It turns out that the disappearing headphone jack, the included adapter cable, and the Airpod that was teased to be picked up and played with did not reduce the charm of iphone7.
Yesterday, Apple's first fiscal quarter of 2017 (Q4 of 2016) was just released. The "Apple Top Theory" that made Wall Street and investors slightly anxious was temporarily calmed down in the last quarter. The revenue and iPhone sales that once again set historical records have also brought the world's largest technology company back on the track of victory.
But we cannot ignore it. This temporary victory depends largely on the hot sale of the latest iPhone 7 series. Coupled with the boost of the holiday shopping season, Apple's explosion in the 4th quarter of 2016 was an expected cyclical result.
In fact, Apple and its revenue have had an impact on the world differently.
A financial report worthy of cheering
Do you still remember the sad numbers in Apple’s Q3 financial report in 2016 3 months ago? Both annual revenue and profit fell for the first time in 15 years. Yesterday's Q4 financial report seemed to have helped Apple make a beautiful comeback:
's quarterly revenue reached US$78.4 billion, up 3.3% year-on-year (US$75.9 billion), setting a record high since the company was established. At the same time, this number is far beyond the forecast given by analysts ($77.38 billion).
earnings per share reached $3.36, higher than analysts' expectations of $3.22 per share.
In the last three months of 2016, iPhone sales also set a historical record again: 78.29 million iPhones were sold, a total of 3.7 million more than the fourth quarter of 2015 (a 5% increase). At the same time, this part also contributed US$54.38 billion in revenue to Apple, accounting for about 69% of total revenue.
Wall Street is obviously very satisfied with this result. After the financial report was released, Apple's stock price rose 3.25% to $124.6 in after-hours trading. However, for Apple, this financial report is actually more like an answer sheet that is eager to finish the work.
iPhone7 became Apple's largest "assist" in Q4 2016
From the perspective of revenue composition, the "contributor" that made Apple's performance in the last quarter was undoubtedly the sales volume that broke through the sky. Among the sales volume of this product line, the iPhone 7, which was just released in September last year, is undoubtedly the most popular Apple product in the shopping season at the end of the year.
In fact, before the sales of Apple's latest mobile phone model were disclosed, the market had many doubts about the performance of the iPhone 7.
Although the company has improved water resistance for the iPhone 7 series and improved camera, battery life and processor, the appearance of the 7 series is almost no different from that of iPhone 6/6s.
For those rich people who want to find a sense of superiority from appearance differences, their attraction naturally cannot reach the level of imagination. Not to mention the cut-off headphone jack and the Airpod Bluetooth headphones with an overly high loss rate.
However, this does not prevent the iPhone sales data from taking a "big reversal" in 2016Q4.
During this rare holiday shopping season of the year (Christmas, New Year and Black Friday), millions of consumers don’t seem to reject this new product that requires adapters to use wired headphones.
According to the financial report, from October to December 2016, the average selling price of each iPhone was about US$695, which is nearly US$4 higher than the same period last year. This figure exceeds the average selling price given by analysts ($688).
, to some extent, suggests that consumers were more loyal to snap up the latest products like the iPhone 7 or 7Plus in the last quarter. Because an iPhone 7 is nearly $20 higher than the previous generation, this can not only increase Apple's average selling price, but also offset the impact of some users switching to cheap phones such as the iPhone 6s and SE series.
Of course, this also indicates that people's expectations for Apple's new generation of products are still strong.
At this telephone financial report meeting, Mestri believed that the sales boom caused by the iPhone 7 series, especially the iPhone 7 Plus, was beyond the company's expectations:
"We were really shocked by the hot sales situation of the iPhone 7 Plus. In fact, we have been in a shortage of 7Plus this quarter.After entering January, we will have the ability to enter a state of relatively balanced supply and demand. "
, while Apple CEO 1 Cook called the iPhone 7 series "Apple's most popular product" on the conference call:
"iPhone7 and iPhone 7Plus have a very high market demand, and their popularity is something I have never seen in other Apple product portfolios. "Behind the good results of
, there is a "cyclical" principle
That's right, Apple's iPhone sales in the fourth quarter of 2016 may be able to make up for the mediocre performance of other business lines, and temporarily block the crowd on Wall Street, but it cannot cover up the subtle changes in Apple's position in the global market and its increasingly obvious risk of slowing revenue.
In fact, if you look at Apple's quarterly revenue changes over the past seven years (below), you won't be surprised by Apple's turnaround in the Q4 quarter of 2016.
Apple's revenue in each fourth quarter All the results are very good, and almost all can break historical records. Pictures are from Quaitz
Apple releases new mobile phone products almost every year at the end of the third quarter, which is destined to become a "grand carnival" for Apple's mobile phone business line in the fourth quarter.
