The iPhone fell below the floor price, and Apple was really anxious
On January 15th, "Apple's official website rare big price cut" on Weibo hot search, taking advantage of the Spring Festival promotion, Apple's official website for iPhones, Mac laptops, iPad tablets, AirPods headphones and other products opened a round of official price reductions, ranging from 50 yuan to 800 yuan.
▲ (Source/Weibo)
Although this drop is not the largest in history, it can be ranked first in the hot search, because the official website represents Apple's attitude as Apple's official direct sales channel. In the past, the official website has always been the most "firm" price channel, and it has rarely reduced prices except for new product iterations over the years, and has always been regarded as Apple's price anchor. The official website price "breaks" means that the channel price has fallen further.
Just after the price adjustment on Apple's official website, the "city boundary" checked the major e-commerce platforms and found that as of press time, the starting price of the iPhone15 standard version has dropped to 4598 yuan, iPhone15 Plus has dropped to 5448 yuan, iPhone 15 Pro has dropped to 6498 yuan, and iPhone 15 Pro Max has dropped to 8228 yuan.
▲ (Picture/Taobao, Pinduoduo screenshot)
In offline channels, "City Boundary" recently visited and found that some dealers have launched a discount of 1,600 yuan on the official website of iPhone15 Pro Max, and an additional subsidy of up to 600 yuan can be provided for trade-in.
As early as last year's Double 11, Apple's "big price cut" trend has been very clear, when the major e-commerce platform iPhone15 series of the highest price reduction exceeded 2000 yuan, is the earliest batch of new iPhone price reductions in recent years.
Zhu Jiatao, a senior analyst at Canalys, told "City Boundary" that compared with previous years, Apple's promotions in 2023 will indeed be much more frequent, and the price control of channels will also be relaxed, so there have been many "price breaking" phenomena that break through historical low prices in emerging channels such as Pinduoduo and Douyin.
But not long ago, according to authoritative data in the industry, as of December 10, 2023, Apple won the first place in China's smartphone sales last year, with shipments of 44.505 million units.
Among the major mobile phone manufacturers, Apple mobile phones have always been known for being expensive, with an average selling price much higher than other manufacturers, and last year's sales also topped China's first, why are they in a hurry to reduce prices in recent times?
01. The price of iPhone can't hold up?
Apple's price cut came very suddenly. According to the "City Boundary", in addition to the official website, the scope of the price reduction activities also includes Apple's official stores, Apple Stores and offline authorized stores.
The store clerk of the Apple Store in Wangfujing, Beijing, told the "City Boundary" that the event will start on January 18, and you can buy and get the machine first on January 15, and then come to the store after the 18th event to make a transaction to enjoy the discount. "There is no limit to the number of items for this event, but there may not be stock in the store on the day. ”
▲(图/Apple Store王府井店)
In terms of authorized stores, a dealer of an authorized store told "City Boundary" that a variety of products in the store can already enjoy New Year price discounts, and if they come on the 18th, they will also give small gifts, "Buy Apple watch S9 can give a strap." "But the dealer's promotion does not represent the official.
Regarding Apple's price cut, Canalys senior analyst Zhu Jiatao told "City Boundary" that it is largely to maintain sales in the Chinese market, and the current market actually has certain pressure on Apple's mobile phone sales. From the perspective of the domestic market, in addition to Huawei, the high-end machines of other Android manufacturers are continuing to make efforts, and from the perspective of the global market, in the second half of 2023, Apple's decline in North America and Europe will be more obvious, and the situation in the domestic market will be more relaxed, so now Apple also attaches more importance to the Chinese market.
Just a few days ago, the 2024 domestic new phone activation data released by industry authorities showed that although Apple still won the first place in China's mobile phone market share, with 15.0116 million activations, it fell by 10% year-on-year. The second-place Xiaomi and the third-place Huawei increased their activations by 38.4% and 79.3%, respectively.
▲(Data source/BCI)
In addition, according to more detailed data from the agency, Apple's new device activation in December last year was only 0.18% higher than Xiaomi's, and after entering January, with the release of another wave of Android high-end flagship models, Apple's difficulty in maintaining the first place in sales has further increased.
