The price of iPhone 15 plummeted, and the AI ​​​​mobile phone suffered a huge collapse of Apple?

Only three months have passed since 2024, and Apple has become one of the technology giants with the most serious "turnover".

On the one hand, the Vision Pro, which Apple has high hopes for, received mixed reviews after it went on sale, and it entered a wave of returns in less than half a month; on the other hand, Apple has been plotting for a long time The car-building project was officially sentenced to death, and billions of investments were wasted. Compared with these, what really needs attention is Apple's smartphone business. After all, this is Apple's current most profitable business.

(Source: Apple)

Apple’s smartphone business There is some danger, which is mainly reflected in the fact that its technological leadership is being gradually replaced. For example, Samsung took the lead in establishing the concept of "Galaxy AI" in the global market, which caused the Galaxy S24 series to set a new pre-sale record. Or let’s talk about the imaging part. At the Mi 14 Ultra launch conference, for the first time, a self-developed large model was introduced in the imaging, using AI to assist imaging, bringing mobile phone imaging to a new stage.

## (Source: Samsung)

If we talk about technology Lagging behind only makes the market worried about the future of iPhone, so Apple's initiative to cut prices and sell off products is enough to show that Apple also has some concerns about its mainstay business. It is reported that Apple's Tmall official flagship store has unveiled a discount strategy in the 2024 "Spring Renewal Season". Among them, all four models of the iPhone 15 series have coupons for an immediate discount of 1,000 yuan, and the price reduction is beyond imagination.

What’s more noteworthy is that the Apple Tmall official store is not the third-party channel we discussed before. In a sense, the store’s preferential strategy represents Apple’s official attitude and stance. Only half a year after the launch, Apple has launched a major promotion for the iPhone 15 series. It is difficult to say that Apple is not being pushed into a hurry.

The price has plummeted and plummeted again. What happened to the iPhone 15?

The first sales of the past two generations of iPhone have not been satisfactory, but this is the first time that the iPhone 15 series has been in such a tragic situation.

The iPhone 15 series "broke" on the day it went on sale. Among them, the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus models are generally discounted by 300-500 through third-party channels. Yuan, some less popular colors, such as black, even if the price is reduced, no one is willing to buy it. The most surprising thing is the iPhone 15 Pro, which obviously has the "titanium metal" promoted by Apple, but it can't escape the fate of breaking the sales on the first day.

(Source: Apple)

In fact, Not surprisingly, the iPhone 15 Pro is the one with the smallest upgrade compared to the previous generation among the four iPhone 15 series models. For example, the selling points of the standard iPhone 15 are “Smart Island” and “melted glass”, while the iPhone 15 Pro Max The selling point is the new 5X optical lens. In comparison, except for the highlight of "titanium metal", the iPhone 15 Pro is not surprising.

(Source: Apple)

However, It’s not just the iPhone 15 Pro that is unpopular, but the entire iPhone 15 series has not attracted much attention from consumers. This is the biggest crisis Apple has encountered. From the perspective of the limitations of the iPhone itself, signal, image, and charging speed are still the biggest shortcomings. If these basic experiences are not done well, it will inevitably lead to a large number of old users fleeing; and from the market point of view, there will be a large number of powerful new phones launched in 2024. For example, Xiaomi 14 Ultra, OPPO Find X7 Ultra, vivo X100 Pro and other models can give the iPhone a heavy blow.

#This forces Apple to adjust its marketing strategy in the Chinese market. Taking the initiative to lower prices is the best choice.

In the "Spring Renewal Season" event, Apple's Tmall flagship store gave out large coupons of 5999-1000. After stacking the Tmall coupons, you can You can get iPhone 15 for 4,849 yuan and iPhone 15 Pro for 6,849 yuan, which is quite a deal. Some friends may say that such prices have long been available in the tens of billions of subsidy activities on various platforms, but Apple’s Tmall futures store is an official channel after all, and the after-sales, service, and warranty are guaranteed to a certain extent.

(Source: Tmall)

In any case, from From a consumer's perspective, it is a good thing that Apple can offer discounts through official channels, allowing "Apple fans" who are interested in the iPhone 15 series to have a more affordable and secure plan to purchase. But price cuts are always a temporary solution rather than a permanent solution. If Apple can only rely on price cuts to attract consumers, the iPhone's market advantage will soon disappear.

Fruit fans are adaptive, and sales are the confidence that Apple is “flat”

After the iPhone 12 series, Apple’s innovation has stalled. However, Apple users (Apple fans) don’t seem to care about AI, imaging, and folding. For many Apple fans, buying Apple is like buying LV or GUCCI. “It’s just buying a bag anyway.” What kind of innovation does it take to buy a bag? This has become Apple's confidence to "lay down" - the market is the best judge. So far, Apple still has a super high market share and shipments.

In the 2023 global smartphone single model shipment rankings released by market research organization Counterpoint Research, the top seven are all iPhones, while the remaining three are Samsung's low-end and mid-range models. What is intriguing is that the model that topped the list is not the newly released iPhone 15 series, but the iPhone 14.

(Source: Counterpoint Research)

Ranking Some changes in the list are also worthy of our attention. For example, the market demand for iPhone 14 has far exceeded iPhone 14 Pro Max, and the more cost-effective previous-generation models have replaced contemporary flagships as consumers' first choice. Among them, due to the poor reviews of the iPhone 15 series, the cheaper iPhone 14 has become the first choice for many old Apple fans.

