Source of this article: Time Weekly Author: Yang Lingling
Young people do not like to change mobile phones, and Apple also has to cut prices and cut orders to save themselves.
Recently, the iPhone has been exposed to the news of cutting orders and reducing prices. According to Loop Capital analyst John Donovan, Apple will cut production orders for the iPhone, with the final total orders at 245 million to 250 million units. In terms of price, the Times Weekly reporter found that at present, on the domestic mainstream e-commerce platform, the price of iPhone 13 is significantly reduced, and the maximum is 1,000 yuan.
For a long time, chasing new young fruit fans has supported Apple's continued high iPhone sales, but this momentum has begun to change.
Xu Yun (pseudonym) is a 90 consequence fan, for last year's new best-selling model iPhone 13, she did not have much interest: "The mobile phone I use now, the king can play, take pictures is also clear, use it will not be card, there is no need to change ah." ”
Recently, "why young people are reluctant to change their mobile phones" rushed to Weibo hot search. According to market research firm Strategy Analytics, the average replacement cycle for Chinese users has been extended to 28 months. In Xu Yun's view, it is not that young people are unwilling to change their mobile phones, but that the mobile phones used now can meet daily needs.
"Young people change machines longer, on the one hand, manufacturers collectively to the high-end market, the average price rise inhibits demand; on the other hand, smart phones are in the stock market, the industrial chain tends to mature, the upstream device innovation space is reduced, and the scene integration innovation is not more landed, so that the overall innovation of the terminal enters the bottleneck period." On April 12, Ding Shao, the founder of Nail Technology, told the Times Weekly reporter.
On the same day, Zhao Zhenying, a researcher at the National Engineering Laboratory of E-commerce Transaction Technology, told the Times Weekly reporter: "In fact, it is not only young people who are unwilling to change mobile phones, but many friends around me have also lost interest in changing mobile phones. The development of mobile phones to this day has been separated from the concept of fashion products. ”
In the context of increasingly limited product innovation space, even Apple is facing a lot of challenges, and if you want to keep sales, price reduction may be a helpless move that you have to do.
The iPhone 13 is downgraded
Apple has long mastered the right to speak in the mobile phone market, and it is rare for the iPhone to reduce prices on a large scale.
Digital blogger Kang broke the news that the iPhone 13 will reduce the price of the whole line, and after the price of the goods is reduced, the lowest price of the iPhone 13 National Bank can be 4999 yuan.
On the e-commerce platform, Apple Jingdong's official self-operated store shows that after the price reduction, the iPhone 13 mini to the hand price is 4599 yuan, the iPhone 13 to the hand price is 5399 yuan; after the subsidy of Pinduoduo, the 128G iPhone 13 to hand price is only 4999 yuan, which is 1000 yuan lower than the retail price of the official website.
In the second-hand market, the market for Apple's iPhone is also declining. According to the "Mobile Phone Market Report for the First Quarter of 2022" released by the Transfer Group, the iPhone 13 series has reduced its price by 100 to 500 yuan in the second-hand market.
Among them, the iPhone 13 Pro is the most price-reduced model in the series, and the price of second-hand products in late March fell by about 470 yuan compared with the beginning of January, a decline of 6.45%.
Among other models, the 99 new 64G version of the iPhone 11 Pro Max dropped by as much as 20.17%, which is the most price-reduced mobile phone in the main iPhone model, and the 128G version of the iPhone 12 Pro Max dropped the price by 745 yuan, a decrease of 11.24%.
The iPhone SE3, which was released less than a month ago, has also begun to show its cost performance in the second-hand market. According to the data of the transfer platform "Free Market", the current resale price of the 64G version of the third-generation iPhone SE is generally reduced by 100 to 500 yuan compared with the new product price, and the maximum price reduction is about 1000 yuan; the price reduction of the 128G version is 200 to 1000 yuan, and the maximum price of the 256G version is 1700 yuan.
One after another, he was slashed
On the one hand, apple is also adjusting production on the manufacturing side and cutting orders.
According to the financial report data, in the first fiscal quarter of fiscal 2022 (the fourth quarter of 2021), the iPhone achieved sales revenue of $71.628 billion, accounting for 58% of the total revenue, becoming a well-deserved revenue pillar, which is also the highest single-quarter sales revenue of the iPhone in Apple's history.
