Foxconn, the next city
As we all know, Apple is a banner that has always led the way.
As one of the pioneers of TWS headphones, Apple AirPods can be said to have single-handedly brought up the heat of this niche market.
Many domestic suppliers are working hard and trying to enter Apple's supply chain and are proud of it. Because Apple's supply chain is like quality assurance, it is a ticket to leapfrog to a world-class manufacturer.
According to industry information reports, Foxconn, the world's largest iPhone manufacturer, has just won a big order to manufacture AirPods for Apple, and Foxconn's industrial expansion is the next city, preparing to invest more than $20 billion in southern India to build factories and produce.
Because of Apple's distributed supply chain plan and Foxconn's expansion territory, Foxconn will continue to increase investment and layout in the world to meet customer needs, and reduce its dependence on a single production area to avoid the potential blow to enterprises caused by the escalation of Sino-US trade frictions.
The new plant in India will be completed in the second half of this year and is expected to start production as early as the end of 2024.
While Apple doesn't plan to update its AirPods line in 2023, Foxconn may already be ready for new models of AirPods 4, AirPods Pro 3 and even AirPods Max 2. At the same time, the factory will produce the latest iPhone models and can also assemble Apple's upcoming MR devices.
Apple's Yang Scheme
Any link in the Apple industry chain cannot escape the Yang Scheme! 苹果在其产业链上是绝对掌控的，只要是产业链上的一环，都逃不过苹果的阳谋，扶持老二打老大，利用老三制衡老二。
It is reported that the existing main suppliers of AirPods are Luxshare Precision, Goertek, etc., but as we all know, an overseas customer of Goertek suspended the assembly of its intelligent acoustic products in November last year, and the industry generally believes that it is AirPods Pro 2, which directly brought it a loss of up to 3.3 billion yuan. The company's stock price suffered a heavy tumbling and its performance declined.
Apple's order makes Foxconn the first time to become a supplier of AirPods, and highlights Apple's main suppliers to further globalize, because the current orders for AirPods are basically from Chinese suppliers, while Pegatron and Wistron have also gained more competition.
The giving and gaining of the fruit chain
The essence of low-end manufacturing is that the threshold for manufacturing is low, the profit is low, and the difficulty of being replaced is also low, and the fundamental drawback lies in this.
企业之间容易形成内卷，更容易被上游的苹果“杀价”，低端制造企业的命运从来都没有真正掌握在自己的手中。
Although due to the relatively low profit margin of manufacturing AirPods, Foxconn management has reportedly debated internally for months whether to assemble AirPods, but ultimately chose to go ahead with the deal to "strengthen the supply chain relationship with Apple."
The partnership between the fruit chain and the apple is not equivalent.
It is reported that the decision to set up a production base in India was requested by Apple, and Foxconn competed with Taiwanese foundry competitors such as Wistron, among which Pegatron won more orders from Apple.
Apple's hidden worries
As one of the pioneers, Apple has always been a trendsetter and has always occupied the position of industry dominance.
However, with the rising popularity of the TWS headset market, many domestic manufacturers have joined the research of TWS technology, coupled with the sinking strategy of other mobile phone manufacturers, the market share of AirPods with high prices has declined in recent years, and is constantly being eroded, Apple's market share is expected to shrink further.
Through industry chain news, it is known that the demand for Apple's AirPods series will decline significantly in 2023, the most important thing is that the market's demand for AirPods 3 will be significantly reduced.
Compared with the decline in demand in the Chinese market, the positive growth of Indian market demand, coupled with Apple's own "southbound strategy", may be to promote Apple's firm determination to enter India, even if the current environment and structure of the Indian industrial chain are not perfect.
同时，苹果AirPods自己身也正面临着三大问题：产品选项不多、产品价格太贵、产品的针对性太强。
In people's perception, Apple has always been synonymous with "expensive", and during the epidemic, more consumers will tend to choose mid-range or entry-level TWS; At the same time, AirPods have a lot of "Apple-only" design, making it basically out of the Android market.
epilogue
With the continuous development of the wireless headphone market, cost-effective is becoming a new trend, and Apple has to develop new products to cope with such market phenomena.
How to balance the brand value and actual experience of AirPods may become the key to whether Apple can achieve low-end volume.
In the new round of competition pattern, Foxconn, Luxshare, Goertek, who will become the biggest winner, everyone wait and see!
I will continue to keep track of the latest industry information and keep watching!