Text |Minister of Gyeonggi.
According to foreign media reports, Apple officially abandoned the decade-long and billion-dollar electric vehicle research and development program (ICAR). As soon as the news came out, it immediately attracted great attention from the global automotive industry, and analysts believe that this is the result of Apple's nearly decade of car manufacturing projects that have not been able to compete with the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. However, for internal employees, some Apple employees are happy to see the end of the Titan program, and many Apple employees have long expected that the plan will fail, and even call it the Titanic disaster. As the world's most popular and high-profile technology company, Apple's announcement of the cancellation of car manufacturing will undoubtedly have a big impact on the capital market's expectations for the auto market.
Apple abandons ten-year car building plan Why do you say that, the columnist tried to analyze this matter from the perspective of the industry and the market, and then tried to find the answer to this decision.
Apple finally canceled the smart car project, from a rational point of view, this decision is obviously a timely stop-loss measure, as the Matthew effect of the smart car market is gradually obvious, the car oligarchy gradually appears, and then try to get a piece of the pie, compared to the cost of investment and the future visible profits, the difficulty is obviously much greater, Apple's choice is a wise move in my opinion, and it also means that Apple's core product - iPhone is still a fist product in Apple, But this is also a crisis for Apple, and the most effective is the mobile phone, which will be seriously bearish for the tech giant's capital market.
First of all, Apple has not been building a car for a year or two, but for more than ten years, but the outside world still has extremely limited information about this, and can only judge the step of the car building project from the changes in Apple's senior management and the limited information revealed. It is understandable that the more mysterious the market is for the new product, the higher the expectations will be, but it is undeniable that such a long period of time also means that the project is extremely unsmooth, and the outside world can only know about the scales and half of the claws, but cannot get a glimpse of the whole picture, and may not have the whole picture.
Comprehensive public information, Apple's smart car is an icar with automatic driving function, but after ten years of exploration, the person in charge of the ** smart car project has changed again and again, and was finally abandoned, which is not difficult to understand, because Apple's requirements for finished products are extremely high, and even some aspects can be called the extreme, considering the increasing popularity of generative AI, Apple's timely adjustment of the direction of the sprint market can also be understood, which is also in line with the character of Cook, who was born in the **chain, at any time, to pursue stability.
It can be seen from Apple's initiative to give up icar, the full automatic driving in the science fiction film to land, unless the explosive growth of science and technology can be realized, at this stage, it is still a fool's dream, whether it is Huawei or Tesla and other technology companies, which is still trying L3 or even higher level of automatic driving landing for enterprises, it also gives everyone a wake-up call, that is, it is easy to test smart cars in their own experimental sites, but it is necessary to fully realize complete intelligent driving in actual road conditions, Maybe now it can really only stay in the lip service to investors and the public.
I want to make it very clear that no matter how smart the current new energy vehicle companies say they are, their essence is the accumulation and accumulation of current Internet technology. What I mean by this is, if I am told what ingredients I have, how many seasonings I need to put in them, and the time is set to the minute, then my cooking skills are really not inferior to any chef, but can I say that I am an expert? Obviously not, because I can't even understand the home cooking without these.
The outside world actually does not have much high evaluation of the matter of building a car, especially the current new energy vehicles. It is generally believed that the so-called smart cars are now nothing more than refrigerators, color TVs, washing machines and other household appliances stuffed into the car, plus a large battery, which is essentially an addition, rather than a real smart car, although this rumor on the market is a bit one-sided, but in fact it also shows that the smart car is not smart now, they are still saying that the car can break 100 in a few seconds, what materials are used, how much efficiency is improved, etc.
It is an undeniable fact that not only to build a car, but also to look at the smart home that has been more popular in the past few years, and the smart home products that can really be put into use and change life have not been put into the market so far. What can be put on the market for sale is more of a smart home product introduced by a PPT demonstration, which is not practical. The revolutionary product of this industry is still on the drawings. The so-called revolution is the innovation and subversion of the iPhone for the mobile phone industry, which is thorough and from beginning to end. In this sense, instead of comparing with others and cobbling together, reducing the figure of being pulled by others to compete in the field they are good at, it is better to take the initiative to give up and polish in the field that they are good at. After all, no matter how innovative Nokia is, he will not think that there is no digital button on the mobile phone.
Apple's core advantage is the product ecology, unless science and technology explodes, otherwise in terms of existing cognition and technology, making a car is just an addition, but not a must, maybe in the future, a technology company really transplanted the smartphone ecology to the car, that's another thing, in the short term, giving up the car business is a good thing to actively cut the meat, but considering that Chinese mobile phone manufacturers are eyeing the car, in the medium and long term, Apple is likely to be dangerous.
Looking at the country, the two most direct competitors Xiaomi and Huawei, have put the core of the future intelligent terminal products on the car, although it is still in a relatively early stage, but time is a good friend of business growth, with the number of hundreds of millions of customers of the two companies, there is an opportunity to complete the unfinished task of icar, that is, mobile phones, cars form a perfect ecological closed loop, when the time comes, I am afraid that Apple can only retreat to the local market in the United States, which is by no means alarmist.
In short, Apple's abandonment of making cars is unexpected and reasonable, and generative AI will really enter the era of giant competition, which has sent a very clear signal to China's head Internet companies, in addition to choosing the path of AI, there is obviously no better option, and after Apple gave up iCar, Huawei and Xiaomi will open up the ecology of mobile phones and cars in the future, giving an opportunity.
But even so, Apple still has a head start in the market, because the efforts made in self-driving systems and vehicle artificial intelligence can be highly transferred to other computing aspects. Apple has revealed that it has invested $10 billion in the Titan program, but the funds have not been lost, because all the results of the work will now be conducive to Apple's entry into artificial intelligence.
At this stage, if Apple really turns the human and financial resources of the car project to generative AI, it means that the AI track will be more popular, because Apple's ability to integrate software and hardware is strong, coupled with sufficient liquidity, it can directly rush to the leading position of AI through mergers and acquisitions, and Apple investors also think of this, so Apple's stock price fell first and then rose, which is already the result of the market voting with its feet. **10,000 Fans Incentive Plan