In addition, a recent report by investment bank Jefferies also showed that Apple's sales in the Chinese mobile phone market fell by 30% year-on-year in the first week of 2024 due to fierce competition from local Chinese brands.
In the face of sales pressure, in the case of leading brand power and price power, Apple's price reduction can play an obvious role in driving shipments. Zhu Jiatao said in the analysis of the "city boundary" that in the first half of last year, Apple basically had no rivals in the domestic market, and Huawei's return was almost in the fourth quarter.
Just two days before Apple's price cut, a dramatic event was that on January 13, Huawei's first flagship store in Beijing opened on the first floor of Wangfujing Yintai 88, which covers an area of more than 1,200 square meters.
02. "Besieged" by domestic manufacturers
In the fourth quarter of 2023, China's mobile phone market, which has been silent for a long time, ushered in a round of major changes.
At the end of August last year, Huawei Mate60 series suddenly went on sale, announcing the strong return of the once world's top three mobile phone giants, with satellite communications, domestic chips and other differentiated selling points, in the following months, Huawei Mate60 series, Huawei Mate X5 folding screen series is hard to find.
Today, the Huawei Mate60 series, which has been on the shelves for nearly half a year, is still limited by the lack of full supply of production capacity, and the impact of Huawei's return on Apple has not really been shown.
In Huawei's Wangfujing flagship store, which has just opened, the Mate60 series is still very out of stock. According to the clerk of the store on January 15, the store clerk introduced to the "City Boundary" that the Mate60 standard version is still out of stock, the Mate60 Pro is only available in the 1TB version, and the folding screen Mate X5 is only available in the collector's version, which is 1000 yuan more expensive than the regular version.
Some industry insiders told the "City Boundary" that the feedback from the upstream supply chain shows that Huawei still has capacity bottlenecks in some materials, and this year, with the ramp-up of Huawei's production capacity, it is hoped that the entire domestic mobile phone market will return to growth.
"If Huawei can sell openly, the impact on Apple will be even greater. An industry insider told "City Boundary".
▲ (The official flagship store of Huawei and Apple across the street from Wangfujing.) Source/City Boundary Shooting)
At the same time, domestic manufacturers such as Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo and Honor are also accelerating their efforts in the field of high-end phones, facing Apple head-on with a more compact product rhythm.
In the fourth quarter of 2023, Xiaomi and vivo's high-end flagships Xiaomi 14 series and vivo X100 series will be released in October and November, respectively. After entering 2024, the OPPO Find X7 series and the Honor Magic 6 series were also launched to the market in early January. It can be seen that major domestic manufacturers are comprehensively "benchmarking Apple".
However, while domestic manufacturers are menacing, Apple's product power is still very strong, and Android manufacturers are more likely to regard Apple as a "benchmark" and "challenge" object, and there is still a gap between the brand power and price power of the two sides. With Apple's strong ecosystem of iOS system, leading performance of A-series chips, and long-term accumulation of video capabilities, the latest iPhone is still a first-class product in terms of comprehensive experience.
On the one hand, there is still a big gap between the mainstream price of the Android brand and Apple, mostly around four or five thousand yuan, and a large part of Apple's price segment has been raised to more than eight thousand yuan. At present, Android manufacturers and Apple are competing for the market, mainly relying on folding screens with higher prices.
The focus of Android manufacturers is mainly to complement the capabilities at the system level and build differentiated selling points around the shortcomings of the iPhone, such as signal and charging.
In recent years, almost all domestic manufacturers have been focusing on the bottom layer of the system, and Huawei's self-developed HarmonyOS 4.0 has been rolled out on a large scale last year, and HarmonyOS native applications have also been accelerated on the agenda recently. In addition, Xiaomi also officially launched its self-developed operating system surging OS in the fourth quarter of last year, and OPPO, vivo and Honor also took the optimization of algorithm computing power at the bottom of the system as an important force point.
In terms of differentiated selling points, Huawei and Honor's high-end phones have been equipped with satellite communication functions, Huawei's many high-end models can make satellite calls, Honor has just released Magic 6Pro, which supports real-time voice and two-way satellite communication, Xiaomi's upcoming Xiaomi 14 Ultra is also equipped with satellite-related functions.
