thick eyebrows and big eyes Apple has also been reduced in price. It is not uncommon to reduce the price of
iPhone. Shortly after the latest iPhone 14 series was officially released, the channel price experienced a break. In the past month, various channels have continued to reduce the price of iPhones, but it is still rare for Apple to take the initiative to reduce the price.
Photo/Searched from Apple’s official WeChat
Last night, Apple’s official WeChat introduced the Double 11 discount in a tweet:
As of November 3, iPhone 14/14 Plus will receive a discount of 550 yuan, and iPhone 14 Pro/Pro Max will receive a discount of 350 yuan, both of which support 12 interest-free periods. In addition, iPhone 13/13 mini, iPad, MacBook, AirPods, and Apple Watch have almost all prices reduced.
On third-party platforms, the discounts for Apple products are even greater, especially for iPhones. Pinduoduo even reduced the iPhone 14 256GB version from 6899 yuan to 5949 yuan. Of course, it’s not just the iPhone, almost all mainstream manufacturers are working hard to reduce prices and promote promotions on Double 11. The latest Xiaomi 12S has dropped to over 3,000 yuan, the OPPO Find X5 has also dropped to 2,799 yuan, and the Samsung S22 has been directly reduced by 1,600 yuan.
is like a consumption carnival. But for mobile phone manufacturers, it is somewhat mixed.
is alone? Apple can't do
Picture/Apple
Last week, Apple released the latest fourth quarter report for the 2022 fiscal year. Compared with other technology giants, Apple's achievements are undoubtedly stronger. But when the entire mobile phone and personal computer industries are experiencing a cold winter, Apple naturally cannot be immune to it, and it still feels the cold.
In fact, shortly after the release of the iPhone 14 series, Apple removed the iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max, but retained the iPhone 13, iPhone 13 mini and iPhone 12, and lowered the prices respectively. In other words, in addition to iPhone SE 2022, Apple's official website is selling three generations of iPhones at the same time, and the two most expensive models from the previous generation have been removed.
Currently on sale on Apple's official website and starting price:
iPhone 12, 4699 yuan
iPhone 13 mini, 4699 yuan
iPhone 13, 5399 yuan
iPhone 14, 5999 yuan
iPhone 14 Plus, 6999 yuan
iPhone 14 Plus, 6999 yuan
iPhone 14 Yuan
iPhone 14 Pro, 7999 yuan
iPhone 14 Pro Max, 8999 yuan
It can be seen that Apple did not want to miss the price range of 4700-6000 yuan, and used the price reduction method of the previous two generations of iPhones to attract consumers who are willing to buy iPhone but are entangled with slightly more budgets. This is also the relatively concentrated price range of Android high-end flagships, which means the two are directly competing in the market.
. According to the latest report from Canalys, 70 million smartphone market shipped in mainland China in the third quarter, a year-on-year decrease of 11%. Xiaomi , OPPO, vivo, and Honor all fell in double digits. Only Apple has grown against the trend by 36%.
Photo/canalys
Of course, this requires considering the sales growth brought about by the release of the iPhone 14 series one week in advance this year, but it is enough to illustrate the resilience of the iPhone business in the cold winter. However, the hidden danger is that many sources, including analysts from Tianfeng Securities, pointed out that the demand for iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max is currently strong, while iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus perform poorly.
In the short term, the hot selling of iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max can certainly bring more revenue and profit . But past experience is that the standard version is sold more lasting than the more expensive Pro series. If consumers want to buy the Pro series, they will often concentrate on consuming some of the demand within a period of time when they are just released.
In addition, in the conference call after the financial report was released, Cook said that product lines including Apple Watch Ultra and iPhone 14 Pro were all subject to "supply restrictions", which will inevitably affect subsequent iPhone sales.
Canalys Analyst Liu Yixuan also believes in the report that in the context of fierce competition and industry downturn, Apple has to deal with it: adopts radical promotions in its entry-level version and previous generation models, especially in the 5,000-6,000 yuan price range. The iPhone 13 Pro series was removed from the shelves by
, which is also to encourage consumers to purchase iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus. This also explains to some extent why Apple has given greater offers for the cheaper iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus.
But even so, Apple reminded investors that the company's revenue growth will slow down in the next quarter (October-December).
