华强北造不出苹果Vision Pro
The Chinese mainland industry chain alone cannot assemble a product close to Apple's headset.
Text / Ba Jiuling
At the beginning of 2024, the most explosive news in the tech world is undoubtedly the launch of Apple's headset (Apple Vision Pro).
This product was released in June 2023, and finally opened pre-order in the United States on January 19, 2024 Eastern time half a year later, with a starting price of $3,499 (about 25,000 yuan, including 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB storage versions), and 200,000 units have been sold so far.
One of the interviewees in Silicon Valley was a first-hand witness of the heat of the U.S. market. When he went to book seven or eight hours later than the pre-sale time, he was already a little embarrassed:
"The reservation is through the Apple store, and it needs to be done with facial scans and other operations, and it is obvious that it is stuck, and the delivery time for mail orders is scheduled for the end of February, and the time for self-pickup at a nearby Apple store has also been scheduled for February 11. ”
What's hotter than booking is the daigou market.
"89999 yuan, 256GB, fixed price. ”
Not long ago, a Taobao store marked "14 years of good store" quoted the above purchase price for the minibus, which is about 64,999 yuan more expensive than the official starting price.
This is one of the most daring sellers.
The minibus asked two other netizens who were interested in reselling in Xiaohongshu, and one of them quoted 36,000 yuan (256GB, 11,000 yuan more expensive than the official price), and the other quoted 6,000 US dollars (1TB version, about 15,000 yuan more expensive than the official price).
They hadn't even actually used it until they gave it that price.
On February 2nd, that is, today, this product that Apple has high hopes for will be officially on sale, and audiophiles and the general public will finally have a chance to see it, and at the same time, another voice is also rushing to shout to Shenzhen Huaqiangbei.
In 2016, shortly after the release of Apple's 1,000-yuan Bluetooth headset Airpods, Huaqiangbei rolled out a copycat model that only cost 50-200 yuan;
In 2017, a Silicon Valley engineer spent only more than 2,000 yuan to buy all the parts to assemble the iPhone 6s in Huaqiangbei and assemble it into a brand-new mobile phone.
In this way, in 2024, it is not a problem to produce a copycat Apple Vision Pro, but this is not the case.
Difficulty 1: More than 200,000 units have been sold, but there are still very few users
The first reason why Huaqiangbei can't bite this wave of dividends is that the genuine products have not yet fully entered circulation.
The characteristic of Shanzhai is that "the experience is similar but the price is more favorable", and the production process of Shanzhai is to seek the possibility of "replacement" through deep digging of the original product.
But it wasn't until January 30, that is, three days ago, that Apple's Vision Pro-related evaluations were released one after another with the "lifting" of the confidentiality agreement, and most of them were concentrated abroad.
Apple CEO Tim Cook with Apple Vision Pro
Based on what all parties have learned, the buyers of Apple headsets can be roughly divided into three types of people, Huaqiangbei is either one of them, or needs other people to provide more information.
◎ First of all, fruit powder. The common characteristic of this group of people is that they are more motivated by their love for Apple than by the merits of the product.
To describe himself as a netizen, he is called a "fanatic". He told the minibus that he planned to fly straight to New York to buy it "because the price of scalpers is too high and the delivery time is uncertain".
Another netizen, Li Mao, is an engineer in Vancouver, Canada, who said to the minibus: "My father, as a fan of the ashes, the first batch of iPhone users, strongly wanted one, and I was the only one in the family in North America in late January and early February", so he bought two.
To sum it up in the words of Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst at Tianfeng International: "Apple has a huge user base of more than 1.2 billion active users. Therefore, as long as about 0.007% of users are willing to open pre-order purchases, the Vision Pro can be sold out after pre-orders. ”
◎ The second category is new technology enthusiasts. This type of people generally have more personal expectations for new technology products.
For example, a netizen who also bought two Apple headsets told the minibus that "there has never been such a product in the technology field", although it has not yet arrived, but he imagined an important use scenario in the future:
"I want to use this headset to record my grandparents, grandparents and other people of the older generation, if they leave one day in the future, there will be a better way to mourn and see the original group photo."
These two types of people are most likely not the target users of Huaqiangbei, but their opinions are the most valuable. Whether the Apple headset can further enter the homes of ordinary people depends on their use experience and suggestions.
◎ Finally, there are B-side industry-related practitioners. This group of people has to buy because of the need to work or to understand new trends in the tech industry.
"The problem is not demand, but supply, hundreds of thousands of XR companies, mobile phone companies, computer companies, Internet companies, technology media, and self-media around the world, each order two, hundreds of thousands of units will be sold out immediately. A senior Apple analyst described the minibus.
People watching Apple's Vision Pro
The demand of the B-end is difficult to ignore, and their development largely needs to leverage the potential energy of Apple's new products. For example, "if Apple sells well, it is estimated that it will continue to expand production, so that the cost of those components can be brought down, and other companies can take this opportunity to buy some better components and improve the experience." He further said.
They highly overlap with Huaqiangbei's demands, but now everyone is also in the process of trial.
The second difficulty of replication: "It can pile up as much as it wants"
The second difficulty lies in the technical threshold.
According to media reports, Vision Pro is the product of 8 years, billions of dollars of investment, 2,000 designers, engineers and tens of thousands of supply chain R&D and production personnel.
"If you recall products like iPhoneX and Airpod Pro, you will find that it does only have micro-innovation in technology, through some comprehensive optimization, through the insight into user needs from a certain angle, and achieves a very acceptable experience. Li Mao, the above-mentioned fruit fan, said.