Since this is Apple's most profitable business line, coupled with the "holidays" catalyst, you will see a cyclical phenomenon in which the company's revenue begins to make rapid progress in the fourth quarter.
This phenomenon has become a "law" since Apple launched the global hit iPhone 4 series in 2010.
Yes, the fourth quarter of 2016 brought Apple's revenue back to its peak again, which was a sharp decline compared with the previous three quarters (after the release of 6S, except for the 1.7% increase in Q4 2015, the decline in each quarter exceeded 5% in the first three quarters). This result can indeed make investors cry with joy.
But compared with 2010 to 2015, in the fourth quarter of 2016, which is most promising to sprint sales, a slight increase of 3.3% year-on-year is definitely not a reassuring number (refer to the fourth quarter of 2015 in the figure below).
can predict that if there is no significant growth in this quarter, it may mean the next 3.3% growth in the next 3000 quarter (see the fourth quarter of 2015 in the figure below).
can predict that if there is no significant growth in this quarter, it may mean the next 3 There will not be very impressive results in the quarter.
data comes from Apple's financial report, picture production: 36Kr
Therefore, in this financial report conference call, Apple gave a conservative estimate: revenue in the first quarter of 2017 was approximately US$51.5 billion to US$53.5 billion, with an increase of between 1% and 6%. But from the current perspective, this range is actually lower than the US$53.8 billion expectations given by Bloomberg analysts.
In addition, although many people will have great expectations for the 2017 new product launch event (this is also the 10th anniversary of the birth of the iPhone), referring to the 2016 fiscal quarter iPhone Judging from the poor results of the 6S series (as shown above), whether it is the launch of iPhone 7s or iPhone 8 (or other names), it is inevitable that people will be suspicious.
puts eggs in a basket of iPhones, which cannot cover up the "weakness" of other business lines
In addition, judging from the changes in iPhone revenue share in recent years, we should rename Apple as an "iPhone company".
In the last quarter of 2016, nearly 70% (69%) of iPhone revenue accounted for the highest level since 2010. However, in the eyes of Wall Street, a single profit structure is a very dangerous thing for Apple.
Therefore, as early as the beginning of 2016, Cook has been trying to reshape Apple's business structure - making it a veritable software The service company firmly sticks existing Apple users to the "hardware + content + service" ecosystem built by Apple. The financial reports of
in recent quarters prove that the success of this business segment is indeed impressive. The "Apple Services Department" including apps, music, movies, game sales, cloud services and insurance has received US$7.2 billion in revenue, a significant increase of 18% year-on-year.
The most prominent of these is the music and game business.
Since 2015, Apple has been seeking exclusive copyrights for its music streaming and game services. For example, the iOS version of the game " Super Mario " launched with Nintendo at the iPhone 7 launch conference, had more than 80 million downloads in the fourth quarter of 2016.The result of
also means that the App Store has received a very considerable fee from Nintendo.
However, although the revenue of this sector has been growing, the revenue of US$7.2 billion is almost less than a fraction of Apple's total revenue. At the same time, its contribution to Apple's revenue has once again lagged behind the Mac product line and "retreated" third place.
For five consecutive years, Apple's revenue ratio has not changed much. The picture comes from Quaitz
, but Cook always believes that if the goal of "increasing business volume in the next four years" is achieved, the sales of Apple's service department will be the same as the revenue generated by a "Fortune 100" company.
However, during the telephone financial report meeting, should Cook, who is full of confidence in iPhone sales, service sectors, AR products and acquisition business, think about how to save Apple's hardware product line other than iPhone?
Perhaps affected by the new Apple Computer MacBook Pro series of new products released in October last year, the PC product line performed quite well. After two quarters of sales sluggish, sales of Mac series in Q4 2016 reached US$7.244 billion, a year-on-year increase of 7%.
However, the performance of the iPad product line can only be described as "poor", with revenue of only US$5.533 billion, a sharp drop of 22%.
, a product that once ranked second in the "Apple Blood Production List" in many times, has now been surpassed by the Mac and service sectors.
2011~2016, compared with the quarterly revenue of iPad and Mac, the picture comes from Quartz
Of course, the continuous decline in the average selling price of iPad is part of the reason for this result. But does this mean that in addition to the fact that the iPad Pro is not attractive enough to consumers, Apple has also entered a misunderstanding of the product positioning of the iPad tablet?
In addition, is the Apple Watch (called the sales record) that Cook called at the conference, really sold so well?
Although the sales performance of this product is jointly included in the "other products" sector with iPod, Bluetooth headset Airpods, Beats headsets, and Wifi routers, its revenue is US$4 billion, and the decline of nearly 8% of the same period shows that consumers may not be very interested in the Apple Watch product.
is constantly "reducing" the Chinese market on Apple's territory.
