Image source @ Visual China
Wen 丨 深火 (ID: shenrancaijing), author 丨 Wang Min, editor 丨 Jin Jiepan
A few hours ago, Apple ended its first launch event of 2022.
Didn't stay up late to watch? Never mind. After all, Apple's efforts in secrecy in recent years have become smaller and smaller, and after watching the full live broadcast of the conference, it was found that most of the highlights had long been exposed.
At Apple's spring conference with the theme of "high-energy transmission", the "highest energy" of "transmission" is the Mac Studio equipped with the M1 series chip M1 Ultra. The M1 Ultra chip is a seamless integration of two M1 Max chips, and the performance is the strongest among the current personal computer chips. The Mac Studio desktop console equipped with this chip is priced at 29999 yuan.
Paired with Mac Studio, Apple also released the Studio Display, a display equipped with an A13 chip and a 12-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera, starting at 11,499 yuan.
This set of super-performing equipment is considered to be the highest configuration of the current "editing artifact", but the minimum price of more than 40,000 yuan has dissuaded many people.
The iPhone SE3, which has been the focus of attention before, although it has been grabbed by the chip, the starting price of 3499 yuan has indeed aroused the interest of many people.
Last quarter, Apple performed well on the iPhone 13 series, becoming the world's first company to break the $3 trillion mark in January. I don't know if this time, the stepping stone that Apple threw out to "stimulate Android users to switch to iOS" is not good.
Overall, this conference, on the degree of surprise, but also to see the replacement of Intel chips of the self-developed M series of chips, some industry observers commented, "this makes the Mac, iPad product line, added to the point of view." On the cost performance, the iPhone SE3 starting from 3499 yuan is worth paying attention to.
Apple "Little Spring Festival Gala": 1 hour update 4 models of hardware
At the beginning of the conference, Apple CEO Cook briefly introduced the upgraded version of Apple TV, switched to the iPhone, released a green version of the iPhone 13 and a green version of the Cangling iPhone 13 Pro, and continued to use the new color scheme to stimulate sales. Some netizens joked that "science and technology are based on changing shells."
Immediately after, the iPhone SE3, which was nailed down in many market forecasts, appeared. The exterior design still uses the Home button, which has not changed much compared with the previous generation, and there are three colors of midnight color, starlight color and red color.
Although it is regarded by digital enthusiasts as the "matryoshka machine" of the iPhone SE2, it is equipped with the A15 bionic chip of the iPhone 13 series, supports 5G, and has improved battery life, which is up to 2 hours more than the previous generation of video playback time. And the price is 3499 yuan, which is slightly higher than the iPhone SE2 by 200 yuan, which is unexpected by many people.
iPhone SE3 source / press conference screenshot
Following the downgrading of the A15 chip to the SE series, Apple's self-developed M1 chip has also been released from the iPad Pro series to the iPad Air 5. After the performance improvement, the new iPad Air will further improve the experience of gamers and the productivity of content creators. In addition, the new iPad Air is also equipped with a 12-megapixel front camera that supports the center of the character, starting from 4399 yuan, and is officially released on March 18.
The iPad Air can only be regarded as a regular update, and the difference between the Pro series, that is, it does not support Face ID and does not support high brushing. A digital blogger commented, "These performances or features may be an improvement for the iPad Air series, but most of them have been seen on the iPad Pro series before, which is not unusual." ”
iPad Air 5 source / press conference screenshot
The next product is the biggest highlight of the conference.
Apple released the M1 Ultra, the last chip in the M1 series, which is arguably the most powerful chip in the current personal computer. Apple also spent a lot of ink to introduce.
The chip uses a multi-grain architecture, consisting of two M1 Max pieced together, a total of 114 billion transistors, up to 128GB of unified memory, equipped with 20-core CPU, 64-core GPU. In terms of the number of transistors, the M1 Ultra chip is 7 times the M1 chip. The M1 Ultra is eight times the performance of the regular M1. To sum up, it is more powerful and lower power consumption. However, the practice of splicing to enhance performance has also been "ridiculed", "Is the next step to stitch three, four or even more pieces?" ”
Mac Studio Source / Apple Official Website
The M1 Ultra chip has been used in Mac Studio consoles designed specifically for studios. Mac Studio is like a heightened version of the Mac mini, 19.7 cm long, 9.5 cm high, the fuselage is covered with more than 2,000 precision-machined holes, priced from 29999 yuan, the highest with 59999 yuan. In addition, Mac Studio also launched the M1 Max chip version, starting from 32GB + 512GB, and the price of the Bank of China is 14999 yuan.
