Every year, Apple Inc and Huawei's annual flagship machine debut period is a day when "consumers are excited and dealers are boiling".

Because the opportunity for scalpers to make money on the consumption chain is within a month or so of insufficient supply during the first sale period. If there is an ample supply of goods every year, it will not be a problem for Apple Inc and Huawei's dealers and scalpers to earn hundreds of thousands. Under special circumstances, Huawei can even make a profit for two years. For example, Huawei Mate 40 has been a hot hype since its launch, and now the goods can be sold at a price increase of 1000 yuan.

But unexpectedly, there were frequent accidents in the flagship smartphone competition in 2022, causing many people who wanted to make a lot of money to lose their glasses.

September 16 is the first day of sale of Apple Inc, on the same day, "iPhone 14 break 100 yuan" on the hot search. Although the early basic version is difficult to increase the price is the norm every year, but the speed of the break this year is still unexpected. Although the iPhone 14 Pro/Pro max still needs a price increase, a comparison of Tech Planet shows that the rate of increase is not as high as in previous years.

Huawei's Mate 50 first sale day is September 21, the major e-commerce platforms and offline stores are very popular, online platform hot models sold out within 10 seconds, various versions are very difficult to buy, some consumers who paid a deposit of 200 yuan did not get the goods. Xianyu, out-of-store scalpers and other trading channels, the Porsche version even increased the price by 10, 000 yuan. However, some industry analysts believe that this is mainly due to insufficient stock caused by driving up market prices, a lot of goods are also hoarded in the hands of dealers and scalpers.

According to the current situation, the first batch of Apple Inc's iPhone 14 series is much more than in previous years. When Tech Planet visited the flagship store in Sanlitun, Beijing, it was found that orders for the basic version of iPhone 14 could be placed at any time, and the scalpers gathered at the back door of the store a few days ago had disappeared. Many stores of Huawei's Mate 50 series are out of stock, and some scalpers mistakenly believe that without 5G Mate 50, it should not be as hot as Mate 40, so it will not be so focused on speculation.

Is the hustle and bustle of Apple Inc and Huawei's mobile phone incarnating wealth management products really gone?

1, 2022, but also increase the price to buy Apple Inc mobile phone?

Li Wen, a post-90s Internet practitioner, got the iPhone14 Pro max on Apple Inc's first day of sale.

"I have been using iPhone12. I want to change my mobile phone this year, and my friends are very careful to help snap up purchases. Li Wen told Tech that he was lucky to get the goods on the day of the price increase. After posting the moments, it was also a successful show. But in fact, Li Wen's heart is not as excited as before to buy iPhone. After all, the boxes of 14 have not changed much compared with the previous generation.

In fact, iPhone 14 does not need to be snapped up at all this year. In many Apple Inc experience stores, iphone 14 can basically be put on the spot. And the upgrade of iPhone 14 is relatively small. "if it is the style, it must be the Pro series, the appearance of Pro 3 lenses, 14 on 2 lenses, the difference is still very obvious; from a performance-to-price point of view, the 14 basic version is no better than the reduced price of iPhone 13 Pro. "

This is true from the consumer's point of view, while from the scalper's point of view, only which one is profitable or not. Zhang Qiang, an individual trader on Apple Inc's mobile phone in Beijing, told Tech that he had expected the iPhone14 to break. "first, there is no shortage of chips, and second, Apple Inc has increased production, so the price increase cycle of scalpers has been directly shortened to 2 days from half a month to one month a year. "

Judging from his own experience in operation, if the goods received on the same day are not transferred to consumers in time, they must be sold to dealers on the same day, otherwise the loss is certain.

A photo of scalpers circulated on the Internet shows that the scalpers, which were not worried about selling in previous years, are covering their faces with a sad face this year. Because the machines are bought from consumers by scalpers, iPhone14, 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max are about 200 yuan, 800 yuan and 1000 yuan respectively. The speed of iPhone14 breaking directly makes them have to sell at a loss below the original price of the official website.

There is also a rule: the larger the memory version of iPhone 14, the more broken it will be. Many scalpers lose money, the main is the iPhone 14256 and 512 memory version, a mobile phone loss of three or five hundred yuan is normal. The larger the memory version of Pro and Pro max, the more you can increase the price, so you don't have to worry about the market.

