【Text/Observer Network Lv Dong Editor/Zhang Guangkai】
In the past few days, the launch of Huawei's Mate 60 series has continued to attract attention. Yesterday (September 6), an industry source said that Huawei has notified all sales channels that the Mate60 series is in sufficient supply and is not allowed to increase prices.
People close to Huawei confirmed the news to the Observer Network.
Later, when visiting a Huawei offline store in Shanghai, the salesperson told the observer that the stock of the Mate60 series was indeed more adequate than in previous years, and it was impossible to increase the price of sales.
Inside this store, the Mate60 mobile phone booth gathered significantly more consumers. However, when asked if they could buy the Mate60 on-site, staff said that only reservations are accepted and that it is expected to arrive in one to two weeks.
On the other hand, the Apple iPhone 15 series that has been finalized will debut next week. However, due to the impact of the early sale of Mate60, market institutions generally began to lower the shipment expectations of the iPhone 15 series, and the US media more bluntly said that Apple encountered a "strong enemy" in China.
In fact, mainstream mobile phone brands are inevitably affected by the launch of Mate60, and even the supply chain is inevitably shaken. Market analysts predict that Huawei's demand for Qualcomm chips will plummet next year, and TSMC may also lose a lot of advanced process launches.
Yesterday, U.S. star technology stocks fell, with Apple shares tumbling 3.6%, ranking first among the Dow Jones index constituents; Qualcomm and TSMC fell by around 2%. Before today's market, these companies continued to decline, Apple fell more than 2%, Qualcomm, TSMC fell 1%.
Huawei's offline store Mate60 series booth Source: Observer Network
Can the iPhone still arouse "curiosity"?
Huawei's Mate 60 series has been on sale for more than a week, and there is still no exact news on whether to hold a press conference, and Apple has set the release time of this year's new iPhone on September 13, with the banner "curiosity on the head".
Although the theme is "curiosity", before each release, the configuration and parameters of the new iPhone have basically been picked up, and consumers have gradually lost their curiosity, and this time is no exception.
Not surprisingly, Apple's new machine this year will be named the iPhone 15 series. According to market news, the basic iPhone 15 will be equipped with the previous generation A16 processor, and the Pro series will use the latest TSMC 3nm process A17, which is said to be expected to increase performance by 50%, reduce power consumption by up to 35%, and extend battery life by 15%.
In terms of photography, the iPhone 15 series may usher in a more obvious upgrade in recent years. Analyst Guo Mingxi predicts that the Pro version of the iPhone 15 will be equipped with a periscope telephoto lens for the first time, and the optical zoom capability of this lens can reach 5 to 6 times, which is a significant improvement compared with the previous iPhone 14 Pro Max's 3x optical zoom.
AppleInsider broke the news about the iPhone 15 series model
But it also highlights that Apple is far less aggressive than its rivals in adopting innovative technology. As early as March 2019, Huawei P30 series used an 8 million pixel 5x periscope telephoto lens with up to 50x digital zoom, which caused a sensation in the industry. This time, Apple, as a "latecomer", has attracted much attention on its ability to take telephoto photos.
Other obvious changes include multiple revelations that Apple will abandon the proprietary Lightning interface and use the USB Type-C interface on the iPhone 15 series, and the transmission speed will increase; In addition, the display bezel of the Pro version will be further narrowed, and it may be replaced by a stainless steel frame that is prone to fingerprints to a stronger, lighter and more advanced metal - titanium.
However, due to the use of titanium body and periscope telephoto lens, the iPhone 15 Pro series, which has seen a sharp increase in cost, may increase significantly, between $100-200, while the price of the regular version may be the same as the previous generation iPhone 14.
Apple welcomes "fierce rivals" again
In the past three years, due to Huawei's continuous US sanctions, the market share of mobile phones has shrunk significantly, and Apple has also taken the opportunity to expand its territory. According to third-party data, Apple's domestic market share reached 15.3% in the second quarter of this year, compared with only 8.3% in the same period three years ago. The Chinese market also surpassed the United States for the first time in the second quarter of this year, becoming the single market with the largest iPhone shipments.
In the high-end market, after Huawei was sanctioned, Apple was even more in the dust. According to CINNO Research data, in the first half of 2023, domestic high-end smartphone sales of more than 5,000 yuan accounted for 23%, of which Apple accounted for 75%. Dating back to 2020, when the United States upgraded its restrictions on Huawei and Huawei chips were officially "cut off", this figure was 11%, of which Apple accounted for only 48%.
However, this market pattern may change drastically with the launch of the Mate60 series. The Wall Street Journal wrote on September 6 that after Huawei was sanctioned by the United States, the mobile phone business shrank sharply, and Apple profited from it. However, Huawei has recently upgraded its technology and released a Mate60 series mobile phone equipped with self-developed chips, which may become a "fierce rival" of Apple in the Chinese market.