In addition, the special optimization of antennas and signals by various manufacturers has further enhanced the communication capabilities of mobile phones, such as Huawei's Lingxi Communication and OPPO's Super Signal Engineering.
In terms of charging, high-power fast charging in the Android camp has been basically popularized, with the highest rate rolling up to more than 200W, while Apple's charging speed is still below 30W. Under the wave of AI large models last year, various Android manufacturers have also accelerated the installation of large models into mobile phones, Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo and Honor have integrated AI capabilities in their latest products, taking the lead in rolling up in terms of end-side large models.
03, Apple's battle of life and death
When domestic mobile phone manufacturers are crazy about rolling images, performance, and AI, what is Apple doing? A very important direction is to find the next generation of traffic entrances that can replace the iPhone, and at the same time tap the "revenue potential" of software services.
In recent years, as the innovation of the entire smartphone industry has fallen into a bottleneck, manufacturers have become smaller and smaller around the involution of performance and image, and Apple is obviously aware of this, so a large part of its energy is spent on the construction of the software ecosystem.
According to Apple's 2023 fiscal year financial report released not long ago, Apple's net revenue from services in the last fiscal year has reached 85.2 billion US dollars (about 611 billion yuan), which is equivalent to the revenue scale of one of China's top Internet giants.
However, one of the problems faced by Apple is that many functions are incomplete in the domestic market due to the ecological barriers built around software services, which has led to the shrinkage of its comprehensive experience in China. For example, Apple TV+, iTunes Store, satellite communication, millimeter wave and other functions are not equipped with the national version of the model, and domestic manufacturers often do better in these aspects by virtue of localized operations.
Although Apple is still strong in hardware products, this ecological fragmentation is still a concern for Apple. After all, Samsung's mobile phone, which is also the top player in the market, has also strong product power, but now its market share in China's mobile phone market is negligible.
In the case of the lack of imagination of mobile phone hardware, Apple pinned a great hope for the next generation of hardware traffic entrance on the Vision Pro, a headset product that will soon be launched in the United States, as the strongest headset product in the current VR/AR industry, the product took up to eight years to develop, and the research and development cost may exceed 15 billion US dollars.
However, the product is still facing bottlenecks in mass production and popularization, with the market initially predicting that it could sell 1 million units in 2024, which was later cut to 400,000 units. Judging from the shipment forecast, the Vision Pro is destined to be unable to replace the position of the iPhone in the short term.
A VR industry practitioner told "City Boundary" that Apple's Vision Pro does represent the highest level in the industry in terms of display effect, perceptual interaction and eye movement manual tracking, but there is still a long way to go before it is promoted, and it may take ten years to complete this process.
"I'm still very optimistic about the promotion of vision Pro in ten years, but now it still weighs a few hundred grams (city note: about 454 grams), from a few hundred grams to dozens of grams, ten years is already optimistic. The practitioner said.
Now not only Apple, but also Huawei, Xiaomi, Meizu and other manufacturers are deploying VR/AR related products, such as smart glasses. However, compared with Apple, these manufacturers have chosen to invest in a more lightweight way, rather than "all in" like Apple.
After all, the challenges faced by these manufacturers and Apple are different, and one of the big differences is that they have all chosen to enter the new energy vehicle industry, and VR is just a "spare tire" for them, ensuring that they are on the table.
Apple's fatigue is almost universally known. On January 12, local time, Microsoft's stock price closed 1% higher, closing with a market value of $2,887.2 billion, surpassing Apple's $2,874.7 billion and becoming the world's largest company by market capitalization. Hedgeye, an investment research firm, expects Apple's growth to be bleak in 2025, with its share price falling 30% from current levels.
For Apple, with the Apple car in the distance and the lack of significant advantages in the AI war, the Vision Pro is more like a battle of life and death. Before the Vision Pro is really popular, the iPhone can't lose, even if it relies on price reductions and promotions, it must maintain sales and market share.
Author | Zeng Guang
Edit | Dong Yuqing
Operations | Jia Tianyu