The last piece of hardware at the conference was the Studio Display display launched with Mac Studio, which adopted a narrow bezel full-screen design, equipped with an A13 bionic chip, equipped with a 12-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera, supported character centering, and also equipped with a studio-level three-microphone array, and the highest high-fidelity six-speaker system on the Mac so far, priced at 11499 yuan.
Studio Display display source / Apple official website
Some users commented, "Unexpectedly, a display screen actually has a well-built chip", but there are many voices of doubt, "the display ability is not as good as Pro Display XDR".
For this set of top --equipped "editing artifacts", some users questioned, "How many user scenarios can use such high-performance products?" "This set of equipment that started at 20,000 or 30,000 can only be said to be prepared for a small number of users." Apple is paying more and more attention to the needs of professionals such as video and development."
Relying on hardware to "make friends", Apple first circle users and then make money?
"To be honest, the iPhone SE3 is not attractive," a self-proclaimed fruit powder user told Shen Yan that most users in the Chinese market are immune to this product, "it is an old antique."
So, who is the user base of the iPhone SE3? He believes that it is most likely that the old users who use the iPhone 7 or 8 will "rush" the iPhone SE3 in order to change the machine or use 5G.
According to deep combustion observation, some small screen enthusiasts have begun to struggle with whether to lean towards the former in the iPhone SE3 and iPhone 13 mini.
There are also some users who buy it as a transition machine, planning to use the iPhone SE3 until the second half of the year, and then buy the latest model of the iPhone digital series. An Apple user shared that "after spending about 3700 yuan to buy the iPhone SE2 in 2020, the original price was directly deducted in the second half of the year, and the money was added to buy the iPhone 12."
Cook once again clearly positioned the customer base of the SE series of mobile phones: one is a small screen enthusiast, and the other is a user who is keen on performance technology. Previously, he also pointed out that some of the customers of the iPhone SE series have switched from the Android camp to Apple.
Same series, same positioning. The responsibility of the iPhone SE3 is no different from the previous generation, that is, to penetrate more users in the low-end market.
Samik Chatterjee, an analyst at JPMorgan Chase, has pointed out that the iPhone SE3 has the potential to attract more than 1 billion Android phone users around the world to change to the iPhone.
"Apple sells the SE series, mainly to sell ecology." A number of mobile phone industry observers expressed similar views on deep combustion, facing the SE series of the low-end market, "hardware is to make a friend", just to pave the share, and then make money in the service.
Sun Yanbiao, president of the First Mobile Phone Industry Research Institute, pointed out that the ultimate purpose of Apple's continuous update of the SE series is to achieve greater profitability by expanding the user base. The growth of iPhone users means the growth of Internet service revenue, which is one of the keys to Apple's profit growth.
Source / unsplash
Some industry insiders analyzed that the iPhone SE3 series still uses old molds, to some extent, in order to reduce hardware costs as much as possible.
At one point, Apple's market capitalization exceeded $3 trillion in January. Investors are bullish on Apple because iPhone 13 sales are climbing, and because rising service revenues can contribute to overall earnings. The former means that revenue has risen, and the latter is of great significance to improving gross profit margins.
From the financial report of the fourth quarter of 2021, Apple, which released the iPhone 13 series, both had revenue and net profit higher than market expectations, with $123.945 billion and $34.630 billion, respectively. The improvement of profitability is inseparable from the improvement of its gross profit margin. In this quarter, Apple's comprehensive gross profit margin reached 43.8%, of which the gross profit margin of hardware businesses including iPhone and Mac reached 38.4%, while the gross profit margin of service business reached 72.4%.
After more users enter the Apple ecosystem, Apple can earn more, which can not only pay for other hardware products such as headphones, tablets, etc., but also bring about the improvement of software services.
