Three days after the market value was surpassed by Microsoft, Apple launched a New Year promotion: the price of the new iPhone 15 was reduced for the first time

Source of this article: Times Finance Author: Wang Ting

Source: Pexels

On January 12, Apple's market value was surpassed by Microsoft. Three days later, Apple launched a limited-time offer on its official website to welcome the Chinese New Year, starting a strategy of reducing prices to boost sales. Unlike previous year-end promotions, this category covers the latest iPhones, and all of them participate in the promotion.

According to Apple's official website in China, from January 18th to January 21st, users can save up to 800 yuan when they buy Apple's designated products, and Apple Store online and offline channels participate in promotions, including mobile phones, computers, tablets, headphones, etc.

The iPhone 15 series, which was released only 4 months ago (September 2023), is also participating in the promotion, with a 400 yuan discount on the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus, and a 500 yuan discount on the iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max.

On the evening of January 15th, the topic of "Apple's official website can refund the price difference" appeared on the hot search, and Times Finance consulted Apple's customer service as a customer, saying that he had recently purchased an iPhone 15 and asked whether he could refund the difference. Apple's customer service did not say that the price difference could be refunded directly, but only that the order number needed to be provided and processed by the order management department.

Times Finance noticed that at the end of last year, the beginning of the year, and before the Spring Festival (from December 30, 2022 to January 2, 2023), Apple's official website in China also launched a limited-time discount campaign, but the only mobile phone models participating in the price reduction at that time were iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini, excluding the iPhone14 series, which was released for more than 3 months at that time.

Apple's official website in China and channel providers seem to be "clearing inventory" at the same time, and the iPhone 15 series really can't be sold?

iPhone 15最高打9.3折

On January 15th, the topic of "Apple's official website rare big price reduction" appeared on Weibo hot search, with more than 300 million reads and more than 13,000 discussions.

Taking the 128GB version of the iPhone 15 as an example, Apple's official website is priced at 5999 yuan, with a discount of 5599 yuan, which is equivalent to a 9.3 discount, and the price of the 256GB iPhone 15 Pro Max is reduced by 500 yuan, which is equivalent to a 9.5 discount.

There are also price reductions for old iPhones, in this special event, iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus will be discounted by 300 yuan, and iPhone 13 will be reduced by 200 yuan, and the starting price will be as low as 4499 yuan.

From the point of view of promotion, Mac notebook products are discounted by up to 800 yuan, iPad is discounted by up to 400 yuan, and the price reduction amount of designated models of watches and Bluetooth headphones is 200 yuan and 100 yuan respectively.

From the perspective of the number of stocks, Apple's official website shows that the number of products that can participate in this promotion in Apple Store offline retail stores is limited, of which the number of iPhone products is 30,000, which is much higher than the number of other categories participating in the event, for example, only 750 Mac laptop products participate in this special event.

It can be seen that the main category of Apple's official website price reduction promotion is iPhone, and if it is specific to the model, iPhone 15 is the series with the highest profit amount in the iPhone category.

This is not the first time that Apple's official website has reduced prices, Times Finance has observed that there have been at least two since 2022, in addition to December 30, 2022 to January 2, 2023, there is also a summer special from July 29 to August 1, 2022, when the iPhone 13 was discounted by 600 yuan, but at that time, nearly a year has passed since the iPhone 13 was launched.

The effect of Apple's official profit concession strategy remains to be seen, because the current official price reduction is still far less than the subsidy of the e-commerce platform.

Taking the 128GB memory version of the iPhone 15 as an example, after superimposing tens of billions of subsidies on Pinduoduo and Taobao, the lowest price is as low as 4598 yuan, which is 1401 yuan lower than the starting price of 5999 yuan, and the lowest price is 4629 yuan after being supplemented by big brands on Kuaishou e-commerce.

The official launch price of the higher-configuration iPhone 15 Pro 256GB is 8999 yuan, and after tens of billions of subsidies on Pinduoduo and Taobao, the lowest price is as low as 7398 yuan, and the lowest price is 7297 yuan after being supplemented by big names on the Kuaishou platform.

The market capitalization has been surpassed by Microsoft

Times Finance compared Apple's official websites in different regions and found that this special event seems to be limited to Chinese mainland, Apple's official websites in Hong Kong and Taiwan have no push event notifications, and Apple's official websites in the United States, the United Kingdom and other places have no special activities.

As a new phone that has only been on the market for more than 4 months, why is the iPhone 15 series in a hurry to reduce prices?

According to foreign media reports, analysts at investment bank Jefferies recently said in a report that iPhone sales in China fell by 30% year-on-year in the first week of 2024, which further indicates that Chinese competitors such as Huawei are putting increasing competitive pressure on Apple.

At the end of August last year, Huawei's Mate series quietly returned, and before that, Apple dominated the high-end market in China.

According to a report by market research agency Counterpoint Research, in the third quarter of 2023, China's smartphone sales fell by 3% year-on-year, of which Apple's sales decreased by 10% year-on-year, and its market share decreased from 15.3% to 14.2%, and Huawei's sales increased by 37% year-on-year, and its market share also increased by 3.8 percentage points year-on-year.

Apple's data for the 2023 fiscal year (ending September 30, 2023) shows that Apple's total net sales in fiscal 2023 will be $383.285 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 3%, of which net sales in Greater China will decrease by 2% year-on-year.

On the other hand, Huawei is quite strong. According to Counterpoint Research, in the first four weeks of October 2023, smartphone sales in the Chinese market increased by an average of 11% year-on-year, with Huawei performing well, with sales increasing by more than 90% year-on-year.

Li Zegang, an analyst at Omdia, said in an interview with Times Finance that the current problem facing Apple is that the demand in major markets is not strong, and China is facing the impact of Huawei's high-end return, while the European and American markets are facing weak overall consumption.

In addition, Apple was recently downgraded by Harsh Kumar, an analyst at Barclays and Piper Sandler & Co, who said in a report that "the growth rate of unit sales has peaked." ”

The rating was downgraded, and Apple's stock price fell in tandem. On January 12, local time, Microsoft closed at $388.47 per share, with a total market capitalization of $2.89 trillion, and Apple closed at $185.91 per share, with a total market capitalization of $2.87 trillion. This means that Apple's market value has been surpassed by Microsoft, giving up the title of "the world's most valuable company".

It is worth mentioning that on February 2, local time, the MR headset Vision Pro, which Apple has high hopes for, will be officially sold in the United States, with a starting price of 3499 US dollars, or about 25,000 yuan. Will the Vision Pro help Apple regain its market capitalization?