Huawei and Apple chose to compete on the same day.
Tablet matchup, two press conferences
What are the trends in the development of electronic products?
The latest layouts of both sides are aimed at AI
What kind of future does it reveal?
On May 7, Huawei and Apple held two blockbuster press conferences on the same day.
Even though the press conference ended late at night, consumers were enthusiastic, and at 11 o'clock in the evening, they directly sent a number of Apple-related entries to Weibo for hot searches.
After Apple's press conference, Huawei, which held a press conference in Dubai in the early morning of Beijing time, also filled consumers' expectations.
Each new product has its own merits
Prior to this, on April 11, Huawei just released a high-performance laptop equipped with AI, the MateBook X Pro 2024, which can be easily clamped with just two fingers, earning enough market attention.
Less than a month later, Huawei held an "innovative product launch" in Dubai, releasing the new watch WATCH FIT 3, as well as the previously displayed MateBook X Pro and MatePad 11.5 tablets and other products, as well as its self-developed painting application Go Paint.
In terms of hardware, both performance and fashion are taken into account, and software innovation has not been left behind.
And the two giants not only collided with the date of the meeting, but also the type of new product.
Bloomberg reported that Apple unveiled the thinnest iPad Pro in history with the M4 chip and the larger iPad Air at its "Let Loose" event, aiming to revive the tablet lineup that has been sluggish for the past two years.
(Source: Bloomberg)
The iPad Pro with AI function in this new product is worth paying attention to.
Previously, in Apple's earnings call in the second quarter of the fiscal year, AI became the focus of Apple executives.
While Apple CEO Tim Cook did not share AI-related details at the conference, he expressed strong confidence in Apple's AI technology and revealed that he will soon share "some very interesting things" with users.
So the question is: why did Huawei, a Shenzhen company, launch its products in Dubai this time? Why is AI the focus of Apple's attention?
Cook: AI is a key opportunity for our products
Compared to other brands, Apple's operating situation can be described as challenging.
On May 3, Apple announced its second-quarter results for the first three months of this year, with revenue of $90.8 billion, down 4% year-on-year.
As of March 31, only Mac computers have increased sales of Apple's major products, sales of iPhones and iPads, which account for about half of Apple's revenue, have declined year-on-year, and the revenue of wearable devices has also fallen by 370 million yuan from expectations.
Looking at the domestic market, in the fourth quarter of 2023, Huawei surpassed Apple for the first time to win the first place in China's tablet market shipments, with a market share of 30.8%, while Apple's was 30.5%.
In the mobile phone track, in terms of shipments, Honor, Huawei, Oppo/OnePlus, and Vivo all ranked among the top in China's market share in the first quarter, while Apple almost fell out of the top five.
(Source: Reuters Reyters citing IDC survey data)
The shift in the shipment of each brand is directly related to Apple's own lack of new products last year, which has pushed consumers to manufacturers such as Samsung, Lenovo, and Huawei that have launched mid-to-high-end product portfolios.
TechInsights, a market research agency, even predicts that Huawei's market share in China will increase significantly to 19% in 2024, regaining the top spot in the Chinese market.
Weak revenues and fierce market competition have forced Apple to introduce AI features into its products.
(Reuters: Apple's slow rollout of AI services has led to a sharp drop in iPhone sales)
According to Bloomberg, Apple is currently in contact with Open AI and Google Inc., preparing to apply some of the advanced technologies of these two companies in the field of artificial intelligence to the new Apple products that will be launched this year.
"We see generative AI as a key opportunity for our products," Cook said on the earnings call...... We'll talk more about this in the coming weeks. ”
Huawei's overseas development strategy
Let's go back to the Shenzhen enterprise Huawei, which suddenly went to Dubai to hold a product launch conference, which is a bit confusing at first glance, but behind this we can get a glimpse of Huawei's overseas development strategy:
Huawei will not only return to the No. 1 market share in China, but also continue to expand the global market.
This is not the first time that Huawei has held an innovative product launch conference overseas.
Since 2023, Huawei has held a number of overseas new product launch conferences in Munich, Barcelona, Dubai and other cities, and officially released flagship new phones such as the Huawei P60 series and Huawei WATCH 4 at the overseas conference in Munich in May last year.
(Source: Ma Xiaoqiang, VP of Huawei Consumer Business Asia Pacific)
AT THIS PRESS CONFERENCE, HUAWEI USED "FASHION AVANT-GARDE" TO DESCRIBE THE FIRST RELEASE OF WATCH FIT 3, WHICH HAS BEEN UPGRADED IN TERMS OF SHAPE AND PERFORMANCE ON THE EARLY FIT SERIES, AND HUAWEI IS MAKING EFFORTS IN THE OVERSEAS HIGH-END INTELLIGENT MARKET.
He Gang, chief operating officer of Huawei's terminal BG, once said that Huawei would not give up overseas markets, and revealed that "Huawei's global market is recovering".
However, in the process of competing for the global high-end mobile phone market share, Apple is Huawei's "big brother" that cannot be avoided.
Huawei's latest financial report shows that in the first quarter of this year, Huawei's revenue was 178.45 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 36.66%, and its net profit also achieved a year-on-year increase of about 564%, reaching about 19.65 billion yuan.
However, compared with Apple's profit of nearly 170 billion, Huawei's net profit is only 12% of Apple's, and Apple's position in the global market, which was slightly declining in the first quarter, is still solid.
Although there is still some distance to surpass Apple, the good news is that Huawei has stepped out of its own characteristic path.
In addition to the eye-catching location of the press conference, the release of its self-developed Go Paint software also demonstrates Huawei's ambition to regain the "crown" of overseas markets through software innovation.
According to analysts at Canalys, a market research firm, one of Huawei's key strategies in 2024 is to build AI capabilities for smart devices from the bottom of hardware and software systems, and extend the successful practice of ICT and industry-level AI to the consumer electronics field.
Therefore, accelerating the deployment of AI to enrich the product ecosystem may help Huawei regain the "crown" in overseas markets.
It's hard to say who will be the better of the overlord or the rookie at this conference, but one thing is clear.
The two giants mentioned at the press conference that they hope that the products can provide better services for consumers, and that it is hard power to continuously improve products with technological innovation.
Huawei and Apple, who will you rush in this wave?
Writer / Liu Zhouyi (trainee) Li Tiannan
Editor / Xu Zijun Li Ting