More than a thousand yuan can buy a brand new iPhone, can you believe it?
According to reports, at Apple's spring conference in March, Apple will bring the third-generation iPhone SE, which is also the first SE model to support 5G networks. It can be said that this machine is the core version of the iPhone SE 2, and there will not be much upgrade in the rest of the configuration, and the starting price will still be around 3,000 yuan.
But the protagonist of this article is not it, but its predecessor, the iPhone SE 2. Recently, foreign reporter Mark Gurman revealed that after the release of the iPhone SE 3, the original price of $399 (domestic price of 3299 yuan) of the iPhone SE 2 will be reduced to $199 (the domestic price is about 1500 yuan).
This means that the iPhone SE 2 will become the cheapest iPhone in Apple's history, and it is also a major "killer" for Apple in the price range of two thousand yuan. With less than two thousand prices, you can buy a product with performance that is not inferior to today's Android flagship, which is undoubtedly a huge impact on other mobile phone manufacturers, but in fact, can the iPhone SE 2 after the price reduction really make the low-end mobile phone market reshuffle? I don't think so.
Sales of the iPhoneSE 2 far exceeded expectations
Before predicting what kind of results the iPhone SE 2 will achieve after the price reduction, we may wish to review how the iPhone SE 2 performed before, and the price reduction can really make it become another big "sharp blade" for Apple?
The iPhone SE series from the day of its birth, its positioning is destined to be only an entry-level product, and will not compete with the iPhone digital series for share, but hope to harvest a part of the "like iPhone, but can not afford to buy" users' hearts. It sounds like a good idea, but in fact, since the SE series is the entry-level entry product, the rest of the configuration can be said to be "floor" level, except for the excellent performance.
Apple CEO Cook said that the target users of the iPhone SE 2 are mainly from two major groups, one is small screen enthusiasts, and the other is the group that switched to Apple from the Android camp, but this statement does not apply to the Chinese market. According to a report shared by the domestic market research agency GfK, the sales of the first two generations of iPhone SE were not as good as expected, and the iPhone SE 2 sold about 2 million units in the life cycle of one year, which is about equal to the sales of OPPO or vivo in the same price segment for one month.
But don't forget, the target area of the iPhone SE series is Chinese mainland, and its sales abroad are far beyond our imagination. In the 2020 global mobile phone list released by Omdia, the iPhone SE 2 is second only to the iPhone 11 in sales, and is the second best-selling model in the world. Even in 2021, it will still be in the top ten, and sales have already exceeded the 20 million mark.
And these achievements are based on the premise that the iPhone SE is priced at $2 399, so what about when its price drops to $199? Things are likely to change. Don't forget, the biggest advantage of the iPhone SE series in addition to being cheap is that the fuselage is small enough, and now many netizens have called for mobile phone manufacturers to launch small-screen flagships, but in fact, there are very few people who really pay for small-screen Android flagships.
In fact, how many users are in the small screen demand, this has always been an unknown, but some people on the line will brush some sense of existence, the sales of the iPhone SE 2 can be said to prove that the small screen user demand is enough to support a popular model, which is still very important.
Is there a market for small screen mobile phones? Of course, otherwise why did the second-generation iPhone SE sell out immediately after the launch of the second generation last year, and it would not be able to be on the global top ten mobile phone sales list for two consecutive years.
Before the iPhone 13 conference last year, there were rumors that Apple would cancel the iPhone mini series, and as a result, the iPhone 13 mini still arrived as scheduled, and the iPhone 12 mini also entered the list of the top ten models in the global shipment in 2021, which shows consumers' love for small size models.
Although the overall iPhone SE 2 is not eye-catching, in the absence of opponents, the system is stable and the feel is excellent, but it has become one of the few choices for small-screen mobile phone enthusiasts. What's more, it may only sell for 1500 yuan.
Bad news or does it matter for Android?
Having said all this, if the iPhone SE 2 really drops to around 1500 yuan, does it have a huge advantage in the face of competitors at the same price point? Taking the models currently on sale in JD.com as an example, in the price segment of 1500 yuan to 2000 yuan, only the Redmi K40 is equipped with a Snapdragon 8 series processor in the top ten mobile phones, and the remaining few cannot be compared with the A14 frontal hard steel in terms of performance.
