Text/JING Audit/Zi Yang Correction/Zhi Qiu
According to apple's "Supplier Responsibility Progress Report", 96 of the top 200 suppliers are from Chinese mainland, and the proportion continues to increase.
Although the entry of Chinese companies into Apple's supply chain has greatly helped their own development, the potential crisis cannot be ignored. If domestic manufacturers rely too much on Apple, then once Apple terminates its cooperation, Chinese companies may fall short.
Ruthlessly abandoned by Apple
OFILM is a typical case. It is reported that OFILM is the first manufacturer in China to win Apple's optical components. It is also with the help of Apple's orders that OFILM successfully surpassed Sunny Optics and won the shipment and revenue championships in the mobile phone lens module track. Before Apple and OFILM broke up, Apple was OFILM's largest customer, and the proportion of revenue contribution was stable at 20% to 30%, which showed its importance.
However, although Apple is important to OFILM, OFILM is not irreplaceable compared to Apple.
According to the official announcement, in March 2021, Apple notified OFILM to end the partnership. Affected by this, OFILM's revenue in 2021 has dropped significantly, and the net loss is expected to be between 1.9 billion and 2.7 billion.
Apple's termination of cooperation, for OFILM, not only means a sharp decline in shipments, but also represents that the company must bear the operating costs after the termination of the procurement relationship.
Domestic factories suffered heavy losses
Of course, of course, of course, the reason for the loss of money is not all in Apple. In fact, OFILM originally had a customer comparable to Apple-Huawei.
However, Huawei is limited by chips, mobile phone shipments continue to decline, and camera demand continues to decrease. The orders of the two manufacturers have changed together, which is the root cause of the continuous decline in OFILM's performance.
For this situation, OFILM is also quite helpless. Although there are other manufacturers in the market, there are almost no companies that can compete with Apple and Huawei, and OFILM simply cannot find manufacturers to fill the vacancy.
The annual loss of 1.9 billion yuan was forced to transform
Forced to do so, OFILM can only carry out transformation. According to the official introduction, at present, ofilion's business focus has begun to shift to smart cars, VR/AB, industrial, medical and other fields, and from the performance point of view, the new business has had a certain positive impact on the company.
It is worth mentioning that OFILM did not choose to develop in the new track after being abandoned by Apple. In fact, OFILM has always been a business-rich enterprise.
As early as 2016, OFILM began to carry out the technical layout of smart cars. Moreover, because OFILM has the advantages of optical lens and camera research and development, it has made rapid progress in the smart car track. As of November 2021, OFILM has obtained the qualification of first-class suppliers of more than 20 car companies.
In fact, from the perspective of market development, OFILM's shift to the smart car track is also a blessing in disguise.
Although the current smart car lens module market is not as large as the mobile phone market, with the rapid popularization of new energy vehicles, China's automotive industry has entered a period of rapid development, and it is only a matter of time before the smart car lens module market surpasses the smart phone lens module market. OFILM may be blessed with the fact that it won the sales championship and the sales championship on the new track.
Of course, OFILM will not give up the mobile phone lens business. In 2021, OFILM has successfully developed 8P lenses and entered the supply chains of many manufacturers such as Xiaomi and OPPO, and the mobile phone lens business is slowly recovering.
Write at the end
On the whole, even if OFILM has prepared early, it still needs a long buffer time to recover from losing Apple orders. For other domestic supply chain enterprises, OFILM's experience is worthy of caution.
In your opinion, do domestic companies enter the Apple supply chain with more advantages than disadvantages, or do the disadvantages outweigh the benefits?