iPhone 15 price plunge, AI mobile phone Apple rout?

Visual China.

Text |leitech

On the one hand, the after-sales reviews of Vision Pro, which Apple has high hopes for, are mixed, and it has entered the return tide in less than half a month; On the other hand, Apple's long-planned car-building project was officially sentenced to death, and billions of dollars were put into the water. Compared to these, it is Apple's smartphone business that really needs to be paid attention to, after all, this is Apple's current most profitable business.

Apple's smartphone business is a bit dangerous, mainly because its technological leadership is gradually being replaced, such as Samsung's pioneering establishment of the concept of Galaxy AI in the global market, which has led to a new pre-sale record for the Galaxy S24 series. Or the image part, at the launch of Xiaomi 14 Ultra, for the first time, a self-developed large model was introduced in the image, using AI to assist imaging, so that mobile phone imaging has entered a new stage.

If the backwardness of technology only makes the market worry about the future of the iPhone, then Apple's initiative to cut prices and sell it is enough to show that Apple also has some concerns about its own pillar business. It is reported that Apple's Tmall official *** has shown a discount strategy in the 2024 spring renewal season, among which all four models of the iPhone 15 series have coupons of 1000 yuan, and the price reduction is beyond imagination.

What's more noteworthy is that Apple's official Tmall store is not a third-party channel that we discussed before, and in a sense, the discount strategy made by the store represents Apple's official attitude and position. It's only been half a year since the start of sales, and Apple has done a big promotion campaign for the iPhone 15 series, and it's hard to say that Apple is not in a hurry.

The first sales of the last two generations of iPhones have not been satisfactory, but it is the first time that such a tragic situation as the iPhone 15 series has occurred.

The iPhone 15 series broke on the day of the sale, of which the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus models are generally discounted by 300-500 yuan in third-party channels, and some less popular colors, such as black, are reduced in price and no one wants to buy them. The most surprising thing is the iPhone 15 Pro, which obviously has the titanium metal that Apple pushes, but it cannot escape the fate of breaking on the first day.

In fact, it is not surprising that the iPhone 15 Pro is the least upgraded of the four models in the iPhone 15 series compared to the previous generation, for example, the selling point of the standard iPhone 15 is the Dynamic Island , melting glass , and the selling point of the iPhone 15 Pro Max is the new 5X optical lens. In comparison, the iPhone 15 Pro is not a surprise except for the highlight of titanium.

However, it's not just that the iPhone 15 Pro is unpopular, it's that the entire iPhone 15 series has not attracted high consumer attention, which is the biggest crisis that Apple has encountered. From the perspective of the limitations of the iPhone itself, the signal, image, and charging speed are still the biggest shortcomings, and if these basic experiences are not done well, it will inevitably lead to a large number of old users fleeing; From the perspective of the market, there will be a large number of strong new phones in 2024, such as Xiaomi 14 Ultra, OPPO Find X7 Ultra, Vivo X100 Pro+ and other models, which can give the iPhone a heavy blow.

This has forced Apple to adjust its marketing strategy in the Chinese market, and taking the initiative to reduce prices is the best option.

In the Spring New Season event, Apple Tmall*** gave a large coupon of 5999-1000, and after stacking the Tmall coupon, it can be achieved for 4849 yuan to get iPhone 15 Pro, which is quite cost-effective. Some friends may say that such a ** has long been available in the tens of billions of subsidy activities on various platforms, but the Apple Tmall futures store is an official channel after all, and the after-sales, service, and warranty enjoyed are guaranteed to a certain extent.

Source: Tmall).

In any case, from the consumer's point of view, it is a good thing that Apple can give discounts on official channels, so that fans who are interested in the iPhone 15 series have a more affordable and secure plan to buy. But price cuts are always a palliative decision, and if Apple can only rely on price cuts to attract consumers, the iPhone's market advantage will soon disappear.

After the iPhone 12 series, Apple's innovation has stagnated. However, Apple's users (fruit fans) don't seem to care about AI, images, and folding, for many fruit fans, buying apples is the same as buying LV and Gucci, "Anyway, it's just buying a bag", what innovation does it take to buy a bag? This has become Apple's confidence to lie flat - the market is the best referee, and Apple still has a super high market share and shipments so far.

In the 2023 global smartphone single-model shipment ranking released by market research firm Counterpoint Research, the top 7 are all iPhones, while the remaining three are Samsung's mid-to-low-end models. Interestingly, the model that topped the list was not the newly released iPhone 15 series, but the iPhone 14.

Source: Counterpoint Research).

Some changes to the leaderboard are also valued

It should be noted that the iPhone 14, for example, has far surpassed the iPhone 14 Pro Max in market demand, and the more cost-effective predecessor has replaced the contemporary flagship as the first choice of consumers. Among them, due to the poor reviews of the iPhone 15 series, the cheaper iPhone 14 has become the first choice for many old fruit fans.