Not only the "scattered soldiers" scalpers, many channel operators are also raising prices to sell. In the digital store chain Shundian, iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max added 2000, and the top 1TB even added 3000 yuan. Some consumers said that after 2022, it is not so worthwhile to buy an Apple Inc mobile phone by adding so much price. after all, the iPhone 13 Pro on hand is also enough.

Of course, iPhone14 Pro and Pro Max are not great wealth management products. At present, according to Apple Inc's official website, iPhone14 Pro placed an order today, and the expected delivery time is 5-6 weeks, while iPhone14 Pro Max is 6-7 weeks, far exceeding the average waiting time of 3-4 weeks for last year's iPhone 13 Pro series. It is the longest "waiting time" in Apple Inc's history.

It also means that many users will have to wait until October and November to get their phones. Some netizens believe that they can only get the goods in one or two months, and Apple Inc does not pay consumers more than 10, 000 yuan in interest.

Zhang Qiang said that they are not afraid of losing money. After all, if they order goods from the official website, they can return them if they can't sell them. But he also admits that consumers are indeed more rational. Many people came to him to buy goods on the first day, and the number dropped a lot in the next few days. "there are fewer people buying on a whim for financial management. "

2. Huawei is difficult to become a financial management hard currency in the secondary market.

Huawei Mate 50 has just started pre-sale, the market can also get a glimpse.

After the launch on Sept. 6, not many consumers experienced the Mate 50 in Huawei's offline experience stores. Therefore, many people think that the Mate 50 does not have 5G, and the design is even backward compared with the previous generation, so it should not be a big seller. However, there are still a lot of people coming to pick up the goods on the first day of sale on the 21st.
Similar to Apple Inc's mobile phone, the higher-end version of Huawei is more popular.

Although the official price of Huawei Mate 50 Porsche version of iPhone 14 Pro Mmax is only 500 yuan lower than the former, scalpers have set the price at 23000 yuan, exceeding the original price of 10,000 yuan. Compared with yesterday's hot search "maximum price increase of 8000 yuan", it rose by 2000 yuan the next day.
In addition, the Mate 50 uses Kunlun glass screen this time, which officially claims to be 10 times more resistant to falling, but requires a price increase of 200 yuan, and many consumers also give priority to snapping up models of this kind of screen. Many dealers sold the phone at an additional price of 1000 yuan.

On September 22nd, Tech Planet visited a number of Huawei experience stores in Beijing, and there was no supply in the store. Some sales told Tech Planet, "you need to find a store with a source of goods." "

And most of these so-called stores with supplies are not Huawei's official experience stores, so there are a lot of irregularities in sales. General premium sales are the norm, and some joining stores are afraid of consumers reporting to Huawei, so they play the bundling sales routine that often appeared during the hot sales of Mate 40 the year before last.

Bundling sales requires consumers to purchase items such as broken screen insurance or headphones when they buy a mobile phone. Broken screen insurance costs 499 yuan a year and 798 yuan in two years. Objectively speaking, Huawei Mate series screen change price is as high as 1600 yuan, broken screen insurance is still a relatively cost-effective choice, but do not buy broken screen insurance, do not sell mobile phones, is depriving consumers of the right to choose.

In the view of dealers and scalpers, the money lost on Apple Inc this time can be earned back on Huawei. However, some people in the industry believe that Huawei's mobile phone market is hotter than Apple Inc in the short term, which may be caused by special factors. First of all, Huawei has not released the Mate series for two years, and it is true that many users have reached the time point when they want to change their phones. Second, Huawei did not have much stock in the first batch, which caused the supply of Mate50 in the first sale period to fall short of demand.

At present, it has been revealed on Weibo Corp that the size of Huawei's first stock is about 4 million. But there are also many people who think it will be less than this figure. On the 21st, many e-commerce platforms, including the official website and JD.com Tmall, Mate50 were snapped up within 10 seconds.

A Huawei dealer told Tech that the stock of the Mate50 should be much less than that of the Mate 40 in the same period. "in our prefecture-level city, we gave 200 Mate 50 units in the first batch, 1/3 less than in the Mate 40 period. "

I do not know whether it is difficult for Huawei to predict the heat of the 4G mobile phone market, or it is difficult for Kunlun glass to mass production and climb the slope, from the perception of various channels, the first batch of Mate50 stock is indeed not enough, and even many netizens think it is "hunger marketing". "(Mate50) if there are so many goods arriving on the first day of the iPhone 14 series, you will have to lose all his scalpers' pants," one user said on social media.

