If Apple changed the world, the iPhone changed the smartphone era. Since the iPhone is equipped with an all-touch screen, it has changed the habit of using the keyboard for many years, and the comprehensive innovation of interaction methods has also laid the industry status of the iPhone.
With Apple's dominance and influence, firmly occupying the position of the leading boss in the mobile phone market, the iPhone in the past was lined up as soon as the store was opened, the scalper's continuous grandeur was vividly remembered, and Apple also became an evergreen tree in the technology company.
However, in recent years, there have often been remarks about apples, and Xiao Hei believes that it is not surprising that such remarks have appeared. Because in recent years, with the maturity of the mobile phone industry, many domestic brands have quietly risen, from the perspective of global market share, many domestic brands are expected to become strong competitors for the iPhone. At the same time, from the perspective of technology alone, some technologies that have been popularized in the Android camp for one or two years, Apple is still "going its own way" and has not followed up.
Under various circumstances, people began to doubt Apple's ability to innovate, and whether the iPhone was ahead of the industry.
Challengers, can you shake the iPhone's position?
I don't know when, the word "impact on the high-end" often appeared at the press conference, and the mobile phone brand that was closely linked to the high-end before was Huawei. However, affected by sanctions, Huawei's mobile phone business has completely degenerated from a domestic leader to others, and the glory is gone, so now Huawei is actually not a strong competitor to Apple.
The reality is that as long as one side slacks off a little, there are always more competitors pouring out, so who is this challenger? The answer is: Xiaomi!
Since the release of Xiaomi 10, Xiaomi's slogan of "impacting high-end" has been running through the product concept, which is reflected in its core technology and price. In order to get rid of everyone's stereotype of Xiaomi, Xiaomi vowed to be a real flagship, no longer making the choice between configuration and cost performance, but in the real sense of making a high-end flagship machine.
In the past 2021, Xiaomi released the Xiaomi 12 series, and Lei Jun also humbly said: Officially benchmark Apple and learn from Apple! The words represent both an affirmation of Apple's position in the industry and an ambition to challenge the iPhone.
In order to achieve this goal, Xiaomi spent 100 billion yuan on research and development funds to smash into the Xiaomi business in the next five years, in order to complete this arduous "challenge" task.
Of course, it is not enough to rely on a single passion, and the challenger needs not only courage, but also strength. It is not difficult to see from the simple comparison of the Xiaomi 12 super cup and the iPhone 13 super cup that Xiaomi has come up with all the sincerity at present, and has achieved transcendence through the way of "stacking" in terms of hardware configurations such as fast charging and cameras.
Of course, in addition to Xiaomi, there are two brands, OPPO and Vivo, trying to become a powerful challenger to Apple through differentiated competition in the high-end field.
Last year, OPPO's actions were no less than Xiaomi's, and the release of the OPPO Find X3 series received wide acclaim, and the ColorOS system also became a plus for mobile phones. Not only that, but also enriched the content of the mobile phone product line, after the merger of OnePlus and OPPO, released its first folding screen mobile phone Find N, with a small body and patented hinges, opened up a new idea of folding screen, and alleviated the pain points of folding screen creases.
After Huawei, Xiaomi, and OPPO have successively launched folding screens, there will be more domestic folding screens this year. Folding screen mobile phone is essentially a mobile phone, essentially a high-end flagship, if the iPhone still maintains the "three years a big change" update frequency, perhaps many domestic brands with differentiation and first-mover advantages, enhance comprehensive competitiveness, and Apple competition.
Judging from the latest data report about the "2021 Q3 Global Mobile Phone Market Report", Samsung ranks first, Apple ranks second, Xiaomi ranks third, and from the perspective of market share, Xiaomi and Apple are already very close. It is followed by vivo and OPPO.
It can be said that the competition in the mobile phone market is extremely fierce, and if the iPhone wants to maintain its advantage, it may also need to resist the threat of these competitors.
Apple suffered a "conservative" loss
Jobs died, Cook took over, and many people said that Apple's soul was no longer there, is this really the case? Friends with this view may be dissatisfied with the iPhone squeezing toothpaste, after all, once every three years a big update, who can't help but spit. However, in fact, in terms of Apple's net revenue, Cook can be called a business wizard.
