At Apple’s press conference last night, there were two biggest highlights: one was having the "fastest chip in a smartphone", which was enough to support some small leaps in shooting; the other was the comparison The release price of the first-generation iPhone series has not increased, but has dropped.
The latest A15 chip, although not much information was disclosed at the press conference, in terms of performance, it rarely did not compare with the previous generation A14 , and compared it with competitors, claiming to be "compared to the closest Competitors are 50% faster". In the past, when the CPU performance was not as good as Qualcomm , Apple dared to repeatedly break the price ceiling. Why do we now have the "strongest chip", but not the confidence to increase prices?
Regarding the price reduction of the iPhone 13 series, there are various speculations; there are also pessimisms about technological innovation caused by this, and concerns about the consumer market and even the economy.
Price reduction guess 1: Exchange rate
The US dollar release price of the iPhone 13 series has not changed compared with the previous two generations, but the RMB release price is a visible price reduction, so let What people think of is the exchange rate issue.
iPhone 4 In the 11 years since its inception, the RMB against the US dollar has been stable in the range of 6-7, so Apple basically does not care about the exchange rate. Anyway, it will suffer a little loss this year and take a little advantage next year. On average, it is stable to earn RMB at an exchange rate of 6.5.
But now the general trend has changed, the acceleration of digital currency,It means that the renminbi no longer wants to use the US dollar as the anchor, and must enhance its status as an international currency in the mid-to-long-term appreciation process and realize the internationalization of the renminbi. In other words, after the exchange rate has risen from 7 to close to 6 in the past two years, there is a high probability that it will not fall back to 7 as before, but at least stabilize in the era of 6, or even open to the era of 5.
For a mature global business giant such as Apple, the exchange rate factor must be paid attention to and has rich experience. Assuming that the center of gravity of the exchange rate rises from 6.5 to close to 6 in the next year, the price cuts of 5-8% for new apples are just right.
There are obvious and legitimate reasons for the price reduction, then the price reduction means the increase in sales. In the world's largest mobile phone markets, the increase in sales also means that they can grab valuable market share.
Price reduction speculation 2: Tax policy misalignment
Anyone who has bought a mobile phone on Apple’s official website will have an impression. If you do a little calculation, you will find that this is actually a 13% value-added tax, and "other statutory taxes and fees" can almost be ignored.
"Including value-added tax and other statutory taxes and fees" This item is not available on Apple's US official website and Hong Kong official website. Because the United States and Hong Kong both levy direct taxes on (various income taxes, profits taxes), and do not use value-added tax, they believe that this tax is unfair to consumers, because companies will directly add value-added tax to the selling price , Borne by consumers.
But objectively speaking, even if converted to corporate income tax, the enterprise will also transfer the tax burden to the selling price. Between the enterprise and the consumer, who bears the more actual tax burden depends only on which party is stronger, and has nothing to do with the form of the tax.The value-added tax can be seen in the price at a glance, but the corporate income tax is passed on to the price, which is even more opaque.
It's a digression, back to the topic.
Comparing the selling prices of the Hong Kong Bank and the National Bank, you will find that although there is no VAT in the Hong Kong version iPhone price, it is just about 10% less than the price of the National Bank including VAT. Tariffs. (This also just confirms the previous conclusion)
my country has lowered the highest-grade value-added tax from 16% to 13% two years ago. It is still in a wide fiscal cycle. Even if tax cuts are not continued, at least not May increase taxes as a whole.
In the United States, although the tax increase for companies has not yet been finalized, it is only a matter of time, and it will definitely not be too late. This is the misalignment of Sino-US tax policies.
The latest version of the U.S. tax increase plan two days ago mentioned that the most high-end corporate tax rate will be increased from 21% to 26.5%. The so-called high-end corporate tax rate applies to companies with revenues of more than $5 million, and Apple is undoubtedly in this category.
Apple mobile phones are released once a year. They are not sold out in one day. They have to be sold for one year. Therefore, the impact of tax increases in the near future will inevitably be considered, and the tax increase will be passed on to product prices. The US dollar price of the iPhone remains unchanged, and the tax burden in the selling price increases. So in fact, the iPhone 13 is really reduced in price .
is converted to our national bank's selling price. Since the tax burden ratio has not increased, the selling price will decrease accordingly.
