The price of the affordable iPhone has increased, who will pay?

Text/Meng Qian

In the early morning of March 9, Apple's spring conference arrived as scheduled, and the new iPhone SE, iPad Air, and Cangling Green iPhone 13 were unveiled in turn. Every press conference seems to have become Apple's "shuluo field", on the one hand, the netizens are full of praise, thinking that the chip reflects the light of science and technology, on the other hand, the crazy spit of netizens: there is no novelty, the mountains are exhausted. The new Cangling Green iPhone 13 series was also ridiculed for the exclusive use of Chinese investors, and was on the hot search, brushing the screen in the circle of friends.

The theme of this conference is "high-energy transmission", and the focus of the outside world on Apple's new products is focused on 5G and chips. The affordable iPhone is Apple's newly released iPhone SE3, which has caused endless doubts, some people say that this is the old iPhone 8, and some people have issued soul torture: Do you dare to believe that in 2022, Apple can still give you a non-full screen, 64GB, single camera and 720P resolution mobile phone?

What is the competitiveness of the affordable iPhone, which is highly expected, and can it compete with domestic Android mobile phone manufacturers? The capital market gave its own judgment, and after the conference began, Apple's stock price went all the way down, falling by 2.6% at one point higher.

The new iPhone SE has actually increased in price

Before the Apple conference began, public opinion has focused on the release of the iPhone SE3, most voices believe that this will become the cheapest 5G iPhone, and even some people say that Android phone manufacturers will be trembling. After the release of the new machine, netizens commented: This mobile phone is not useless, especially in the summer, at least the small mobile phone will not fall in the pants pocket. It can be seen that this phone really lacks explosive points.

The iPhone SE3 is the same as the previous exposure, the design is the same as the previous generation, is the traditional 4.7-inch LCD screen and home button. The biggest highlight of its configuration is the support for 5G, and equipped with Apple's iPhone 13 same A15 bionic chip, which has also been upgraded in terms of imagery, although it only has a single rear lens, but the performance has also been improved. Available in midnight, starlight, and red, the phone uses the same glass as the iPhone13 series back panel and supports Touch ID.

In terms of price, some analysts previously believed that this affordable iPhone may break the "bottom price". This is not the case, the iPhone SE3 bank price has increased slightly, 64GB for 3499 yuan, 128GB for 3899 yuan, 256GB is 4699 yuan, compared with the previous generation of mobile phones are 100-200 yuan more expensive.

It is worth noting that when Apple released the much-anticipated "thirteen spices" last year, analysts predicted that the iPhone 13 series would increase in price, but in the end, the price of the whole series was reduced, and the price reduction of the new product triggered the sighs of netizens, who expressed "true fragrance". Therefore, the offer of the iPhone SE3 this time is considered by netizens to be "the price is not SE at all".

In fact, the controversy over the affordable iPhone has not stopped since the day it was born. The first generation of iPhone SE was born in March 2016, and once launched, it attracted a lot of attention and was considered a "volume" product, and Cook also publicly stated that the product line has certain strategic significance.

Public data shows that the total sales of the first-generation iPhone SE are about 30 million. Two years ago, the second generation of iPhone SE was born, the current sales of 24.2 million, but the phone is more popular in Europe, the United States, Japan, the performance in China can not be called ideal, compared to the sales of the iPhone 13, completely incomparable.

In addition to the iPhone SE3, Apple launched the Cangling green iPhone 13 series, which is expected to open pre-sale at 9 p.m. on March 11 and officially went on sale on March 18, many users have expectations for the color of the phone, and at the same time there are many complaints. In addition, a new iPad Air was also released, the overall design is not much different from the previous generation of products, and the core change is still equipped with the same M1 chip of Apple's new iPad Pro series, which also supports 5G. However, the starting price of the National Bank of China has dropped from the previous generation to 4399 yuan.

Apple's "big move" this time is the M1 Ultra chip. The chip uses grain-to-grain technology with a transmission speed of 2.5TB/s, 114 billion transistors, seven times that of M1, and a high-performance processing core. M1 Ultra is applied to the Mac new product Mac Studio, mainly for creative workers, performance exceeds the top iMac, priced at $3999, the Bank of China from 29999 yuan.

Apple also released the display Studio Display, a 27-inch large screen, 1.47 million pixels 5K retina display, support 600 nits brightness, including A13 chips, equipped with a 12 million pixel ultra-wide angle camera, the price starts at 11499 yuan. This set of desktop Mac top matching down to about 60,000, by many users pointed out that the performance is excessive.

The conspiracy continues

Apple launched the Cangling Green iPhone 13 series new machine, which triggered the ridicule of netizens: no one may want to buy a green mobile phone. There are also voices in the industry that the update color is to harvest a wave of sales growth, after all, the iPhone 12 sold millions of units after the purple version was launched at last spring's conference.

In September last year, Apple released "Thirteen Fragrances" at the autumn press conference, taking the initiative to reduce the price of new products, increasing the amount and reducing the price of the behavior to make users say "true fragrance", when there was a voice that Apple was pointing to the Chinese market. Now from the performance of the iPhone 13, Apple's momentum in China has risen.