Such changes in market demand have forced Apple to be cautious. Without the ability to launch mid-range models to "rescue" the market, Apple has no choice but to consider the simple and crude method of lowering prices. Strategy. But from a practical perspective, even if the price of the iPhone 15 Pro Max is reduced by 1,000 yuan, its price is still as high as about 8,000 yuan, and in this price range, there are already too many powerful Android models to choose from.

(Source: Apple)

Specially What I am saying is that there is a very important objective reason for the strong iPhone sales in recent years, and that is Huawei's inability to participate in market competition fairly. Before the Mate 60 series, Huawei was basically absent from the high-end flagship market. A large part of the high-end market vacated by Huawei has been taken by Apple. Since the return of Huawei Mate 60, demand has been in short supply due to production capacity constraints. Next, with the gradual recovery of Huawei mobile phones, it may be difficult for Apple to continue to win.

But Apple is not worried yet. First, the iPhone’s performance in the market is still strong. Although it has many shortcomings, it is still one of the most influential flagship models in the high-end market. Second, the ecosystem that Apple has operated over the years has bundled a large number of users. It is difficult for these users to truly escape from the iPhone camp and choose Android phones; thirdly, the iPhone has extremely high proactive pricing power. Android phones are extremely cost-effective, and the iPhone eats up most of the market's profits. In theory, the iPhone still has a high price reduction space, which is part of its competitiveness.

#The other side of "So what if you don't innovate, sales are good!" is "So what if sales are good? No innovation!" This is exactly the problem Apple faces.

The era of AI mobile phones is coming, and Apple has actually fallen behind for a long time

People have no foresight There must be immediate concern that Apple’s most popular model is not a contemporary flagship, which shows that the iPhone’s appeal to non-Apple ecological users is declining. Faced with the coming "AI Phone" era, Apple has completely abandoned its automotive business and increased its focus on AI to rush to compete, but at the same time it has divided its forces into the Vision Pro business line, which has an uncertain future. Perhaps the iPhone will still sell well in the next two years, but it is an indisputable fact that Apple’s imagination is shrinking.

#The application of AI on mobile phones is progressing faster than we imagined. Large models have just been launched on smartphones, and they still serve as smart assistants to help users complete some simple tasks. For example, Xiaomi’s Xiaoai classmate advocates natural language question-and-answer interaction. Within a few months, vivo and OPPO handed over the Blue Heart model and the Andes model respectively. In addition to natural language, it also includes a lot of generative AI, such as article summary, copywriting generation, etc.

(Photo source: Ray Technology on-site filming)

Not long ago, at the Mi 14 Ultra conference, its self-developed image model was officially unveiled. Its arrival mainly solves four problems: tone, fusion optics, portrait and color. Simply put, the image model eliminates previous calculations. The "digital feeling" brought by photography uses AI calculation to restore the optical texture.

(Source: Xiaomi)

During the just-concluded MWC, Honor released the Magic 6 Pro overseas. , announced its understanding of AI mobile phones in a high-profile manner. At the same time, Honor has attracted the world's five AI giants (Google, Microsoft, Intel, NVIDIA, Qualcomm) to build an OHA (the alliance organization behind Android) similar to AI mobile phones, hoping to lead new changes in human-computer interaction.

It is difficult for us to predict what changes AI will bring in the mobile phone field. Perhaps in the near future, generative videos like Sora will become popular. The model will be launched in the mobile phone field, and users only need to provide their facial features to generate an interesting vlog. But the iPhone has none of the AI ​​functions mentioned above.

They are confused by the new communication technology, but are still willing to pay to experience new technologies. The iPhone 11 series has been criticized by a large number of media for not having a 5G network. Today, Apple is also facing such a problem. This is a dilemma of "advanced technology or not." It cannot meet market demand through simple marketing decisions such as price reductions.

################# (Source: Apple) ###############Of course, AI is very important for today’s For the iPhone at this stage, it is just one of the problems. Including the aforementioned image, signal, and even the most basic charging speed, battery life, heat control, etc., the iPhone has areas that need improvement. There is still half a year until the iPhone 16 series is launched. It is difficult to say whether Apple will choose to focus on solving these problems in half a year, or continue to break through on the first day and give consumers discounts overtly and covertly in exchange for sales growth. ###############Written at the end###############Many people say that the current face of AI mobile phones is not clear, and there are even pessimists It is believed that AI mobile phones are just a marketing gimmick and an attempt by mobile phone manufacturers to break the situation after traditional smartphones failed to sell. ############### Admittedly, AI mobile phones are still in the early stages of development, and what they will become still needs to be explored by the industry. However, Android mobile phone manufacturers' attitude of having the courage to use new technologies to explore, trial and error, and innovate is undoubtedly more worthy of recognition than Apple's "off-the-shelf" approach. In fact, not only AI phones, but also Android phones are on the front line in terms of mobile imaging, folding screen phones, etc. Apple will either follow or wait and see. ############### In recent years, Apple has become more and more accustomed to being an integrator of technology, building its own products based on the trial and error of its predecessors, and then relying on A powerful combination of branding, marketing and ecology has achieved great results. As a latecomer, Apple can avoid pitfalls. At the same time, Android phones have worked hard for many years to reduce supply chain costs such as hinges. Perhaps this is the so-called late-mover advantage. But even if such a concept can achieve great success in business, the corresponding company is definitely not a "great company", and Apple is no longer the Apple that continues to change the world - which is really regrettable. ################################################ ###################

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