Personally, the two kinds of guesses have their own valid reasons, in fact, there is no need to score right or wrong. Because of the clever Cook , you can’t think of both problems,Did you decide to lower the price in the end?
The price cut of the iPhone 13 series means that the technological innovation of mobile phones has come to an end?
Although there are valid reasons for lowering prices, it still inevitably triggers people's pessimism towards technological innovation. It makes people feel that technological innovation has come to an end at least for the representative technological product of mobile phones?
In fact, since the iPhone 4, Apple has basically maintained the pace of innovation across generations. For example, 4 is innovation, next year’s 4S is perfection; 5 is innovative generation, next year’s 5S is perfection...
This rhythm starts to slow down when X: X is innovative In the first generation, XS is perfection. The PRO series of 11 is just an innovation on the model, and the underlying technology is still only further improved. Therefore, the iPhone 11 has always been known as the "most cost-effective".
iPhone 12 is another generation of underlying technology innovation, while iPhone 13 is just a generation focused on perfection. In the past, every time Apple's mobile phone broke the price ceiling, it occurred in the generation of underlying technological innovation, and as a complete product, the price would generally be the same as the previous generation.
The so-called "underlying technology" mainly refers to the chip manufacturing process. A14 uses a 5nm processor, and A15 uses a 5nm processor. Even if it has a few more cores and is much faster than its competitors, In any case, the 5nm limit cannot be broken.
There is no breakthrough in the underlying technology, no matter how much optimization and improvement are done, there is no confidence to increase the price. Chip manufacturing’s Moore’s law slowed down,No matter how good Apple's optimization technology is, it has to slow down the pace of breakthroughs. This is why when talking about semiconductor logic last night, the wafer manufacturing link was defined as the core asset of the semiconductor industry.
So it is not that the technological innovation of mobile phones has come to an end, but the underlying technology Moore's Law slows down and restricts the rhythm.
Here, by the way, let’s talk about why Apple’s chips can be "50% faster than the nearest competitor"?
Did the trade war help Apple kill Qualcomm?
The trade war, and the subsequent technological war, not only made our Huawei uncomfortable, but also made the US Qualcomm uncomfortable. At the end of the fight, Qualcomm was crying and begging the White House to allow them to sell chips to our country. Speaking of this, in fact, the chips are not made by them. Qualcomm is just a chip design company. After they have designed it, they have to let the foundry help them make it.
Although Qualcomm is extremely good, it is not at the core of the card neck link, so there is no irreplaceable position. The biggest difference between Apple and Qualcomm is that although he is also designing chips, he also needs the help of and TSMC to manufacture them, but his chips are for his own use; Qualcomm’s chips are only sold, and the largest buyer is also My country. Therefore, a trade war has greatly widened the gap between Apple and Qualcomm.
Although the R&D investment is only the sunk cost of ,But for technology companies, especially among the fiercely competitive giants, that is simply the lifeblood of the company and the key to victory. Regardless of Qualcomm's huge losses in 2018, it still maintains an annual R&D expenditure of more than 5 billion. It seems that the R&D investment has not been affected in any way? Comparing with Apple, you will find when the gap starts to widen:
As it has not been hit by the huge impact of those two years, Apple's profits can support him to maintain an annual growth of about 15% in research and development expenses. In terms of absorbing high-end talents, it is obviously a pattern of ebb and flow. Over the past few years, the performance of Apple chips has not only reversed ultra-Qualcomm, but even gradually widened the distance, and at this distance, Qualcomm has no hope of being able to shrink again...
Concerns about the consumer market
If calculated in Eastern U.S. time, on the same day of the press conference, my country also announced a very "pessimistic" data-the important data reflecting the prosperity of the consumer market, "the total retail sales of consumer goods" increased significantly year-on-year Lower than expected, and refreshed the lowest year-on-year growth rate in the past year.
These two things put together, so that the market is suddenly very worried about the economy in the remaining months of this year, especially for consumer stocks, and even a new round of panic. Some KOLs have seen the end of the year and believe that at least until next year, social zero data will improve, and consumer stocks will have no hope of resurrection until next year.
But as long as you carefully analyze the social zero data and observe the relationship between the social zero data and consumer stocks, you will not be so blindly pessimistic. We will talk more about this on the weekend.
Let’s stop here tonight. If you have any questions or corrections about the content of the article, please continue to leave a message in the comment area!
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