In October last year, Apple's iPhone won the domestic sales championship for the first time after a gap of 6 years, and since then it has won the domestic market single-machine sales championship for four consecutive months. According to CINNO Research, Apple's smartphone sales in January fell slightly by 1.8% month-on-month and 11.4% year-on-year. Among them, the iPhone 13 won the first single machine sales in the domestic market for the fourth consecutive month with sales of more than 2.3 million units.

The importance of the iPhone 13 series to Apple can also be seen in the financial report. According to Apple's financial report for the first fiscal quarter of fiscal 2022 (the fourth quarter of 2021), Apple's single-quarter revenue reached a record, reaching $123.945 billion, an increase of 11% year-on-year; net profit was $34.630 billion, an increase of 20% year-on-year, and it is estimated that it will net earn nearly 2.4 billion yuan per day. Among them, the sales revenue of the iPhone reached $71.628 billion, an increase of 9% year-on-year, accounting for 58% of the revenue, also setting a record. Revenue in Greater China reached $25.783 billion, up 21% year-on-year, up from 17% in the previous quarter to 21%, the third largest revenue market outside the United States and Europe, with the fastest growth.

At the press conference, Cook said that the iPhone 13 series has brought an unexpected number of new iPhone users, and he is looking forward to the release of affordable iPhones to bring more new users. Behind Cook's speech is Apple's ambition to achieve a breakthrough in the low-end market with the help of the iPhone SE3.

Cui Lili, a researcher at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, believes that the affordable iPhone is not high for some emerging regions, such as Southeast Asia, and may boost sales.

Since 2015, Apple's mobile phone shipments have shown a downward trend, according to public data, in 2019, global mobile phone shipments were 1.4861 million units, of which Apple mobile phones were 196.2 million units, with a market share of 13%, a year-on-year decrease of 4.9%. By 2021, Apple will sell about 236.2 million units, up 15.6% year-on-year from 2020.

Analysts previously predicted that the iPhone SE could reach 30 million units in the first year of sale, and said that the figure was conservative. The product will help Apple capture more market share from its Android rivals. The financial report shows that Apple's service business revenue reached $19.52 billion, an increase of 24% over the same period last year, which includes iCloud, Apple music and other service fees, the business is extremely profitable, driving the overall gross margin to improve. With the affordable iPhone, Apple seeks to grow in the performance of ecological services.

Senior communications engineer Yuan Bo said that Apple itself is a high-end mobile phone brand, iPhone SE series is mainly based on business strategy considerations, to meet those who have needs to try Apple users, is not currently Apple's business focus.

Who competes with Apple?

After Huawei's fall, Apple has benefited a lot. In 2021, Apple regained its imagination in the Chinese smartphone market, in the high-end market, Apple's market share increased, in the low-end market, Apple did not hide its covetousness.

At present, many manufacturers are looking for a way to seize the share, whether in product design, chip research and development and even in the system and ecology want to be more of a city. According to public data, Apple's market share in the 5000+ slot currently accounts for 75%, and the growth of this share may further trigger the anxiety of the entire industry.

In the past year, domestic mobile phone manufacturers have been trying to hit the impregnable walls of Apple's high-end market, but the popularity of the iPhone 13 series has still widened the gap. In the absence of Samsung and the fall of Huawei, in the Chinese smartphone market, products that break apple's wrist have not yet appeared.

Not long ago, the Samsung Galaxy S22 series was officially launched, which means that Samsung began to re-explore the Chinese market. In the global smartphone market last year, Samsung ranked first with 272 million units shipped worldwide, and now its actions in China will increase competition. Xiaomi and OV of the fist, the rise of glory, folding screen mobile phone has become the next two years of mobile phone brands are brewing a big move, DSCC's research report shows that it is expected that this year's folding screen mobile phone sales will be quite interesting.

It is foreseeable that This year's High-end Mobile Phone Market in China will be unpredictable. Yuan Bo said that domestic mobile phones in the face of Apple, in terms of technology accumulation and brand value, there are still deficiencies, it takes time and patience to make up, folding screen mobile phones may be an opportunity, but still depends on the recognition of the market.

Looking back at the development of the sinking market, China Mobile has said that it will ensure continuous coverage of 5G above the township level and effective coverage of important parks, hot spots and developed rural areas by the end of 2022. With the wave of 5G popularization, for Xiaomi, OV and Glory, domestic mobile phone manufacturers have actually begun to tell new stories, and the low-end market still has advantages.

Apple's release of the affordable iPhone has triggered the disappointment of many people's expectations, which is based on apple's failure to achieve the ultimate cost performance. Cui Lili believes that Apple's mobile phone should be an entry machine, mainly to cultivate user habits, borrowing IOS better experience to serve users, this user group is likely to be not so mainstream, such as the hardware demand is not so high teenagers, spare machine market, in the Chinese market Practicality is worth considering. If we can improve the places that Chinese users are more concerned about, and the price is cheap, users may gradually be attracted in the future.

In 2021, the top five manufacturers in China's shipment volume are vivo, OPPO, Apple, Xiaomi and Glory, but apple is still difficult to occupy the minds of low-end users, and the overall sales volume of domestic mobile phones accounts for more than 70%, firmly occupying most of the domestic mobile phone market.

From this point of view, Apple mobile phones want to be localized, and domestic mobile phones want to be Apple, which is not an easy task.