Unlike the Mate 405G version, which is still sold at a premium, many people think that the heat of the Mate 50 will not last long, and the core of the Mate 50 is the chip of Qualcomm Inc Snapdragon, which no longer has the problem of chip supply, and is not a 5G chip at the same time. In the following month, the production of mobile phones will increase, while consumers' enthusiasm for new products will decline, both factors will make it difficult for Mate50 to sell at a premium, so it will be difficult to become a wealth management product, and dealers at all levels will return to normal sales.

3. is there a chill in the smartphone market?

Earlier, Counterpoint released the sales data of Q2 domestic mobile phone market in 2022.

Overall, sales of Q2 smartphones in China fell 14.2% in 2022 from a year earlier, the lowest in a single quarter in nearly a decade. Although the decline in consumer demand and purchasing power is the main factor, the lacklustre new smartphone products in the first half of the year really made consumers less interested.

The attention of the market is focused on Apple Inc iPhone 14 and Huawei Mate 50 in the second half of the year. But neither has led to the expected disruptive innovation, and many iterations are seen by consumers as squeezing toothpaste.

For example, iPhone 14 has not changed the appearance of the model for three generations in a row, and many consumers are already visually tired; the smart island function that looks cool at the press conference, but the reality is that many mainstream software, such as Wechat and Arena of Valor, do not adapt; iOS 16 does not have more eye-catching functions except for increased power consumption.

Economist Ren Zeping said Weibo Corp: "iPhone 14 may be a symbol of the rise and fall of Apple Inc's empire." Since the death of Jobs, a company that no longer has innovation and enterprising spirit has begun to take advantage of the old money. No wonder Buffett, who always does not buy growth stocks, does not like innovation, and only likes monopoly (moat), has a large position in Apple Inc. "

It is difficult to draw a conclusion whether Apple Inc will rise and fall, but iPhone 14 is difficult to become a financial product, but it is the current situation. In retrospect, before 2014, Chinese mainland was not Apple Inc's first launch area, when snapping up Apple Inc's mobile phone cost more than 10, 000 yuan. Since 2020, the e-commerce platform has launched another wave of actions to renovate the Hong Kong version and the American version of Apple Inc mobile phones, further reducing the profit channels for dealers and scalpers.

As a result, many scalpers, like consumers, are also snapping up on the official website, or raising prices from the first batch of consumers who grab the goods. Now that Apple Inc has sufficient production capacity and a perfect pre-sale system, many consumers will be more rational and will not be too interested in the premium iPhone 14.

The same is true of Huawei mobile phones. Reviewing the flagship products of various generations, Yu Chengdong, the BG CEO of Huawei, said that the first generation of Mate ushered in the era of large screens and large batteries, the Mate7 was hard to find, and the Mate40 series became "wealth management products".

Nowadays, the Mate 50 is hard to find in its first sale, and he specially stressed in Weibo Corp that it will increase production: "Thank you very much for your love and support for the Mate 50 series!" We will step up production to ensure the supply of products, so that more consumers can use the powerful Mate 50 series mobile phones. "

This also means that the Mate 50 will not be like the Mate 40, because production is limited because of the chip.

The most critical difficulty for the mass-produced Mate 50 is next year. At that time, XIAOMI and OV will release a new generation of flagship machines, and the time difference is the dislocation advantage of these manufacturers. Consumers are using a new generation of flagship phones, compared with Huawei Mate50's 4G phones, it may be difficult to premium the new Mate50 products, and it is hard to say the value preservation ability of second-hand products.

After all, Mate 40 can become a wealth management product, a very important factor is that Kirin 9000 chip is really good, during the same period Snapdragon 3 generation chips are known as "fire dragon" chip because of poor power control. Today, Huawei and many Android flagship machines also use Snapdragon chips, Hongmeng system and product design advantages, become the few remaining bright spots.

It is estimated that the financial myth that you can make a lot of money by snapping up Apple Inc and Huawei mobile phones is also difficult to reproduce.