-folding phone, has started pre-sale, and the entry "4 million people are online scrambling to buy huawei phones like buying lottery tickets" has topped the hot list.
comprehensive media reports show that online queues and physical store reservations are very popular. in addition to the description of "buying lottery tickets", various reports also describe "predicting offline sales like predicting stocks", "scalpers buy back new phones for 80,000 yuan", and "the price is hyped up to 90,000 yuan". in the context of the general downgrade of individual and family consumption, applying the above adjectives to other products, even luxury goods with financial functions, seems like an exaggerated marketing campaign. but when applied to smartphones, it inexplicably feels reasonable.
in the past two years, the general public has felt that the short-lived consumerist era in china has passed. whether from a pragmatic perspective of the economic environment or from an abstract perspective of lifestyle transformation, it is difficult to see the consumption scene of the "double 11 midnight countdown" or the consumption enthusiasm of everyone wanting to wear a logo on their body. what is intriguing is that the "exceptions" that can break this consumer calm today are almost all related to technology media.
car sales have fallen into a slump and price cuts have become a trend, but smart models that can integrate with the internet and artificial intelligence are sought after; the catering industry has never emerged from the downturn after the epidemic and has been constantly reshuffled, but the internet celebrity stores captured and defined by technology media are still strong. "black myth: wukong" is a high-quality content of technology media and the latest experience; folding phones are the basic terminal of technology media and the latest carrier. these are all today's consumer hotspots. why? because modern people's work, labor, social interaction, consumption, information acquisition, knowledge sources, and public life are all in technology media, and technology media has become the living world itself. the quality of all channels that access it is actually the quality of life today.
the goal of the iteration of media terminals such as mobile phones is essentially to further strengthen the perception that "the world is within your hands". huawei's three-fold screen shows in a figurative way that the world can be unfolded in your hands; the iphone 16 released at the same time focuses on the concept of ai mobile phones, emphasizing the recognition of human intentions and decisions by mobile phones, and also provides a feeling that the world is more controllable. this "feeling" is provided by many practical functions, but its significance to users is far from being summarized by the word "function".
the industrial era has formed some traditional classifications of consumer goods, such as durable goods such as cars and electrical appliances and non-durable goods such as food and daily chemicals, as well as convenience goods, shopping items, special collections, etc. smartphones are also being defined and observed in the above classifications. however, from the perspective of media survival, general commodity consumption is difficult to compare with consumption related to technological media, because the latter is neither traditional demand-based consumption nor single conspicuous consumption, but is constructing a complete survival experience.
this should be a new perspective to observe consumption, but it may not only be about consumption. here is another digression: in order to transcend linear thinking and simple binary opposition, a french philosopher once explained the world as a state of infinite folds. the world's unfolding and folding, opening and closing, suspension and generation are all in the "folds". in the context of the symbiosis of modern people and mobile phones, is this media terminal that can be folded in three places unconsciously presenting this state?
