Image source: Oriental IC
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At the beginning of the new year of 2022, Apple became the world's first company with a market capitalization of $3 trillion, and its market capitalization ranked among the top five economies in the world, and the "Apple Empire" deserved.
Under the loneliness of defeat, people can't help but ask, where is the ceiling of apples? The Apple Car is undoubtedly the biggest variable. Tim Cook wants to propel the 3 trillion empire forward, and the "thrust" provided by Apple Cars is indispensable.
Recently, rumors about Apple's car are similar to one. The latest news shows that Apple has put forward parts production requirements to a number of supply chain manufacturers in East Asia, and Apple's first electric vehicle Apple Car, which was originally scheduled to be launched in 2025, is expected to be released in September this year.
In other words, maybe just wait another 9 months and we'll be able to place an order for a genuine Apple Car!
Excitement turns to excitement, but will the exam paper that this apple has hurriedly handed over be satisfactory? Can Apple Car create magic in core technology research and development, supply chain control, and product innovation?
Unfortunately, in the core technology of new electric vehicles such as autonomous driving and batteries, Apple does not currently have a reliable and deep accumulation, if you do not sharpen the sword, the first generation of Apple Car will be difficult to become a truly innovative product, even if the sales volume is Longhong, it is only consuming Apple's top brand loyalty.
The car has been one of the most painful scars in Apple's history. As early as 2013, Apple announced its entry into the automotive field. In 2014, the familiar CarPlay was launched, and adapted to enter a large number of cars, seamlessly connecting with the iPhone in the hands of users. The most ill-fated thing is that Apple has secretly launched the electric vehicle development plan, which was once named "Project Titan", suffered from the tragic experience of the core team falling apart, the project stranded, etc., missed the perfect opportunity to enter the electric vehicle market, and let Tesla "develop" into the most capable technology company that many people think is capable of challenging Apple.
Missing out is missing out, and if Apple catches ducks on the shelves this year to release its new car, it may be a regrettable decision. As a global technology company leader, Apple should play the most calm role when everyone believes in the "outlet theory" and iterates quickly and even frantically to release new products.
A move, a big move.
The success of Apple's most core product, the iPhone, does not lie in grasping which outlet, but in redefining the smartphone and user experience; when the new iPhone faces global consumers every autumn, Apple relies on the insurmountable ability barriers built by chips, ecology and other fields; the reason why Apple has become a "rich and invincible" company relies on its strong and paranoid supply chain control and the ultra-high added value brought by self-developed core technologies.
Without any of the above conditions, the Apple Car will likely become a boring new product draped in an Apple shell, and explicit innovations such as design will become a slightly boring gimmick that attracts consumers to buy. This seems to be a return to the old path of Apple's former "number two person" Angela Arendts, the fashion "witch" from Burberry is not Apple's "true destiny".
Apple is definitely a tech company. There is no doubt that the Apple Car will be a very beautiful new car, and the question is whether it can have Apple's proud genes, or in layman's terms - absolute differentiated competitiveness and technical barriers.
For example, in the current global mobile phone industry, if any mobile phone manufacturer wants to find an optical lens manufacturer to cooperate to improve the image strength, then it is likely to be fruitless. Because the optical lens supply chain can no longer provide more choices, Leica and Huawei, Cai and vivo, Hasselblad and OnePlus have reached strategic agreements, and there is no room for new entrants.
Apple also faces a similar dilemma in the automotive market, the core technology and spare parts supply chain market has long been divided by Tesla and china's new car-making forces, apple is difficult to find peer partners, such as batteries, Apple is difficult to tap enough excellent and special suppliers. In key areas of autonomous driving and other core technologies, Apple also lacks enough accumulation, leaving aside all technical details, the massive driving data owned by electric vehicle manufacturers is what Apple lacks, and these data itself are also difficult to cross the threshold.
Cook revealed in an interview with the media that Apple is very concerned about autonomous driving. Apple's CEO shared the main direction of Apple's future development with great rarity, and the car became Apple's "yang plot".
Looking back at the executives of Apple's car team, John Giannandrea, the head of apple car development, is from Apple's artificial intelligence department, and Kevin Lynch of the Apple Watch team has also become one of the executives of the car team.
Slow work is Apple's consistent style of doing things, and now it is eager to launch new cars, which is somewhat surprising.
If you analyze Apple's motivations in this way, you can speculate on two modes of thinking.
One is that taking advantage of the current hot electric vehicle market, can no longer leave Tesla with a window of time to continue to grow and develop, at this time Apple Car takes advantage of the trend, with unparalleled brand influence, harvest a large number of users; the other is that the current electric vehicle market is facing key technical bottlenecks such as batteries, and the automatic driving scenario is still in a mature period, which just gives Apple cars the opportunity to "retreat to the network", so that Apple can innovate solidly in key technologies, achieve self-research and controllability, and with the help of a strong ecosystem. Demonstrate sufficient control over automotive products and markets.
Mobile phones are the world's first technology consumer goods; automobiles are the world's first industrial consumer goods. Apple is quietly opening a new era, and some institutions predict that the release of new electric vehicles will bring trillions of dollars of valuation contributions to Apple.
The latest news, Apple's long-cherished 5G chip has finally fallen. At the expense of "big fight" with Qualcomm, fighting a century lawsuit and losing, apple's self-developed 5G modem chip has begun trial production in TSMC, and it is expected that in 2023, the scale will be used in iPhone, iPad and other products. In terms of core components and technologies, Apple has always had the tradition of "doing it yourself, eating and drinking", and is not used to handing over its "half life" to partners like Tencent.
In the 1-ton car fuselage, Apple is most likely to create value is still the chip, in the field of intelligent terminals to maintain the chip technology leading Apple, has the ability to launch a neural network processor composed of a car chip processor with powerful AI capabilities. "Entering the car with the core" will be the most reasonable, feasible and efficient technical path for Apple, and we will all wait and see.
In 2007, the first generation of iPhones came on the market, more than a decade later than the world's first smartphone; now, the first generation of Apple cars on the market, a few years later!
Author/IT Times reporter Wang Xin
Editor/Hao Junhui Kicked Sister
Typography/Ji Jiaying
Image/ Apple Oriental IC
Source/IT Times public account vittimes