As Apple once was the second largest Apple product market in the world, the importance of China is self-evident.
However, in this financial report, Greater China became the only region among Apple's five major markets in the world where revenue declined sharply, with a year-on-year decline of up to 12%, and the market contribution rate was only 20.3%. It was caught up by the European market for three consecutive quarters and also lost the title of "second largest market".
26%, 33%, 30%, 12%... The revenue decline level in Greater China in the four quarters of 2016 is really shocking.
2011~2016, Apple's sales in the five major global markets changed. The picture comes from Quartz
Of course, Apple's "down" in Greater China is also reflected in the sales of flagship products. According to data released by Counterpoint, hardware market research agency, 5 days ago:
In 2016, Apple lost the title of "the best-selling single-product mobile phone" in China. The most popular among local consumers is no longer a certain iPhone from Apple, but the R9 under the local brand Oppo, with sales share accounting for 4%.
In comparison, Apple's iPhone 6S can only co-locate with multiple local brands, taking away 2% of its market share.
Image from Counterpoint
Faced with the Chinese market, perhaps Apple has heard the complaints of Chinese users about the product's "no progress", perhaps also seen the continuous maturity of the production chain of Chinese inland brands' mobile phones, and perhaps also been bound by China's policies for overseas business...
Therefore, Cook did not emphasize too much the importance of the Chinese market in this conference call, but instead discussed the "second solution" with alternative significance - "capture India".
At the same time, although financial officer Mestri affirmed the contribution of China and India to Apple's revenue, he hinted that in the near future, India may replace Japan and become Apple's next important market stronghold in Asia.
"There is no doubt that we believe that the Chinese market will soon regain its strength, but India is our biggest goal to seize the 'remaining Asian market'."
However, what will Apple rely on to regain the Chinese cake that was separated by mainland brands, iPhone 8? OLED display? Embeddable artificial intelligence technology? We should wait and see this.
's revenue hit a record, but its net profit is actually not that good
Finally, it returns to this Q4 financial report that made Apple temporarily proud.
In fact, some analysts told Fortune that because they really have no confidence in Apple's performance in the fourth quarter of 2016, they lowered Apple's revenue and profit expectations one after another before Apple's financial report was released.
In other words, the reason why Apple's report card has significantly exceeded analysts' expectations is that the latter has left "imagination space" for it in advance.
In addition, it is more noteworthy that even though revenue set a historical record, Apple's net profit was still declining year-on-year (-2.5%), falling to US$17.9 billion.
set a record, but did not bring Apple a profit increase? This is mainly for two reasons:
Apple increased its marketing and marketing efforts for new products in the shopping season in the fourth quarter of 2016.
increases the cost of research and development and production of new products. We can see that while iPhone 7 has increased its battery life and storage capacity, it has also made significant adjustments in cameras, processors, etc., and the cost will naturally increase. , which corresponds to this, R&D expenditure in the financial report increased by nearly $500 million compared with the same period last year.
Q4 R&D expenditure in 2016
Of course, over the past year, Apple has been constantly asking parts suppliers to lower the price of parts in order to protect the company's profit margins when iPhone shipments stagnate.
In addition to putting pressure on the supply chain, the recent lawsuit between Apple and Qualcomm has also become a breakthrough for iPhone to solve cost problems.
After all, Qualcomm charges a patent fee from Apple up to 5% of the average iPhone sales price. Once Apple wins the case, this will greatly reduce the cost of each iPhone. And the key now is how long the battle will last.
Then the lawsuit is unsuccessful, and the R&D cost is also increasing (if expensive OLED displays are used, the cost will inevitably increase). How will Apple deal with it? This still depends on the iPhone's future sales.
But at the end of the day, it's a question of putting eggs in a few baskets. Judging from the current layout of global technology giants, Apple's advantages are still concentrated on hardware products. If a basket is broken, all eggs will be gone.
In other words, Apple, known as the "iPhone Company", has no essential difference between the two, like Google, which has been nicknamed a "search company with many hobbies" for many years.
I am Fu Bo, the leader of the 36Kr International News Group. I pay attention to major foreign companies and international cutting-edge trends. Welcome to contact us (WeChat: fudabo001, indicate the identity)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 36Kr International News Group is about to recruit formal positions and interns! !
As long as you have a strong interest in artificial intelligence, new energy, AR, VR, and the Internet of Things, and cannot extricate yourself from various "black technologies", your writing style and English are not bad (you can understand MIT and Bloomberg News), please make your resume full of your energy! !
Here, you can not only enjoy a massive amount of the latest cutting-edge technological information, but also have the opportunity to interview international bigwigs and work with reporters from 36Kr’s special information department to complete socially influential manuscripts! In short, we will do our best to share resources with you~
Resume please send to the following two email addresses: [email protected]/[email protected] (Come in the bowl)
