Counterpoint data shows that in 2021, Apple's share of the high-end smartphone market reached 60% for the first time since 2017.

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Soon, Apple is likely to become a company that rents mobile phones.

You don’t need to buy an iPhone, but rent it. This sounds like something that some third-party rental platforms will do, and Apple may indeed do it.

Dark Horse saw a news saying that according to overseas website reports, Apple Inc. is planning to develop a subscription service for iPhone and other hardware products, which will allow users to directly pay a monthly fee to "rent" the equipment.

After the launch of this subscription service, you can directly use your iPhone or iPad by paying a certain monthly fee, and you can switch to other iPhones at any time.

For example, I rented an iPhone 13 from Apple, but not long after, iPhone 14 was released. At this time, I can replace iPhone 13 with iPhone 14. I don’t know if the news about

is true, and Apple has not responded yet, but Dark Horse vaguely feels that this matter really looks like Apple’s style.

During Apple’s spring conference in March 2019, Apple already attached great importance to subscription services.

Since that press conference, Apple has begun to transform into a company that sells movies (Apple TV+), magazines (Apple News+), credit cards (Apple Card), and games (Apple Arcade).

Although Apple’s subscription service revenue is far less than hardware revenue, according to Apple’s financial report, Apple’s current paid subscriptions for all services are 785 million, an increase of more than 150 million from a year ago, and the growth rate is rapid. It's no surprise that

is now launching a new form of subscription service.

Another possible reason is that global mobile phone shipments are declining. According to Xuri Big Data statistics, global mobile phone shipments will be 1.37 billion units in 2021, a year-on-year decrease of 10%; of which smartphone shipments will be 1.12 billion units. , down 8% year-on-year.

The growth of mobile phones has reached a bottleneck period.

In such a general environment, there is a wonderful phenomenon. Apple's market share in high-end mobile phones is getting higher and higher.

Counterpoint data shows that in 2021, Apple’s share of the high-end smartphone market reached 60% for the first time since 2017.

According to data from Counterpoint Research, Apple accounted for more than one-third of global 5G mobile phone sales in January this year.

It seems that the decline in global mobile phone shipments will not have much impact on Apple.

But put the time forward two or three years ago, Apple was not as "sit back and relax" as it is now, especially in the domestic market.

According to data from the Institute of Information and Communications Technology, 41.73 million iPhone units were shipped in 2018, and 32.56 million iPhone units were shipped in 2019, a year-on-year decrease of 21.97%.

This situation was reversed in 2020 when the iPhone 12 series was released.

According to IDC China’s quarterly mobile phone market tracking report, in the fourth quarter of 2020, the iPhone’s domestic market share increased by 34.7% year-on-year.

Although the statistical units are different and the statistical data will be biased, it can basically prove that the market share of Apple mobile phones has rebounded rapidly after the release of iPhone 12.

In the global environment, perhaps because of the 5G replacement cycle and Apple’s premium ability, the iPhone has gone against the trend.

But the replacement cycle does not happen all the time. After the enthusiasm for 5G fades, can the iPhone continue to maintain growth?

4G Moving towards the 5G era, the biggest upgrade of the iPhone is the addition of 5G. In the 5G era, how should the iPhone innovate?

The changes between iPhone 13 and iPhone 12 are far less obvious than the changes from iPhone 11 to iPhone 12.

’s subsequent innovations will probably only be “breakthroughs” in aspects such as appearance design and charging interface that have been complained about for a long time.

At this time, Apple launched a hardware subscription service. If you pay a certain price every month, you can enjoy Apple hardware. And the longer the participation time, the greater the investment cost in Apple devices, and the better it can keep users in the Apple ecosystem.

After all, it costs a certain amount of money to get used to an excellent ecosystem and then go out. It can also attract Android users to the Apple camp at a low cost. After a month of use, if you are not satisfied, you will no longer subscribe to the service.

The key is to spend money every month. The ownership of the phone still belongs to Apple. You only have the right to use it. For Apple, it is a business that will not lose money.

The question now is, if Apple launches this subscription service, will any users join it?

All this depends on how sincere Apple is. How low will the price of the subscription service be? Don’t forget, Apple’s official website also has 24 interest-free installments.