Users spurned Apple for reducing Chinese components, and Cook's revenue decreased by more than $30 million!
Shortly after the start of 2024, Apple CEO Cook was not in a good mood, and the board of directors cut Cook's income from a ** bonus of 75 million yuan by 35 million yuan to 40 million yuan, pointing out that the board of directors was quite dissatisfied with the sales of the iPhone 15, which led to Apple's hard time, of course, Chinese mobile phones.
China is the biggest market for the iPhone, but since last year, Apple's sales in China have been unsatisfactory, mainly due to harassment by several Chinese mobile phone companies, which means that iPhone 15 sales have not met expectations.
What's more, Apple is gradually reducing the proportion of Chinese production, trying to replace it with Indian production. According to reports, the iPhone 15 has only 25% of the components come from the Chinese ** chain, but when the Chinese ** chain contributes more than 20% of the value of the iPhone, which makes Chinese consumers very dissatisfied, Chinese consumers have to give up the iPhone and buy domestic mobile phones instead.
In fact, Cook knew in advance that Chinese consumers had abandoned Apple, and the iPhone 15 launched in 2023 saw a decline in sales just two weeks ago, so Cook rushed to China to interact with Chinese consumers in Chengdu retail stores, and then visited Lucent Precision, and said that he would continue to create a win-win situation with China.
In addition, Apple itself is increasingly lacking in innovation, today's Apple is more dependent on ** to win, every time the iPhone sales are not good, Apple will cut prices, it seems that price reduction has become Apple's latest killer feature, however, Apple seems to have forgotten that its position comes from innovation rather than ** war.
The iPhone 15 launched by Apple in 2023 uses TSMC's 3nm process, which is currently the most advanced process in the world, due to the high cost of the 3nm process, Qualcomm and MediaTek cannot afford to continue to use the 4nm process, and Apple is even more conquered by the 4nm process, and the lack of innovation is especially evident in the iPhone 15.
However, the exclusive use of the 3nm process failed to bring Apple the expected scenario, and after the iPhone 15 was launched, it was confirmed that the performance of the A17 processor was only 1%, and there was also a problem of excessive power consumption, highlighting that the 3nm process was far from as strong as expected.
What's even more difficult for Apple is that competitors are using a higher-performance 4nm post-process. Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8G3 uses a late 4nm process, but achieves a 30% performance boost through an architecture upgrade, which is enough to dwarf Apple.
In the past decade, Apple's self-developed A-series processors have been far ahead, but starting from the A15 processor, Apple has improved the performance by about 10% for three consecutive generations, and Apple's chip technology seems to be difficult to maintain an absolute advantage.
The chip technology advantage is gone, but it is the epitome of Apple's lack of innovation. Since Cook took over as CEO, Apple has seen few dazzling innovations, more changes in screen sizes, and in recent years has cut prices to maintain market share, a far cry from the days when the market was dominated by innovation.
Another reason for Apple's lack of innovation is the departure of the technical genius of the Jobs era, Foster, the founder of the iOS system, left the iOS system one after another, and the departure of Ivey, the genius designer who was considered to be left by Jobs two years ago, made Jobs disappear completely, without the technical genius, it is naturally difficult for Apple to continue to innovate.
In contrast, in recent years, Chinese mobile phones have continued to innovate in chips, photography, etc., and even some technologies are Android phones first, and then Apple was adopted, which is considered to be Apple's copycat in the mobile phone industry, therefore, ironically, Jobs is estimated to be angry when he saw Apple some time ago.
Now the results of the lack of innovation are reflected, it is reported that Apple's shipments fell by 4% in the fourth quarter of 2023, and in 2024, there is news that sales will fall by 30% in the first week, iPhone is Apple's largest revenue**, iPhone sales are weak, no wonder Apple's board of directors wants to reduce the bonus to Cook.