Text/Wang Junliang
Edit/Gale
Is Apple really not sending a charging head for environmental protection? According to expert analysis, since the iPhone no longer gives charging heads and headphones in October 2020, a total of $6.5 billion has been saved for Apple in more than a year, equivalent to about 41.3 billion yuan.
At the 2020 launch, Apple's vice president of marketing announced that they found that users had a lot of charging heads and headphones piled up in their homes. For environmental reasons, they decided to cancel the charging head that was given away. But the problem is that the cancellation of the charging head can be, you reduce the price, the price of the 149 yuan charging head is removed, no, still maintain the original price.
Nowadays, it seems that this practice of apples is really a bit ugly. What is environmental protection? If Apple is to recycle the old charging head in the hands of users, or to provide old for new, this is called environmental protection. Or like Xiaomi, give users two solutions, to the charging head can also be, not also, then this is also considered environmental protection. But as now, neither send a charging head, nor reduce the price, or even increase the price, that can only be said that Apple is to put a commercial behavior on an environmental protection hat.
For Apple, what are the benefits of canceling the charging head? The first is to save hardware costs, conservatively calculated by Apple's annual shipments of 150 million mobile phones, according to 100 yuan per charger, only the charger can help Apple save more than 10 billion yuan of costs every year. Second, because mobile phone packaging boxes become smaller and lighter, logistics costs and packaging costs are also reduced. Third, if the user can't get the original charging head, where will he go to buy it? Chinese enterprises, and Chinese third-party manufacturers want to produce accessories such as charging heads, they need to pass Apple's MFI certification and pay a patent certification fee to Apple, otherwise it will prompt that it is not suitable. You see, you have a good reputation for environmental protection, you can also save costs, and you can also collect patent fees, which can be described as killing three birds with one stone.
Of course, if you think that the reason apple cancels the charging head is the above three points, then you are too small to look at Apple. One of the most important and crucial reasons for the cancellation of charging heads is to pave the way for their next generation of products. This thing Apple has not been the first time to do it, about a few years ago, when everyone is still using the charger, the battery is removable, a piece of use, a charge, never low power, but this mobile phone factory can not make money Ah, so Apple was the first to stand up, cut off the removable battery, launched an integrated battery. In 2016, apple pioneered the cutting of the 3.5mm headphone jack in order to pave the way for its wireless Bluetooth headset airpods. As a result, the airpods on the line immediately sold out, in fact, the charging head here is the same routine, do not send the charging head is to sell wireless chargers. In the same year, Apple launched a wireless charger, MagSafe priced at 329 yuan, and the two-way price was as high as 1049 yuan.
Although Apple is not very authentic in this matter, consumers seem to have no way to take him, and last year, several law students sued Apple in court because of this matter, and this case has not yet come to fruition. Abroad, Brazil fined Apple $2 million under consumer protection laws, but for Apple, which has $100 billion in revenue and $20 billion in profits in a quarter, the $200W fine only takes 13 minutes to earn.
Although Apple is already a company with a market value of more than a trillion US dollars, it is still debatable whether it is reasonable to overdraft consumer trust in exchange for commercial returns, knowing that there is an old Chinese saying that water can carry a boat and can overturn a boat.