The hot selling frenzy failed to continue this year. According to media reports, due to supply chain disruptions and the Russian-Ukrainian war, Apple has cut iPhone orders in 2022, and will cut again, and services are becoming a "key differentiator" in Apple's revenue.
Loop Capital analyst John Donovan said in the research note that the iPhone's annual production target fell by 9 million units to 254 million units, and he was also cautious about another cut that would occur "in the not too distant future".
John Donovan believes that Apple will cut production orders for the iPhone, and the final total order will be 245 million to 250 million units, and the order for the iPhone SE 3 has been cut by 20 million units. In addition, Tianfeng Securities analyst Guo Mingji also recently revised his forecast for low-end iPhone shipments from 25 million to 30 million units to 15 million to 20 million units.
There are media reports that Apple is reducing the number of iPhone 13 orders, and some models of the iPhone 13 series have begun to be discontinued, partly because there are still 5 months to go before the iPhone 14 is about to be released. In response to the order situation of the iPhone 13, the Times Weekly reporter asked to verify Foxconn, Apple's largest foundry, and the relevant person in charge replied: "Do not comment on any customers and products." ”
Not only iPhone products, Guo Mingxi also said on social platforms that due to the failure of product segmentation strategies, the demand for AirPods 3 is significantly lower than that of AirPods 2, and Apple has cut orders for AirPods 3 in the second and third quarters of this year by 30%.
Guo Mingxi believes that in order to avoid repeating the mistakes of AirPods 3, Apple's AirPods Pro2 may be launched after the AirPods Pro is discontinued in the second half of this year.
For the successive rumors of cutting orders, on April 12, apple foundry enterprise Lixun Precision related people replied to the Times Weekly reporter that the current factory production and operation is normally unfolding. On the same day, the staff of goertek securities department told the Times Weekly reporter: "Usually normal order fluctuations, increases and decreases will have, but there is no significant impact at present, and there is no evaluation of network rumors." ”
Squeeze toothpaste innovation
Under the background of Apple's price cuts and orders, the "machine change anxiety" that previously existed widely among mobile phone users is shifting from users to manufacturers.
According to data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, in February 2022, the domestic market mobile phone shipments were 14.864 million units, down 31.7% year-on-year, of which 5G mobile phones were 11.374 million units, down 24.5% year-on-year, accounting for 76.5% of mobile phone shipments in the same period.
At the same time, TrendForce Jibang Consulting research shows that due to sales in the fourth quarter of 2021 is not as expected, the smartphone market in the first quarter of this year, in addition to adjusting the accumulated finished product inventory, is also affected by seasonal sluggish demand, resulting in relatively weak production performance.
The lack of transformative innovation in mobile phones has become the consensus of the industry. When the iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPhone 6 and other models were launched, the grand situation of fruit fans gathering in Apple's offline stores to queue up for purchase is no longer there.
The iPhone series launched in recent years has been accused of being "squeezed toothpaste" due to lackluster innovation. Taking the newly released iPhone SE3 in the first half of the year as an example, some netizens joked that "when you take your iPhone 8 to an Apple retail store to change to a new iPhone SE, they take your money, but return the same phone to you" "Apple philosophy, the old is the new."
"People are accustomed to using the word 'inner volume' to describe the development of smart phones, which is actually a low-level repetition, or micro-innovation." Recently, an executive of a domestic mobile phone manufacturer admitted in an interview with the Times Weekly reporter that it is expected that the domestic mobile phone market will decline to a certain extent this year, in addition to external factors such as the epidemic, it is also because the mobile phone manufacturer has not come up with a reason for consumers to change the machine.
Major General Ding said that price cuts and the launch of low-priced iPhones have become the new normal for Apple, with the aim of driving sales and squeezing the market space of rivals. "The strategy of exchanging price for volume will form a large squeeze on domestic brands, and the high-end products of domestic brands may be greatly affected."
Zhao Zhenying believes that clearing inventory before the release of the new machine is Apple's usual way of playing, and Apple's price reduction may have some impact on other domestic brands, but it will not be too big. In recent years, due to changes in the general environment and the narrowing of the technology gap between brands, consumers have become less obsessed with Apple.