Such changes in market demand have forced Apple to be cautious, and in the case of not being able to launch a mid-range model to save the market, Apple has to consider the simple and crude strategy of cutting prices. But from a practical point of view, even if the iPhone 15 Pro Max is reduced by 1000+ yuan, its price is still as high as about 8000 yuan, and in this price range, there are already too many powerful Android models to choose from.

In particular, there is a very important objective reason for the strong sales of iPhones in recent years, that is, Huawei cannot participate in market competition fairly, and before the Mate 60 series, Huawei is basically in a state of absence in the high-end flagship market. A large part of the high-end market vacated by Huawei has been eaten by Apple. After the return of the Huawei Mate 60, limited production capacity has been in short supply. Next,With the gradual recovery of Huawei mobile phones, it may be difficult for Apple to continue to lie down and win.

But Apple isn't anxious yet. First, the iPhone is still strong in the market, and despite its many shortcomings, it is still one of the most influential flagship models in the high-end market. Second, Apple has operated an ecosystem for many years, and it is difficult for these users to really escape from the iPhone camp and choose Android phones; Third, the iPhone has extremely high active pricing power. Android mobile phones are crazy about cost performance, iPhone eats up most of the market profits, theoretically iPhone still has a high price reduction space, which is part of its competitiveness.

What if you don't innovate, sales are good! The flip side of the spectrum is "What about good sales?" Not innovative! "That's exactly what Apple is facing.

If people have no foresight, they must have near-term worriesApple's hottest model is not a contemporary flagship, which shows that the iPhone is becoming less attractive to non-Apple ecosystem users. In the face of the upcoming AI Phone era, Apple has completely abandoned the automotive business and increased its AI to meet the challenge, but at the same time, it has divided its forces with the vision Pro business line with uncertain prospects. Maybe the iPhone will still sell well in the next two years, but it is also an indisputable fact that Apple's imagination space is shrinking.

The application of AI on mobile phones is progressing faster than we imagined. The large model has just landed on a smartphone, and it is still assisting users to complete some simple tasks as a smart assistant, such as Xiaoai, Xiaomi's classmate, who advocates natural language question-and-answer interaction. Within a few months, vivo and OPPO handed over the blue heart model and the Andean model respectively, in addition to natural language, including a lot of generative AI, such as article summarization, copywriting generation, etc.

Not long ago,At the Xiaomi 14 Ultra press conference,Its self-developed image model was officially unveiled,Its arrival mainly solves four problems:shadow tone、Fusion optics、Portrait and color,In short,The image model eliminates the digital sense brought by the previous computational photography,Restore the optical texture with AI computing。

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

It's hard to see how AI can change in the mobile space, but perhaps in the near future, a generative video model like Sora will be available on mobile phones, where users can generate an interesting vlog by simply providing their facial features. But the AI features mentioned above are not available on iPhones.

Just as when 5G was first introduced, consumers were puzzled by this advanced communication technology, but they were still willing to pay for experiencing the new technology, and the iPhone 11 series was criticized a lot for not having a 5G network. Today's Apple is also facing such a problem, which is a dilemma of whether there is advanced technology, and it is not a simple marketing decision such as price reduction to meet the needs of the market.

Of course, AI is only one of the problems for the iPhone at this stage, including the aforementioned image, signal, and even the most basic charging speed, battery life, heat control, etc., the iPhone has areas that need to be improved. There is still half a year to go before the iPhone 16 series debuts, and it is difficult to say whether Apple will choose to focus on solving these problems in half a year, or continue to break on the first day, openly and secretly giving consumers discounts in exchange for sales growth.

Many people say that the current appearance of AI mobile phones is not clear, and some pessimists even believe that AI mobile phones are marketing gimmicks and attempts by mobile phone manufacturers to break the situation after traditional smartphones cannot be sold.

It is true that AI mobile phones are still in the early stages of development, and what it will look like still needs to be explored by the industry. But Android phone manufacturers have the courage to use new technologies to explore, to trial and errorGo to innovationThe attitude is undoubtedly more worthy of affirmation than Apple's practice of "picking up ready-made". In fact, not only AI mobile phones, but also Android mobile phones are charging on the front line in dimensions such as mobile phone images and folding screen mobile phones, and Apple is either following or waiting and seeing.

Over the years, Apple has become more and more accustomed to being an afterthought, being an integrator of technology, building its own products on the basis of trial and error of its predecessors, and then relying on a strong combination of branding, marketing and ecology to achieve great success. As a latecomer, Apple can step on the pit less, and at the same time, Android mobile phones have worked hard for many years to reduce the cost of hinges and other ** chains, perhaps this is the so-called late-mover advantage. But even if such an idea can be a huge commercial success, the corresponding company is definitely not a "great company", and Apple is no longer the Apple that is constantly changing the world – which is really a bit of a shame.