Analyst Guo Mingxi recently said that the demand for Mate60 Pro has been strong since its sale, and the shipment plan in the second half of 2023 has increased by about 20% to 550-6 million units. According to this market trend, the cumulative shipment of the Mate60 Pro 12 months after its release is expected to reach at least 12 million units. Benefiting from this, Huawei's mobile phone shipments will increase by about 65% annually to 38 million units in 2023.
Mate60 Pro Yakawa Qing version Source: Observer.com
It remains to be seen whether this estimate is accurate.
Before the Mate60 series, Huawei's Mate series shipped the best Mate30 series (Kirin 990 5G) released in 2019, when the new product shipped more than 7 million units within 60 days of launch, a year-on-year increase of 75%, with a total sales of about 20 million units. TechInsights expects shipments of the Mate 60 series to reach 5 million to 6 million units in its lifetime (about two years), significantly less than Kuo predicted.
But in any case, the Mate60 series with differentiated advantages will bring Apple a lot of challenges. TrendForce Consulting estimates that the full series of iPhone15 new machines will produce about 80 million units. However, the poor market boom, coupled with Huawei's strong return, affected Apple's overall sales, and it is estimated that the total annual production of iPhones is about 2.2-225 million units, a year-on-year decrease of about 5%.
Just yesterday (September 6), foreign media revealed that China has asked officials of central government agencies not to use Apple mobile phones or other foreign brand equipment in their offices. This report was seen as an important reason for Apple's stock price to fall sharply that day.
Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief of the Global Times, said in a Weibo post that he did not know whether the report was true, "If it is true, it is indeed to blame that the United States has taken the lead in using the ban on Chinese electronics officials, which has contributed to the spiral of national security vigilance between China and the United States, and this vigilance is directed at each other first." This will obviously take a toll on the commercial interests of both countries. ”
AppleInsider broke the news about the iPhone 15 series model
TSMC, Qualcomm, etc. will be affected
Once Huawei Mate60 was launched, many of the market's concerns focused on the impact on the whole machine manufacturer, which is understandable.
After all, in the second quarter of this year, Huawei mobile phones with only 4G increased by 76.1% year-on-year, and squeezed into the top five in China with a market share of 13.0%, leaving only 0.1 percentage points behind Xiaomi and only 4.7 percentage points from the first place OPPO.
As long as the supply is sufficient, the Mate60 series is bound to quickly reshape the market landscape. Bank of America Securities analyst Mohan said that if Huawei has the ability to achieve the mass production and supply of Kirin 9000S chips, Mate series mobile phones are an opportunity for Huawei to regain market share.
From the perspective of the industrial chain, the reappearance of Kirin chips will also bring great shock.
First and foremost is Qualcomm.
Analyst Guo Mingxi posted on social media on September 6 that Huawei will purchase 23-25 million and 40-42 million mobile phone SoCs from Qualcomm in 2022 and 2023, respectively, and as Huawei re-uses Kirin chips, it is expected that Huawei's demand for Qualcomm chips will plummet after 2024. In addition, Qualcomm also faces the risk of increasing Huawei's market share, leading to a decline in shipments of mobile phones of other brands.
He estimates that Qualcomm's SoC shipments to Chinese mobile phone brands in 2024 will be reduced by at least 50-60 million compared with 2023 due to Huawei's re-adoption of Kirin processors, and are expected to continue to decrease year by year. In order to maintain its market share in the Chinese market, Qualcomm may start a price war as soon as the fourth quarter of this year.
Screenshot of Guo Mingxi's social media
As the industry leader, Taiwan's mobile phone processing manufacturer MediaTek faces a similar situation to Qualcomm.
However, due to Huawei's inability to purchase processors from MediaTek due to sanctions, MediaTek was mainly affected by the decline in the market share of mainland customers. Just on September 7, MediaTek rarely announced that chips produced using TSMC's 3nm process have been successfully tape-out and are expected to be mass-produced in 2024. In the eyes of market participants, the official announcement before mass production shows the competitive pressure of MediaTek itself.
For TSMC, Huawei was once the second-largest customer after Apple. The inability to OEM for Huawei chips is itself a huge loss for TSMC. Now that Kirin chips are produced in the mainland, TSMC may permanently lose Huawei orders.
Not only that, some people in the chip industry on the island analyzed that in the absence of external interference, if Huawei can sell 60 million Mate60 series mobile phones next year, it means that MediaTek + Qualcomm will reduce shipments of 60 million 5G mobile phone chips. After conversion, TSMC will also indirectly reduce 100,000 advanced process chips, which does not include supporting Wi-Fi and power management reduced chips.
CINNO Research analyst Liu Yushi told the observer network that Huawei's "return" to a certain extent also reflects the efforts of the domestic supply chain to increase the rate of self-production in recent years, and some phased results have been achieved in getting rid of dependence on the United States. In the short term, it may boost the Huawei brand, and continue to be firmly optimistic about the localization trend of the smartphone industry chain.