Text/JING Audit/Zi Yang Correction/Zhi Qiu
Recently, there have been many news about the iPhone 14 that have been leaked in advance, from the digging screen to the high-pixel main camera, all of which make consumers happy. However, the whistleblowers are not all good news.
According to Wall Street News, the A16 processor applied to the new generation of iPhones has been designed. Unfortunately, the A16 chip manufacturing process is not the rumored 3nm.
Apple A16 switched to 4nm
Although TSMC claims that the 3nm process is progressing smoothly, according to the plan, TSMC will only start producing 3nm chips in the middle of the year, and due to the late mass production time, the production capacity cannot meet the needs of Apple's new generation of flagship chips. In this context, Apple can only retreat to the second place and adopt the 4nm process.
For the A16 processor, the most direct impact of the 3nm process to the 4nm process is the power consumption increase and performance reduction. However, in my opinion, the performance advantage of Apple's mobile phone does not disappear because of this.
After all, the performance of Apple's A15 chip is more than one generation ahead of the Snapdragon 8 chip in the same period, and even if the A16 processor does not improve its performance on the basis of A15, it is impossible to lag behind the Android flagship in terms of data processing power and graphics processing capabilities.
It is worth mentioning that the bad news about the A16 chip is not only the process shrinkage.
Price increases also include capacity
Taiwan's "Business Times" reported that TSMC will increase the chip foundry price across the board this year, an increase of between 8 and 10 percent. Although Apple is the largest customer of TSMC and has certain bargaining rights, in order to preserve production capacity, Apple has to accept price increases this time.
According to reports, Apple has already covered most of TSMC's 4nm chip production capacity in the second half of the year to prepare for the new iPhone and new iPad.
It should be noted that Apple pays a higher cost for the production of chips, but Apple's mobile phone profits will not be reduced.
The iPhone is ugly to eat
According to Apple's internal price assessment data released by LeavesApplePro, the average price of the iPhone 14 series is $100 higher than that of the iPhone 13 series. Obviously, Apple is passing on the rising cost to consumers, which is somewhat ugly. After all, apple phones' current premiums are already very high.
Of course, the reason why Apple dares to increase prices is also because of the confidence that consumers will choose Apple mobile phones. In fact, after Huawei withdrew from the ranks of mainstream mobile phone manufacturers, Apple's mobile phones have been unbeatable in China.
In terms of hardware, the suppression of A series chips makes it difficult for domestic manufacturers to look back. In terms of software, the iOS system, whether it is fluency or application ecology, is far ahead of the magic android released by domestic manufacturers.
As for brand influence, domestic mobile phone manufacturers are even more difficult to reach the height of Apple. Since the iPhone entered the Chinese market, it has maintained a high-end positioning, and the brand image has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.
In contrast, Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo and other manufacturers are all low-end machines. This has also led to brands such as xiaomi and OPPO being associated with labels such as diaosi and factory sister for a long time, and the gap is visible to the naked eye.
Write at the end
On the whole, the sales performance of the iPhone 14 series with a new look and new hardware configuration should not disappoint, but this does not mean that the iPhone 14 series is reasonably priced.
Compared with the iPhone 13 series, although the iPhone 14 series has many changes, but the product force improvement is not very obvious, if the user is more concerned about the hardware configuration or innovative design, the author believes that the Android flagship that appeared after the release of the iPhone 14 may bring users a lot of surprises.
Such an iPhone 14, would you consider spending money on it?