This shows that in the context of the macro environment and the overall shrinking of the smartphone market, even if the price reduction promotion is adopted, Apple, the strongest in this industry, has no confidence to continue to grow its revenue. Even for its competitors, this is not good news. After all, if it really gets flooded, it is probably the one who drowned in the end.
Mobile phone manufacturers collectively destocking , but the key is to future
Picture/Xiaomi
If Apple's price reduction promotion is more like preparing for the future, for other players in the mobile phone industry, collective price reduction promotions are more like quick recovery, in order to cope with a more bizarre environment.
The Electronic Times reported this week that supply chain sources revealed that TSMC's top ten customers cut orders since the third quarter because dozens of customers in the laptop, smartphone and TV industries cut orders due to sluggish sales in the terminal market, including MediaTek , Nvidia and AMD . Customers of 5nm chips have also reduced orders and shipments, including Qualcomm .
In addition, in August this year, SMIC mentioned that smartphone terminal companies still have a large inventory and do not need to purchase additional chips. In July, Jiwei.com quoted industry insiders and pointed out that smartphone manufacturers have more than 50 million units in stock.
Inventory is just one side of the coin, and the other side of the coin is the continued decline in smartphone demand.
Figure/canalys
Overall, the mainland Chinese smartphone market has been declining since its peak in 2016, except for the outbreak of the epidemic backlog in 2020 in the first quarter of 2021. One of the core reasons is the saturation of the user population. To this day, almost everyone has one smartphone, so there is not much room for improvement in this regard.
Another core reason is that the replacement cycle is constantly elongated, from the first one and a half years to the replacement cycle of laptops in the past, it has become one change every three years, or even one change every four years.
vivo Vice President and COO Hu Baishan said in a media interview:
I remember the earliest (mobile phone replacement cycle) was 16-18 months, then 20-24 months, and the latest was 36 months.
On the one hand, the chip performance provided by mainstream flagship phones currently has obvious performance redundancy in daily use, and the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 released in 2019 still ensures smooth use today; on the other hand, the innovation of the new phone is obviously weak, fast charging and inverter on the camera are stimulating consumers less and less, and the folding screen is also step by step verifying the maturity of the product in the high-end market.
The elongation of the replacement cycle also means the shrinking of demand. To expand the market size, for the entire industry, impacting towards higher prices is one option, and the other is to shorten the replacement cycle of consumers. Both require industry to make breakthrough innovations in product to stimulate consumers. Of course, the latter is far more difficult to some extent than the former.
But high-endization is not achieved overnight, and requires improvement of user experience, long-term brand recognition, and innovation and breakthroughs in product technology. OPPO founder Chen Mingyong talked about high-end in an interview with the media at the beginning of the year and said:
We do high-end plans, and it is more based on user needs. With consumption upgrades, users' requirements for products are being upgraded, which is the general trend. But this consideration does not mean that we can make a high-end breakthrough by making a product with high configuration, but this involves user experience. To truly create products and build brands, we must be consistent with the future mainstream consumer, in line with everyone's opinions, and in line with future development trends. At the same time, behind this, there must be a lot of scientific and technological innovations to solve key problems through key technologies. This is a systematic long process.
Everyone knows that there should be changes in the mobile phone industry. Specifically for each mobile phone manufacturer, their choices are slightly different.
vivo established the Central Research Institute at the beginning of last year, and then successively established user innovation laboratories, chip laboratories, simulation network laboratories, Qianjing Security Laboratory, etc., hoping to write "technology innovation" into vivo's tags, and still focus on the mobile phone product itself; OPPO is transforming in an ecological co-company, regarding the "Mariana Project" involving chips, the "Pantanal Project" involving software and development ecology, and the "Amazon Project" involving cloud services as the three core plans; while Xiaomi and Huawei are both looking for a new spring in electric car .
Mobile phone manufacturers are looking for their respective exports. It is understandable that when the entire market stagnates or even shrinks, everyone's life will only be harder and harder. Either find a connection point to expand the scale of the entire smartphone market, or directly jump out of the mobile phone industry to find a new platform.
Even Apple, as the pioneer of smartphones, will not hold on to the foreseeable future of smartphones. Whether it is service transformation, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods and unborn VR/AR devices, they are all products left by Apple to explore possible futures.
Just like the movie "Jurassic Park " says:
Life can always find its own way out.
