Publicize the "crash" Huawei and Apple battle

On August 29, Huawei terminal low-key official announced that the Mate 60 series officially went on sale, and launched the "HUAWEI Mate 60 Pro Pioneer Program" on the Huawei Mall, and said that since the release of Huawei Mate series mobile phones in 2013, they have been loved by consumers around the world, and the cumulative shipment has reached 100 million units.

On August 30, Apple announced that the autumn conference will be held on September 12, local time, when the iPhone 15 series of new products will be released. Within two days, Huawei and Apple made big moves in the release of new products, and the unexpected "crash" on the announcement triggered market reverie.

The Mate 60 was not released first

As Huawei's two flagship mobile phone series, P and Mate have a relatively fixed release rhythm. Under normal circumstances, Huawei releases the P series around March and the Mate series around September every year.

Although the sale of Huawei Mate 60 series is quite sudden, it still sets off a wave of attention, Huawei has not officially announced whether the new product is equipped with 5G communication, but from the existing disassembly and actual measurement on the Internet, the product has 5G. How Apple will innovate the iPhone 15 series is still unclear, but it is basically certain that the iPhone 15 Pro series will continue to be high-end.

At present, from the revelation of many disassembly users, Mate 60 Pro uses Huawei HiSilicon's "Kirin 9000s" chip, and the CN code on the chip means that its foundry comes from China, and the market speculates that the chip may be manufactured by SMIC, because of this, SMIC's stock price rose nearly 7% intraday on August 30.

Although Huawei's 5G chip is belated, but from the actual measurement effect, its performance is not lagging behind the existing 5G models, a number of evaluation videos show that Mate 60 Pro does not show 4G or 5G logo after inserting the card, but the mobile phone runs at a speed of 500Mbps, comparable to the iPhone 14 Pro.

Industry views pointed out that in the three years since Huawei lost 5G, the mobile phone business has suffered setbacks, and the sales volume and market share have declined significantly, which has greatly weakened its ability to compete for the high-end market, and when Huawei independently masters 5G, its mobile phone business may recover again.

Huawei's operating results in the first half of 2023 show that in the first half of the year, Huawei achieved sales revenue of 310.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.1%, and a net profit margin of 15%. Among them, the most concerned thing in the market is that Huawei's mobile phone business has shown significant signs of recovery, and the revenue of terminal business in the first half of the year increased by 2.17% year-on-year, successfully reversing the previous downward trend.

Not long ago, Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei Terminal BG, said at the 2023 Huawei Developer Conference that Huawei mobile phones are on the road to return. With the release of the P60 series, Huawei's share of high-end smartphones in China returned to the top two, and the mobile phone market share grew rapidly.

According to the Chinese mobile phone market data released by IDC, in the second quarter of this year, Huawei's mobile phone shipments increased by 76.1% year-on-year, ranking fifth with Xiaomi with a share of 13%, returning to the top five from the "Others" column.

In the opinion of experts, the recovery of Huawei mobile phones is expected. Chen Jia, an independent international strategy researcher, said that looking at Huawei's product strategy and market performance, it can be seen that its strategic focus is always on the high-end market, and continuous R&D and innovation are its core competitiveness and long-term planning.

In addition, Huawei's mastery of the industrial chain has also become its magic weapon, whether it is Kirin chip or Hongmeng system, is its strength, compared with the foundry model, Huawei's more independent industrial layout has also become the key to breaking through the "stuck neck" problem.

In response to the mobile phone business problem, the reporter interviewed the relevant person in charge of Huawei, but did not receive a reply as of press time.

iPhone 15 is set

On the day after the Mate 60 series went on sale, Apple also confirmed the release date of the new iPhone 15. Previously, due to supply chain fluctuations, insufficient production capacity and other factors, the iPhone 15 series appeared to be "ill-fated", and it also made the market pay more attention.