This level of innovation is a world away from the competition. So much so that as Li Mao said: "Apple can do this at any cost, it does not need to consider the user's affordability like Quest or PICO to limit the price to two or three thousand yuan, it can pile up as much as it wants."
After the ban on the evaluation was lifted, The Verge, an American technology media, published a 10,000-word long review, and the surprise was overflowing - "the miraculous display technology and video penetration effect are the best today".
In June last year, the ABC presenter interviewed Cook in his first public experience video, and he also mentioned that "it only needs to be operated with hands, eyes, and voice, and there is no need for remote control and other tools" and "the immersive entertainment is strong and realistic".
Screenshot of Apple's Vision Pro's first public experience video Source: Sanyan Pro
But the problem is just as prominent.
The most prominent thing is heavy, which is also a common problem of VR products. Some people describe the Vision Pro, which weighs about 600-650 grams, as if it were an iPad pro attached to the face after wearing it for a long time, which is a test for the neck and nose, and some users mentioned the feeling of pressure on the face.
Secondly, in terms of eye tracking, users need to get used to such interactions, and they will get tired after a long time.
For Huaqiangbei, the experience problem that Apple has not yet been able to solve, and the copycat version is even more flattering.
"Huaqiangbei's products are at most to create a similar appearance, but the experience is deteriorated, Shansai iPhone can't use Apple's ecology, not to mention the cost of Vision Pro is extremely high, they are not at most to make a VR Box like Vision Pro, there are no 12 cameras, how to do gesture recognition and eye tracking?" a senior Apple analyst told Minibus.
Perhaps because of this, according to the Securities Times reporter's on-site visit, it was found that Huaqiangbei is currently cold to Vision Pro, and it is even difficult to find a stall specializing in selling MR products.
But as time goes by, there are still people who are eager to try.
Not long ago, there were media reports that a copycat Vision Pro has recently come out. It's called "Apple Core", and the main thing is that it looks like an Apple headset, and the price is 1600 yuan. It is said that "the main foreign trade is sent hundreds of units a day".
The minibus contacted a seller whose product name is "Apple Core AX162" (the same series as the above-mentioned knock-off products), and he sent the product PPT, video, and video of the product suspected of participating in CES at the beginning of the year, and the product in the video is called "EmdoorVR".
It comes from a company called "Yijing" in Shenzhen, China, and its product appearance is also very similar to Vision Pro. And he took the goods from the company "Yijing", and the selling price was 1,899 yuan. "I've had several. He said.
Apple Core AX162
Difficulty 3: Supply chain and niche products
However, on the whole, there are still only a few companies that are rubbing the heat of this wave of Apple headsets, in addition to the appearance and some similar functions, the materials used in their products (plastic shell VS aluminum alloy), system (Android system VS Apple system), experience (number of cameras, chip performance, display resolution...... and other elements are thousands of miles away from Apple's headset.
"Huaqiangbei has been doing similar things for a long time, but why hasn't a decent product been made until now? Have you seen any products based on Huaqiangbei?" said another industry insider.
To a large extent, copycat technology products are the product of the reckless development of various subdivided technology categories (such as smart phones, electronic watches, wireless headphones), and the main goal is to fish in troubled waters.
In addition, when the Vision Pro was released in 2023, the minibus also took stock of its supply chain "Apple's latest MR glasses, 60% of Chinese origin".
The article mentioned: "In addition to the core chip from Apple's own design and TSMC foundry, the ROM and RAM memory chips are from Samsung, and the core set of 1.3-inch silicon-based OLED comes from Sony...... The Chinese supply chain provides about 60 percent of Apple's Vision Pro components and final assembly, but earns almost as much as the core chip and display providers. ”
This means that although the proportion is relatively high, China's supply chain is not within the core supply chain of Apple's headset, and the core suppliers are Korean enterprises, Japanese companies, and Chinese and Taiwan enterprises, involving chips, screen displays, optics and other parts, and the Chinese mainland industrial chain alone cannot assemble a product close to Apple's headset.
Huaqiangbei, which relies on this, is afraid that it is difficult for a clever woman to cook without rice.
Another reason that cannot be ignored is that Apple's headset may be a niche product in the long run, and it will not be able to form a scale effect, so that it is difficult to further reduce costs.
In addition, "as far as I am concerned, the vast majority of users have no real needs, and most of them are for resale...... And to be honest, a lot of people are coming into contact with headsets for the first time, and the return rate of this thing is absolutely outrageous. Li Mao said frankly.
According to IDC data, AR (augmented reality)/VR (virtual reality)/MR (mixed reality) headset shipments are expected to drop by 8.3% year-on-year in 2023, with a total of about 8.1 million units, of which VR products account for the majority. Even if Apple's annual shipments of 600,000 headsets this year can be achieved, the industry is still quite niche.
Hu Yanping, chief expert of FutureLabs, believes that from the perspective of vision and people's experience of the world, long-term use of virtual reality products is inherently contradictory to human instinct and is destined not to become a mass product - a person can see the real world with his eyes open, why bring something to cover the world and feel the world it simulated?
Therefore, he is more optimistic about the breakthrough of AR (mainly AR glasses) in the future, which may help people enhance their ability to perceive reality and generate public appeal.
The author of this article is Lin Bo| Editor-in-charge: He Mengfei
主编 |何梦飞| 图源 |VCG