Some analysts said that in the first half of 2022, Apple will achieve full range coverage from 2800 yuan to 10,000 yuan in the 5G market, which will continue to cause greater pressure on android mobile phone sales.
However, a number of mobile phone industry observers told Shen Yan that "Apple's market share ratio in China is not too high", and the impact of the iPhone SE series on the Chinese mobile phone market will not be too large. Canalys related data show that in the whole year of 2021, Apple's shipments ranked fourth in the Chinese market, and the top three were vivo, OPPO and Xiaomi.
The iPhone SE3, which has just changed the core, may only have advantages in the chip performance and system ecology of Apple compared to the same price point of Android mobile phone, but in terms of taking pictures, large screens, etc., domestic mobile phone manufacturers have already fought very fiercely in order to meet the needs of users. "At the same price point, there are more Android phone models to choose from."
From another point of view, an industry insider believes that in the face of the increasingly strong impact of high-end Android mobile phones, "THE SE series is also Apple's defensive strategy."
The target market for the iPhone SE3 is considered to be the Indian and Southeast Asian markets. In 2020, Apple specifically placed part of the iPhone SE2 production line in India, which is seen as a hope to stimulate the sales of the iPhone SE2 in India.
Sun Yanbiao said to Shen Yan that it is increasingly difficult for Apple to obtain new users through high-end products, so it can only explore to find new increments. "The Southeast Asian and Indian markets are one of the increments, especially the Indian mobile phone market has always been regarded as a 1 billion mobile phone market. When the price advantage is large enough, users may switch to Apple out of the brand. ”
To support the scene, you have to rely on the chip
Only from the distribution of the duration of the conference, it can be seen that the improvement of the performance of the M1 chip is the focus.
Apple's last press conference last year released the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips specially built for the Mac. At that time, the performance of these two chips, with "frightening speed", stole the limelight of the entire conference, known as "king fried chip", "punch Intel, kick AMD", in Intel and AMD fierce battle CPU, flat thunder, mistakenly injured friends.
Unexpectedly, in less than 5 months, Apple's M1 series chips were updated again. An industry insider said, "Chips need a research and development cycle, and Apple can update twice a year, the efficiency is amazing, and the performance improvement is not small." "Despite this, Apple may have been silently laying out for many years.
Source / @Apple Support
On the social platform, there are professional users who have spent more than 100,000 yuan to buy Mac Pro, and when they see the performance of Mac Studio improved, the price is 59999 yuan, they said that they lost a lot, "did not expect to shrink so fast", opened to dissuade new users, "wait and buy again, the next version of the performance is stronger."
However, some industry insiders pointed out that M1 is still in the stage of replacing Intel, and it is also the beginning of Apple's self-developed chip in the PC field, so the improvement in performance can have such a large range. When it comes to the M2 and M3 series, perhaps the performance improvement will slow down.
The improvement of chip performance is not strong for ordinary users. But just as the iPhone relies on A-series chips to dominate high-end mobile phones, now, Apple wants to use the same routine on computers.
Some users said that they may not be obsessed with Apple with their mobile phones, and the difference between the experience of the Android machine and the Android machine is not so big, but on the PC side, seeing the improvement of the performance of the M1 series, after considering the cost performance and experience, it will be inclined to Mac products.
The M1 chip has indeed driven the development of Apple's Mac industry line, and the financial report verifies this. In the fourth quarter of 2021, Mac products achieved revenue of $10.85 billion, an increase of 25% year-on-year, exceeding the iPhone business line and setting an all-time high. Apple's self-developed M1 series chips have become the key to the revenue growth of the Mac sector, exceeding market expectations. Cook believes that the Mac business line still has relatively large potential.
Apple's spring launches are generally regular updates. In addition to the mobile phone update of the digital series, the improvement of chip performance has become a highlight. In the future, where can the highlights of Apple's conference be?
Apple's wearable XR devices and smart cars apple car for the future layout of the metacosm are still only in the wave of revelations in the market, and no product entity has appeared. Perhaps, only when Apple actually comes up with a ticket to the next era will it "blow up" in the fruit powder again.