Up to now, from a number of digital bloggers broke the news, iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max/Ultra will get additional feature updates that the standard iPhone 15 series does not have, and are expected to undergo a redesign with fewer changes, narrower bezels, slightly changed corner curves, and the iPhone 15 Pro series will use a titanium alloy frame instead of the stainless steel frame of recent generations, which is expected to make the fuselage lighter and stronger.

In addition, Apple's first 3-nanometer chip A17 will appear in the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max/Ultra, and there are rumors that the iPhone's ancestral silent switch will become an operation button. The action buttons can be customized, just like the action buttons on the Apple Watch Ultra. What's more, the iPhone 15 will become more "universal", due to the requirements of the European Union's antitrust law, the iPhone 15 will be equipped with a USB-C interface instead of a Lightning interface.

On the whole, Apple's upgrade of the iPhone 15 series this year is full of sincerity. Well-known analyst Guo Mingqi predicts that in 2023 and 2024, the iPhone will be the world's largest smartphone brand. In 2023, iPhone shipments will reach 220 million to 225 million units, surpassing Samsung's 220 million units and becoming the world's largest smartphone brand. At the same time, Apple set the target for iPhone shipments in 2024 at 250 million units, a year-on-year increase of 5%-10%, continuing to surpass Samsung.

In terms of price, the gap between the iPhone 15 standard version and the Pro will widen again, the market predicts that the price of the standard version will remain unchanged, the iPhone 15 will start at 5999 yuan, and the Pro version will rise by 1000 yuan, the starting price is 8999 yuan, but the flash space will be upgraded to 256GB to start.

High-end market: a change in the landscape

Huawei and Apple's new products meet narrowly, and the competition in the high-end machine market has attracted much attention.

Three years ago, although Huawei was difficult to compete with Apple in the world market, but in the Chinese market, Huawei and Apple have been double-peaked, and even in the field of high-end machines, Huawei once surpassed Apple.

According to IDC China statistics, in the first half of 2020, among China's smart models of more than $600, Huawei's market share was 44.1%, Apple's was 44%, slightly 0.1 percentage points lower than Huawei, and other brands were far from these two, of which Xiaomi accounted for about 4% of the market share, and OPPO, vivo, and Samsung all had a market share of less than 3%.

Industry observer Hong Shibin believes that in the three years of Huawei's mobile phone struggle, Apple in the Chinese market can be described as unique, to some extent, any single mobile phone brand in the high-end field is difficult to equal Apple, Apple is the entire Android market, now Huawei is returning strongly, or will rewrite the mobile phone market pattern again.

More importantly, while Apple is firmly in the high-end field, it is also "grabbing" to the parity market, which can be clearly seen when it released the iPhone 14 series, Apple's entry-level iPhone 14 starts at 5999 yuan, while the iPhone 14 Pro price is 7999 yuan, and the iPhone 14 Pro Max price is higher, 8999 yuan. Using the standard version to seize the parity market and using the Pro version to obtain more added value is Apple's "wishful thinking".

Liang Zhenpeng, a senior industrial economic observer, pointed out that in the future high-end market, Huawei and Apple wrestle, the ultimate benefit is the entire industry, after all, the current mobile phone shipments continue to shrink, consumers' willingness to replace the phone continues to decline, the market needs new stimulus, which only the head brand can provide.

From the data point of view, in the second quarter of 2023, China's smartphone market shipped about 65.7 million units, down 2.1% year-on-year; Shipments in the first half of the year were approximately 130 million units, down 7.4% y/y. The decline spread to the upstream chip field, affected by the downturn in the smartphone market, Qualcomm's mobile phone chip business declined; At the same time, mobile chip manufacturers are facing the problem of low-end "clearing inventory", and there is a sign of setting off a new round of price wars. Sony predicts that the mobile phone market will not begin to recover until 2024 at the earliest, and now the market needs a "shot in the arm".

Experts believe that in the long run, the competition between head brands is outside of mobile phones, for example, whether it is Apple or Huawei, they are "betting" on AI large models, compared with shipments in a period of time, how to expand their own ecology, occupy the upstream of the technology chain, empower more fields, is the focus of large enterprises.

(Reporter Tao Feng, Wang Zhuli)