But putting this aside, in fact, the team led by Cook is not as "brave" as in the Jobs era. For prudent considerations, the iPhone will often do "wait party", wait until the emerging mobile phone technology matures and standardizes, and then decide whether to use it. So we see the high brush delay of a whole year, the iPhone bangs for three years to shrink a loss, and the iPhone delay in the real sense of fast charging and other "embarrassment".
Taking fast charging as an example, domestic mobile phone manufacturers have long been dry mobile phone charging power to the level of 100 watts, Xiaomi earlier released 200W wired fast charging, if it is not the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology for security reasons, the maximum charging power limit to 50W, this number may further soar.
In contrast, the iPhone, although it has changed the status quo of 5V/1A that has remained unchanged for thousands of years, the charging power of up to 20W is still difficult to match with the industry. Xiao Hei guessed that this situation will be maintained for a long time, in the field of fast charging, domestic mobile phone brands are at least three years ahead of the iPhone.
Then there is the interface problem, as we all know, nowadays, whether it is a mobile phone, or other electronic products, basically use the Type-C interface and data cable, it can be said that "with the C port line, go all over the world is not afraid." Except for Apple, which still uses the lightning interface to this day. It is not easy to carry is a small thing, and it is worth mentioning that the lightning interface is weaker than the Type-C interface in terms of compatibility, transmission rate, and fast charging support.
For example, the Type-C interface can support a transmission rate of 40GB/s, and the transmission speed of lightning can be described as "turtle speed".
In fact, Apple also knows the disadvantages of lightning, but why not change it? In the final analysis, it is because of the interests, because third-party data manufacturers want to obtain Apple's official MFI certification, they must implant chips, and they must pay money to apply for authorization, which is about $2. Apple isn't willing to give up such objective profits, so it won't give up lightning, at least not now.
Can these advantages of the iPhone turn the tide?
The release of the M1 chip has allowed the world to see the strength of Apple's self-developed chips, and even changed the style of squeezing toothpaste, making a splash in the SoC field. It is foreseeable that with the help of excellent research and development strength, perhaps Apple will also exert this part of its advantages on the iPhone bionic chip. What's more, according to the actual test, even if the upgrade of Apple's bionic chip is not large, it is at least three generations ahead of the industry.
This part of the core competitiveness, other mobile phone manufacturers are not just hard work to catch up.
In addition, Apple, known as the "supply chain master", is particularly popular in today's "global lack of core" era, although there was also a stock outage in the early days of the iPhone 13 last year, but this situation was soon solved. Because the supply chain knows that thanks to Apple's global influence, no one can offend Apple, so in Apple, it seems that the lack of cores affects shipments and other situations is not a problem.
As mentioned earlier, the iPhone has lost competitiveness in some ways due to its conservative strategy, but sometimes, conservative may be to prepare for a better experience for consumers. The LTPO adaptive refresh rate on the iPhone 13 Pro series is a good example, compared to the Android camp, although it is a year late, but the experience is excellent.
In the refresh rate gear, the iPhone is deeply optimized, providing up to 12 gears, fully covering the use of mobile phone scenarios. Coupled with iOS's excellent power management capabilities, it solves the pain point that high brush experience and battery life cannot be combined.
Of course, this can not be used as an excuse for the iPhone to stagnate, we can understand that Apple has postponed advanced technology for business strategic reasons, but as a consumer, it is actually more willing to experience cutting-edge technology in advance, rather than waiting for three years or even longer.
In addition, ecology is also one of Apple's advantages, iPhone as the core of the Apple family barrel ecology, naturally has become the reason why many people buy iPhones. However, in terms of ecological layout, the big factories led by Huawei and Xiaomi are no longer behind Apple, Xiaomi is taking the affordable route, Huawei is taking the "Internet of Everything" route, the former lowers the threshold of ecological home, the latter uses Hongmeng OS to connect Huawei's entire hardware system, and even in some ways Huawei is better than Apple's localization experience.
Of course, when it comes to the advantages of the iPhone, iOS deserves it. However, from the official version of the recent update of iOS, the stability is much worse than before. What's more, with the continuous improvement of domestic customization systems, such as the strong rise of ColorOS, MIUI and other systems, whether iOS still has advantages, but also need to see if it can come up with more sincere things. Xiao Hei believes that the advantages of iOS are still there, but compared with before, the gap between Android custom systems and iOS is getting smaller and smaller.
Image source: Google, Weibo, self-taken images, screenshots of the conference, Gartner