iPhone 15 can't sell? The gears of Apple's fate "decelerate"
The iPhone 15 showed signs of "bad smell" such as broken hair and shortened delivery time
Author/ IT Times reporter Sun Yan
Editors: Lin Fei, Sun Yan
iPhone 15 series sales in the Chinese market cold?
On the day of the debut on September 22, third-party channels reported the news of iPhone 15 "breaking", Shenzhen Huaqiangbei multiple third-party channels quoted, iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus prices are lower than the official website price, but the first premium of the iPhone 15 Pro series remains between 500 yuan and 1200 yuan.
Compared with the iPhone 14 first released a year ago, the premium of the iPhone 15 has indeed decreased, last year the iPhone 14 had to increase the price of 800 yuan to 1500 yuan, purple iPhone 14 Pro Max was even more than 2000 yuan to buy spot from third-party channels.
Less than a month after its launch, the global average delivery time of the iPhone 15 series has dropped to 15 days, and the demand for new machines continues to weaken. According to financial firm J.P. Morgan's product inventory tracker, the delivery time of the iPhone 15 series has continued to decrease for two consecutive weeks, and the current global average delivery time of the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus is 15 days respectively, compared with 17 days in the third week. The iPhone 15 Pro remained unchanged for 29 days, while the iPhone 15 Pro Max dropped from 46 days to 35 days.
On October 8, third-party channels reported that the blue version of the iPhone 15 Pro series was 1500 yuan cheaper than the official website. Judging from the supply of major Apple stores in Shanghai on October 9, the blue version is indeed the least popular, and the blue version of the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max is in stock.
In fact, the iPhone 14 has also suffered a break in the first launch, and the scalpers who once relied on selling iPhones "daily income of tens of thousands" can only sit on the side of the road with unopened iPhone 14 series mobile phones stacked in front of them. After the iPhone 6 created the "myth" of the first premium of nearly 10,000 yuan, the gears of Apple's fate began to "slow down".
The scalper cut by the iPhone 14 has long done a good job of risk control, no longer accept the low-configuration version when the iPhone 15 is first released, turn to the Pro series, and even more scalpers complain that "the market is not as good as Huawei Mate 60", and change direction to find Huawei's business opportunities.
More noteworthy than third-party channels and scalpers, the iPhone's own sales have declined. Apple's earnings report shows that iPhone revenue fell by 8% and 1% in the fourth quarter of 2022 and the second quarter of 2023, respectively. According to Business Insider's (BI) third round of U.S. market iPhone survey, iPhone 15 sales may stagnate next year as American Apple customers continue to use old phones without upgrading to the new iPhone 15.
A number of investment banks predict that iPhone 15 shipments will be between 70 million and 80 million units, lower than the iPhone 14's 90 million units. At the same time, just like last year, analysts have predicted that the iPhone 15 series of standard versions will be sold at a price reduction on Double 11.
According to IDC data, global smartphone shipments are expected to decrease by 4.7% year-on-year to 1.15 billion units in 2023, a decade low.
The domestic mobile phone market is also sluggish, with data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology showing that domestic mobile phone market shipments in July fell 6.8% year-on-year. In January ~ July 2023, domestic brand mobile phone shipments totaled 121 million units, down 9.1% year-on-year, accounting for 81.9% of mobile phone shipments in the same period.
On Nanjing East Road in Shanghai, where Apple, Huawei and Samsung flagship stores are located at the same time, the gears of fate began to turn.
The strong return of Huawei Mate 60 to the high-end mobile phone market has put great pressure on Apple. In the second quarter of this year, Huawei ranked second in the high-end mobile phone market, and global research agency IDC announced that in the first half of 2023, China's high-end mobile phone market share ranked first, Apple ranked first with 67.0%, and Huawei ranked second, but the market share was only 15.6%. At that time, the Huawei Mate 60 was not yet on the market.
Recently, the "IT Times" got news from the industry chain that the main model of Huawei Mate 60, the Pro series, has raised shipments to 20 million units. Of course, the key to the speed of this digital realization depends on the production capacity of the Huawei Mate 60.
It is foreseeable that in 2024, the ranking of the domestic mobile phone market will be rewritten, and the biggest suspense is how long Apple can keep the first position in the domestic high-end mobile phone market.
The change also began in the second quarter of 2023, when China overtook the United States for the first time to become the largest single-country market for the iPhone. The importance of the Chinese market to Apple is self-evident, although it has accelerated its deployment in the Indian market this year, whether it is on the retail side or the production side.
Back on Nanjing East Road in Shanghai, located opposite Apple is Samsung.
Apple should reflect that what it should guard against most is not its rivals, but its own risks. After the release of the iPhone 15, Apple was "backstabbed" by the problem of iPhone 12 radiation exceeding the standard. The lack of innovation of the iPhone 15 did not accelerate the gears of Apple's fate, and only weakened Apple's brand inertia, but the quality problems that are still hiding in the shadows often make the gears "stall" in an instant.
Typesetting / Ji Jiaying
Photo / IT Times Apple
Source: IT Times public account vittimes
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