App Store "clone" sparked heated discussions about where the mobile phone ecological war is heading

Apple has played "Tai Chi" with regulation again. On January 10, the entry "Apple claims to have five app stores" rushed to the hot search on Weibo, in the face of the regulator's accusation that the App Store is monopolized, Apple said that it operates five App Stores, and the European Commission made a factual error.

Apple has been accused more than once because of the monopoly problem, in the industry's point of view, Apple has long understood the truth of selling software "less and more money", and used the service business to make up for the decline in iPhone shipments, but now domestic mobile phone end side models have emerged, or will dismantle the high wall built by Apple, Under the wave of AI, everyone is standing on the same starting line.

Is Apple "Reasonable"

Previously, Apple argued at a hearing before the European Court of Justice on Tuesday that the App Store is not a single entity. In its complaint to the European Court of Justice, the second highest court in Luxembourg, Apple said that the European Commission "made a material factual error in determining that the applicant's five App Stores served a single core platform." Apple said in its statement that it operates five App Stores on iPhones, iPads, Mac computers, Apple TV and Apple Watch, each of which distributes apps for specific operating systems and Apple devices.

Many people were surprised by this statement, some Weibo users said that Apple was quibbling, and some users jokingly said: By analogy, Apple actually has five browsers, but they are all called Safari if they are renamed.

In response to this matter, a reporter from Beijing Business Daily interviewed Zhu Huiliang, a lawyer from Yingke Law Firm, who believes that although the laws of various countries are different, generally speaking, even if there is a factual error in the evidence, it does not mean that the defendant is automatically awarded the winner, and if the error does not affect the substantive issues of the case, the court may correct the error or allow the testimony to be amended.

The lawyer believes that Apple's rebuttal is mainly to increase the evidence in its favor and affect the overall evaluation of the case, and the final result remains to be further observed.

Regardless of whether Apple's defense is strong or not, it has been accused more than once or twice around the world because of monopoly issues, and the US Department of Justice's antitrust investigation into Apple will also enter the final stage, and it is possible that a full-scale antitrust lawsuit will be filed in the first half of this year.

For example, Bluetooth tracking service provider Tile pointed out that their AirTag-like products have limitations on iPhone location services, and Beeper, which brought iMessage to Android phones, was blocked by Apple on security and privacy reasons less than a week after its launch.

In addition, in the investigation of the U.S. Department of Justice, there are also examples showing that when connected to the iPhone, third-party smartwatches do not have as many features as the Apple Watch, which points to the core of Apple's business model, that is, the closed product ecosystem.

Hold on to the ecology

In the view of industry experts, Apple's closedness is mainly driven by commercial interests, because in the context of declining hardware shipments, the service business has become an important support for Apple, and it is also the guarantee for the maintenance and growth of Apple's ecosystem.

In the fourth quarter of 2023, Apple's Mac business revenue was $7.614 billion, down 33.8% year-on-year, iPad business revenue was $6.443 billion, down 10.2% year-on-year, and wearables, home and accessories business revenue was $9.322 billion, down 3.4% year-on-year. The service segment revenue was $22.3 billion, up 16.3% year-over-year, setting a new historical record.

As a ballast stone, the turbulence of the iPhone line may be more of a headache for Apple, and JPMorgan Chase analysts recently said that in 2023, iPhone revenue will decline by 2% year-on-year, and there will be an 8% revenue decline in the first quarter.

The reason why this is so, in addition to the grappling with the old rival Samsung, the increase in sales of domestic mobile phone brands, especially the increase in high-end products, has eaten away at Apple's share.

According to a report by Counterpoint Research, Huawei's market share in the global high-end smartphone market (i.e., priced above $600) reached 5% in 2023, up from 3% in the same period in 2022, Samsung's market share also increased from 16% to 17% with the S23 and folding models, and Xiaomi's premiumization strategy has begun to bear fruit, rising from 1% to 2% in the high-end market share.

Industry experts say that selling software is "less and more money" than selling hardware, and Apple has long understood this truth. Liang Zhenpeng, a senior observer of the industrial economy, told the Beijing Business Daily reporter that for consumer electronics manufacturers, including Apple, the main target of selling hardware is the incremental market, and selling software is a two-pronged approach to the stock and incremental markets, after all, users may not change their mobile phones for several years, but they are easily attracted by interesting applications and games.

Experts pointed out that despite the poor sales of major products, including iPhone, Apple's 700 million users around the world are an important resource that cannot be ignored, which is also the underlying reason why Apple always wants to build a high wall.

AI redraws the starting line

In the future, it may not be the law that breaks Apple's monopoly, but the industry trend, compared to Apple, the obvious weakness of a number of domestic mobile phones, is that there is no solid ecosystem, experts believe that this is mainly because Apple monopolizes the iOS system, and domestic brands mostly use Android, so that the difference between them is not obvious, but with the wave of AI, domestic mobile phones have also begun to create their own exclusive ecology, in order to overtake in corners.

Take Honor as an example, in 2016, its first generation of Magic was releasedMagic Live intelligent system, in 2022, Magic OS 7.0 layout platform-level AI, and on January 10, Magic OS 8.0 was released with platform-level AI to create a new paradigm of human-computer interaction for intent recognition, for a long time, GloryAI's research and development expenses have accumulated to 10 billion yuan, and AI patent achievements have reached 2100.

Fang Fei, President of the Product Line of Honor Terminal Co., Ltd., told Beijing Business Daily: "From the beginning of its establishment, Honor has designed a map of products and services, built a people-centered cross-system, cross-device, and cross-application product and service ecosystem, integrated through Magic OS, and put forward the concept of service to find people. ”

Similarly, OPPO,Its recently released flagship mobile phone Find X7 is equipped with a 7 billion parameter large language model,Through device-cloud collaborative deployment, it further enhances AI capabilities,In terms of application,Find X7 has a new AIGC elimination function,CallFind X7 brings a large model voice summary,With stronger comprehension ability,Interpret the content of the user's call and generate a focused text summary。

Apple's pressure is self-evident, as of January this year, among the top five brands in the domestic mobile phone market, except for Apple, have released their own end-side large-scale model products.

Industry observer Hong Shibin believes that under the wave of AI, the mobile phone side model has almost become the standard, and various brands have been redrawn the starting line, and at the same time, the relationship between developers and mobile phone manufacturers has also been reversed. In the new round of brand ecological warfare, each company is still in the link of "horse racing".

Industry experts believe that with the emergence of more AI generative applications, there may be a more unified development interface in the industry, although Apple's chip level, user base, and brand appeal are sufficient, but as of now, there is no place for iOS on the device-side large model.

Beijing Business Daily reporter Tao Feng Wang Zhuli