The Apple conference every autumn is known as the Spring Festival Gala in the world of science and technology, which can be said: the world's carnival... But this year, there seem to be some exceptions.
In previous years, a few hours before the start of the press conference, the group and the circle of friends had already been intensively discussed, some had to stay up late to watch the press conference, and there were all kinds of predictions.
No matter how big things are, they can't suppress everyone's expectations and discussions about Apple's conference, but this year seems to be much less, and people fall asleep after discussing Li Jiaqi.
So how many people stay up late to watch the Apple conference, we can't count, but from the circle of friends, you can intuitively feel that the popularity is indeed very low.
In previous years, on the morning of the Apple conference, Xiao Chai opened the circle of friends, and the content of the Apple conference could not be brushed in ten minutes, but this year, Xiao Chai's circle of friends of thousands of people, except for a few media people who shared their own articles about the Apple conference to share to the circle of friends, users spontaneously shared less than ten.
So why, the Spring Festival Gala in the science and technology world, the attraction is not the same as before?
After the press conference, the idea of Apple's "squeezing toothpaste" appeared endlessly. Some people even said: "This Apple conference is not pure pure squeeze toothpaste, and I can't squeeze out anything."
Behind these views is that the new iPhone released at this year's Apple conference, the whole series switched to Smart Island, all switched to USB-C port two outstanding highlights, the rest of the upgrades are tiny, such as the outer frame using titanium, the up and down mute key changed to a multi-function button, and even the most advanced A17 Bionic chip, only the Pro series is equipped.
Of course, all kinds of highlights are added together, and the inventory is completed in a few minutes, but there are a lot of slots, such as a 6999 yuan mobile phone with only a 60Hz screen, a 7999 yuan mobile phone without a periscope lens, and a starting storage of only 128GB...
It seems that the sense of anticipation of One More Thing is more like it disappeared from Apple's fall conference.
At the same time, on Weibo search, there is a topic on the hot search about Apple: "Apple's market value evaporated 340 billion overnight"!
According to the hot search topic: As of the close of the US stocks, Apple's stock price fell another 1.71%, and its market value disappeared by more than 47 billion US dollars (about 340 billion yuan). A week ago, Apple's market value lost $189.8 billion (about 1.4 trillion yuan) in just two trading days.
The continuous decline in stock prices is naturally a side response to its autumn conference, that is, whether it is users or the capital market, expectations for the iPhone are decreasing, and confidence is also lost.
Of course, not only users and capital markets, but also the iPhone itself seems to have lost confidence.
For example, another Weibo hot search about Apple is: "Apple's iPhone 14Pro series official website removed."
As we all know, every year Apple releases a new iPhone product, it will lower the price of the old model to make way for the new model, which is also a quarrelsome market behavior.
But this time, Apple not only lowered the price of old iPhone products, some netizens noticed that Apple's official website shows that the iPhone 14 Pro series has been removed.
In response, Apple's customer service responded that because of the new product just released, the iPhone 14 Pro series currently on sale has been removed, and if you want to buy, you can try to go to offline direct stores.
That is, at present, it is impossible to buy iPhone 14 Pro series products on Apple's official website, and the reason is very simple, that is, I am afraid that iPhone 14 Pro will squeeze the new market space.
Because of such a small upgrade as the new iPhone, for the average user, whether it is performance or appearance, the new and old models seem to have similar effects.
So does this mean that even the iPhone itself has lost confidence in its own updates?
Some people also said: "Last year's 14 was also just released, and this year's 15 may break faster!"
Especially for iPhone 14 series users, how much can the iPhone 15 series arouse the desire to change? In addition to the USB-C port, in the current excessive performance of mobile phones, the upgrade of chips and other may not be convincing enough.
The battery life, which has been criticized by users, is exactly the same as the previous generation.
Another user said: "It sounds like a little changed, but when you really use it, you will find that what iPhone15, iPhone14, iPhone13... There is no difference at all, they are a design set of solutions ready to be used until the sky is old, what squeeze toothpaste is just a kind statement, in fact, Apple this is called technology to lie flat."
"Being able to release such a boring product, I don't know that I thought Apple was sanctioned by the United States."
In fact, before the release of the iPhone 15 series, expectations from all walks of life were lowered, such as Musk ridiculed Apple's lack of innovation, he said on social media: "I don't know how my current iPhone is different from the previous version." The camera is 10% better?"
In addition, Luo Yonghao also said in the live broadcast before: With my understanding of my "subsidiary", I don't think there will be any difference between iPhone 15 and iPhone 14, except that the sequence (column) number has changed.
From the perspective of the industry, the smartphone industry has faced two biggest problems in recent years, one is that upstream innovation has slowed down, and products without new ideas have become the norm; Second, for the current mobile Internet scenarios and applications, smart phone products are facing the pain point of excess performance.
It is precisely because of this that it is manifested in the market, the user's desire to change the phone is low, and the overall shipment of the mobile phone market is weak.
In addition, data released by the US International Data Corporation (IDC) at the end of last month said that due to weak inflation and economic growth expectations worldwide, global smartphone shipments in 2023 are expected to decrease by 4.7% from 2022 to 1.15 billion units, a 10-year low.
The double clamp has made new changes in the smartphone industry, whether it is upstream Qualcomm or downstream terminal manufacturers, the pressure is still huge.
For a long time, the iPhone has been a relatively easy one with Apple's brand influence and related industrial capabilities.
But now the performance of new products, especially the official initiative to remove the iPhone 14PRO series from the official website, can be seen that Apple's pressure has never been seen before.
JPMorgan Chase emphasized in the report that the iPhone 15 has not been substantially upgraded and will not attract a large number of users to update, so it lowered Apple's target stock price from $235 to $230.
At the same time, investment banks such as UBS and Mizuho have sharply lowered their forecasts for Apple's new mobile phone shipments by more than 10 million units to a range of 70 million to 80 million.
Analysts at investment firm Oppenheimer also said that Apple's iPhone shipments in 2024 could decrease by 10 million units, which is equivalent to about 4.5% of Apple's shipments in 2022.
Of course, more importantly, the overall pressure of the smartphone market has forced most terminal manufacturers to constantly try to launch new products, such as entering large models, or betting on folding screen mobile phones, etc., although the results are very little, but at least in the attitude, it is much better than the iPhone almost "lying flat".
Although some people will say that Apple has always taken a conservative route to control risks and output, the so-called wealth is at risk, especially in the current smartphone industry, and the replacement can not arouse the interest of users, isn't it more dangerous?
Shiba Gouwski ©️
Author|Xiaochai No. 1
Editor|Tan Song