Apple ostensibly only releases one generation of machines a year, but if you think about it, from the iPhone SE to the iPhone Pro Max, Apple covers medium, high and flagship prices ranging from 3,000 to 10,000 yuan. At the same time, the products of the previous year, after the price reduction of about 1500 yuan, can continue to maintain a certain degree of competitiveness in the high-end market. For example, after the release of the iPhone 13, the sales of the iPhone 12 model with reduced prices have increased, and it is still the top of the Jingdong mobile phone sales list.
On the side, although Apple only does high-end flagship mobile phones on the surface, it is still continuing to compete with domestic mobile phone manufacturers in the high-end market by releasing the strategy of reducing the price of small-screen mobile phones and old models. For example, the same price point of about 4000 yuan, will you choose the iPhone 12, or will you choose the Xiaomi Mi 12? I think consumers other than rice noodles will think about it before placing an order, let alone in the 2,000 yuan price segment.
From the perspective of consumers, their selection criteria for mobile phone brands are roughly divided into two categories: one is to pay attention to hard parameters, the pursuit of the best performance of the rational consumers at the same price, can be called pragmatism, represented by Xiaomi users; the other is the pursuit of brand design and top use experience of consumers, easy to be affected by the brand image, which can be roughly summarized as consumerism, represented by Apple, Huawei, and Samsung users. In this way, it seems that pragmatism equals the low-end and consumerism equals the high-end. But the emergence of the iPhone SE series has subverted this concept, that is to say, as long as the brand influence is enough, even if there is a certain shortcoming in the overall experience, there will still be many consumers who will pay for it.
From the perspective of the target group, who is the target group of the two-thousand-yuan price segment mobile phone, which is nothing more than those students, middle-aged and elderly people and consumers who are not willing to spend too much money on the mobile phone, their requirements for the mobile phone are nothing more than to be able to get in touch with their families, watch the news, brush short videos, and the system stability does not often crash.
It can be said that all low-end machines are in line with the "cheaper price under the premise of meeting the demand" Although in this price segment, Android's performance in screen, battery life, network and charging far exceeds that of the iPhone SE 2, but don't forget, Apple is still the Apple, just with stable iOS and not outdated A13 processor is enough to make it stand out in a thousand yuan machine.
So as far as the price-cutting iPhone SE 2 phone is concerned, I think it is extremely impactful and threatening for the entire low-end mobile phone market.
Apple, with its precise knife skills, became the biggest winner
In fact, all mobile phones on the market will reduce prices, why Apple can always become a "model", the main reason is that the knife method is more accurate, along with the competitiveness of price reduction products will become more and more prominent. The reason why many people are willing to place orders for the iPhone SE 2, in addition to half of the demand for small screens, the other half is also based on the face of the flagship processor A13.
As for why Apple will use the price reduction of the previous generation of iPhones to compete for the market share of low-end mobile phones, or because the existence of low-end iPhones will greatly disrupt their strategy, after all, low-end mobile phones earn less, and then Apple also needs to spend a lot of time and manpower to adapt and optimize the iOS system for these models to ensure the fluency of the system. Many people use Apple mobile phones for the iOS system, and now low-end machines can enjoy iOS, so why buy high-end ones? So Apple out of the low-end machine, that is, its own left hand and right hand fight, the last injury is still himself.
Therefore, Apple's use of "old bottle of new vinegar" can not only reduce the entry threshold of the iPhone, but also effectively distinguish it from the existing high-end product line. While keeping the original basic disk, and then cleaning up a wave of inventory parts in passing, it can be described as killing three birds with one stone.
Back to the beginning of the question, can the iPhone of less than two thousand yuan make the low-end mobile phone market usher in a reshuffle? Personally, I think it will, even if it does not support 5G, non-full screen design, 750P resolution, single card, endurance blood crash, and general photo experience, but in the face of the price of 1500 yuan, everything is not a problem. So how should Android manufacturers face this "beast"?