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On March 8, Apple held a spring conference and released a number of products, including the new generation of iPhone SE.
But the industry is not welcome to see the new generation of iPhone SE, calling it a new generation of "e-waste", IQ tax, fried cold rice.
Critics of the new iPhone SE focused on the fact that it not only inherits the overall design from the iPhone 6, which has been on the market for eight years, but also does not have a full screen, high refresh rate, multi-camera and large battery in terms of configuration.
All of this makes it seem to be out of place with the current market, after all, the current domestic products, casually take out a product, multi-camera, high refresh rate, full screen design is almost standard.
E-waste or real fragrance products?
So is the new iPhone SE really so bad?
Obviously, things are not so simple.
Not to mention that Apple is currently the most successful giant company in the field of consumer electronics, to say that he launched a product, just to give the market a chance to criticize its "fried rice", I am afraid that no one can believe it.
In fact, it is interesting to say that in contrast to the decline of the new generation of iPhone SE on the domestic Internet, the market is actually quite optimistic about its sales performance, and this product may most likely stage the law of true incense.
According to a report released by SellCell for 2459 adult iPhone users, 40% of U.S. iPhone users intend to buy a new generation of iPhone SE, and research reports from companies such as Guo Mingji and Wade Bush Securities have also fixed the first year of shipments of the new generation of iPhone SE at about 30 million units.
And the driving force behind the purchase of the new generation of iPhone SE: most users plan to buy because of price, 15.2% of users because of support for 5G networks, 11.3% of users prefer its compact form factor, and 6.7% of users prefer Touch ID.
Why there will be a difference in network reviews but the reality is really fragrant, in fact, this may have a lot to do with the perspective of observation - if the perspective is only placed in the domestic market, then the sales of the new generation of iPhone SE may indeed not be very good, but it is clear that the market positioning of the new generation of iPhone SE is the global market, in fact, Japan and the United States are the strong demanders for products such as the iPhone SE.
The iPhone SE (second generation) sales distribution data released by the market research agency Counterpoint shows that Japan accounts for 33% of the iPhone SE (second generation), the United States accounts for 24%, and the Chinese market ranks third, but the proportion is only 8%.
30 million units sold a year, what is the concept?
To quantify it, it can contribute hundreds of billions of revenue to Apple, in fact, this also exceeds the sales of many Android manufacturers in a year.
If such product sales performance is created by a so-called e-waste, then Android manufacturers may be eager to have such e-waste, and the more the merrier.
And it is very interesting to say that such a real fragrance scene has been repeatedly staged on iPhone products - iPhone XR, iPhone SE (second generation), iPhone 11 are all examples, it can be said that it is these so-called "electronic waste" that successfully promote the user's replacement and upgrade needs, and also allow Apple to further complete the pace of market sinking and service transformation.
Why can apples designed to lie flat still harvest 30 million market sales?
From the perspective of market reality, the new generation of iPhone SE, which starts at 3299 yuan, tries to cover the price segment users, which is actually highly overlapping with the main price of the current Android manufacturers.
In fact, in order to win the target user group of this price segment, Android can be said to have been in a highly internal volume state in product competition - large screens, multi-camera combinations, high refresh rates, large battery capacity, game optimization, various types of cooling technologies, etc. can be described as a variety of tricks.
But in this reality, the question we need to think about is: why apple with an old design can be estimated by the market to achieve sales of up to 30 million units, but Android manufacturers have been rolled in the product can no longer be rolled in, but apple continues to harvest the market?
Is it just that, as some reviews have suggested, it has an Apple logo?
Admittedly, brand influence will be part of the factor, but it will obviously not be the whole story. In fact, in my opinion, the reason for this reality may lie in the satisfaction of the differentiated needs of the global market and the core technology gap.
From the perspective of global market differentiation demand satisfaction:
At present, the global population exceeds 7 billion users, but it is clear that the needs of 7 billion users cannot be consistent, which also leads to the diversification of the needs of different markets. This is also why the market has been swept by smartphones for more than a decade, but the feature phone still has a market, and the annual sales reach tens of millions.
In fact, under the huge user base of up to 7 billion, there will inevitably be users who are not interested in multiple cameras and large screens, although they are not the mainstream of the current market, but the user scale formed under the high base is still a existence that cannot be ignored.
But in the face of these needs, among the current smartphone manufacturers, in fact, only Apple is still insisting on meeting the needs of this part of the user, and Android manufacturers are focusing on the large-screen smartphone market. Of course, this is also related to the poor performance of domestic manufacturers in the United States and Japan.
From the perspective of core technology differences:
Apple, which has stronger chip technology and ecological advantages, can obtain more relative advantages in the competition of the target user group with soft and hard, and become a more "interesting soul".
As we can see: on the iPhone SE series of products, Apple's routine is actually "technology to change the core as the basis" - relying on its powerful core processor self-development capabilities, Apple can place its latest processor on its bottom products, on the iPhone SE (second generation), and so on the new generation of iPhone SE.
On the new generation of iPhone SE, Apple directly placed the strongest A15 processor in the current smartphone products, which means that users will not have performance concerns in the next few years, and it also means that this product will also get the same system upgrade support as the iPhone 13 series, and the iOS system also has a relatively good application ecology.
The combination of these advantages allows this product to have a longer user life cycle, which will actually add attraction to users who are price sensitive and have a long replacement cycle.
However, observing the same positioning of Android products, it can be found that limited by the high cost pressure brought by chip procurement, in fact, only high-end flagship products can use Snapdragon's latest chips, positioned in the low-end products, can only be used in the second place to use low-end chips. It can be said that the processor has in fact become the core feature of the Android camp to distinguish the high-end products.
This gap in self-development capabilities has also directly led to the different orientations of Apple and Android in the shaping of product competitiveness - Android manufacturers far exceed the new generation of iPhone SE in terms of appearance design, but in terms of product performance, they are far surpassed by the new generation of iPhone SE - relying on the advantages of self-developed processors, Apple will continue to sink flagship processors, thus forming a performance crush on competitors in low-end products. In fact, even the latest flagship chip of Snapdragon used by Android manufacturers in flagship products is only the level of Apple's processor two years ago in terms of single-core performance. Such a performance difference makes Apple have a huge advantage in product performance.
It is also this core self-development strength, ecology and the strength of system support that allows Apple to design lying flat, but Android manufacturers can only continue to work hard in the direction of cameras, games, heat dissipation, etc., in order to be stolen by Apple a little less tower.
Here, the shock brought to domestic manufacturers or: while continuing to exert mainstream demand, it is also necessary to pay due attention to some non-mainstream needs, after all, these needs are placed on the huge base of 7 billion users in the global market, in fact, they also have a considerable scale. Of course, for domestic manufacturers, the next more important thing is that it is necessary to further on the road of self-developed chips, and insist that Qingshan will not relax.
After all, Apple has used actual success to prove how to "do whatever you want" after the road of self-developed chips is passed.
Of course, domestic manufacturers are almost collectively aware of the importance of chip self-development, and began to start from the research and development of special image chips and charging chips with relatively small difficulty and cost risks, and took the first step of self-developed chips, which is undoubtedly a positive signal. Here, people can't help but look forward to what kind of market competition will be when domestic manufacturers and enterprises collectively use self-developed chips.