A counterintuitive phenomenon is that inIn the days when everyone is tight and tight.越Expensive productsSold.The better.。

For example, the liquor industry has generally suffered a decline in performance, but Maotai revenue has always maintained double-digit growth; luxury brands have raised prices across the board, and Chanel's sales rose 49.6% last year compared with the same period last year.

Mobile phone consumption is also a double game: on the one hand, Android is in the doldrums and sales have collapsed; on the other, Apple Inc's prices have risen, sales have gone up against the market, and even in Android's stronghold, China, sales have grown by 36%.

WhyThe overall market is declining, but Apple Inc is still growing? And, behind Apple Inc's growthIs it really as beautiful as it looks to win?

01、The national mobile phone market is declining, Apple Inc outshines others

In August this year, in his annual speech, Lei Jun reviewed three lows in his life-"countering the defeat of office", "Kingsoft resignation" and "selling Outstanding Network". However, Rebus, who was giving a speech at that time, may not have expected that soon the fourth trough of his life would follow.

In the second quarter of this year, XIAOMI's mobile phone shipments fell 26.2 per cent year-on-year, while revenue fell 28.5 per cent. let me put it another way,XIAOMI reduced the price, butOn the contrary, there are fewer goods sold.。

There is more than one XIAOMI in the cold.. According to the Canalys report, the Chinese market fell 11% year-on-year to 70 million units in the third quarter, equivalent to shrinking one OPPO's quarterly shipments. Among the top five manufacturers, Android phones have all slowed down faster than the market average, with the highest falling by 27%, while Samsung, which is the biggest player in the international market, has also lost 8% of its global shipments this year.

In the earnings report, there is a common reason behind all the declines: weak demand. There are a variety of reasons, for example, the penetration rate of domestic smartphones has reached 97.4% in 2021; for example, mobile phones have excessive performance and users no longer change their phones frequently; for example, Moore's Law slows down, and the performance improvement brought about by replacement is not obvious.

However, in the financial report, what is more pessimistic is the second half of the sentence:And there are no signs of recovery.

But the chill was all Android, and Apple Inc didn't feel anything.

Apple Inc's Chinese mainland shipments surged 36 per cent in the third quarter. Globally, iPhone shipments also rose 8 per cent and revenue grew 9.7 per cent. In other words, Apple Inc's mobile phone is more expensive, but it sells better.

XIAOMI reduced the price and failed to promote it, but Apple Inc went to the inventory instead of raising the price.

Is it possible that Apple Inc is as bad as Chinese real estate?

In fact,Apple Inc's sales growth has a somewhat similar logic to luxury goods: high-end consumers are less price-sensitive, so high-premium products are still popular even in a recession.

In the second quarter of this year, sales of mobile phones priced above US $600 increased in the second quarter of this year, according to Counterpoint.

Apple Inc also admitted in the financial report that the best-selling of the higher-priced iPhone 14 Pro series was fundamental to its contrarian growth. The report from Ji Bang Consulting also supports this view: the production proportion of the two products of the iPhone 14 Pro series has increased from 50% of the initial plan to 60%, and will not be ruled out to 65% in the future.

而让AppleStand firm at the high end and raise pricesThe root of，则Lies in其Differentiation——Ios system and A series chips developed by ourselves.

In recent years, the three axes of Android flagship phones have been nothing more than more and thicker cameras, larger image sensors, and higher-definition screens.

But behind this, the lens is unified by Da Liguang and Sunny Optical; the image sensor is divided by Sony Group Corp and Howie; as for the screen, it is nothing more than Samsung, LG and BOE.

There is no difference in products between Android machines, onlyThe difference in release time. Life is hard and hard, so it's not hard to understand.

But the Android machine is not the worst.

02、The revenue of low-end machines is poor, and what is even worse is the upstream industry chain.

Unsalable low-end machines are the same.Inventory and losses in the upstream supply chain are tragic, butThere are many kinds of things:

• Sunny Optical and Dali together supply 50% of the world's mobile phone lenses. Sunny Optical's mobile lens business shipments fell 9.1 per cent in the first half of the year compared with the same period last year; Dali's revenue fell 2 per cent in the first three quarters compared with the same period last year.

• In 2022, Q3 revenue of Weier, the parent company of Howie Technology, the leader of middle and low-end image sensors, fell 16.01% from the same period last year, while net profit fell 38.92% from the same period last year.

• The global king of low-end contract manufacturing, Wentai Technology in the first three quarters of the product integration business plate (mobile phone OEM) suffered a net loss of 404 million yuan.

As a typical representative of the upstream supply chain of mobile phones, the bad news from Corning sounded the death knell of the industry.

More than half of the world's mobile phone screens come from Corning.However,Compared with Q2 alone, sales of Corning Q3's display technology business plummeted by 22%, and net profit decreased by 41%.%. Corning stressed in its earnings report that the company's capacity utilization of glass panels was at its lowest level since 2008, while sales of smartphones, tablets and laptops fell sharply.

In the financial report, Corning repeatedly mentioned that the demand for the "believe" and "anticipate" panels is at the bottom and will pick up in the future. As for when it will pick up? Neither does Corning. Quietly, it also adjusted the sales forecast of Q4 to a lower level. Over the past six months, Corning's internal executives have taken the lead in selling the company's shares, casting a pessimistic shadow on the industry again.

Represented by Corning, the reason why the upstream supply chain is not doing well is also very simple:

Under the modern OEM division system of the consumer electronics industry, the whole industrial chain is authorized by R & D and design enterprises (such as Apple Inc and XIAOMI), and manufacturing and processing enterprises (such as Foxconn and Lixun) are responsible for OEM.

When mobile phone brands no longer produce their own products, thenWhat is needed for productionPlant and equipment investment，It will naturally be transferred from the developer to the contract factory.. Reflected in the financial report, it is the expensive depreciation expense that the contract factory increases year after year.

Take XIAOMI, the terminal brand with the thinnest profits, as an example. In 2021, XIAOMI's capital expenditure accounted for 2.2% of total income; in the same year, Sunny Optical, already very profitable enterprises in the supply chain, accounted for 6.9% of capital expenditure and 11.6% of Corning.

Therefore, the pressure of light-asset mobile phone enterprises mainly comes from inventory. The upstream industrial chain enterprises that spend a lot of money to build factories and buy equipment belong to workers who invest a lot in the early stage and earn hard piecework fees in the later stage.

therefore,Reduction of orders to the terminalSayMaybe it just doesn't make much money, but for the upstream supply chain, it sometimes means losing money.

Only Apple Inc, when the market goes up to down, the only difference is to make money and make more money.

03、And look at Apple Inc, is he really the winner?

In the third quarter, Apple Inc made more money, but「Behind the "perfect" quarterly results, Apple Inc's life may not be easy.。

First: data of Q3In fact, it is not universal.

Broaden the vision to the whole year, Apple Inc January-August shipments, although compared with OV XIAOMI, can only be considered very stable, but in fact not outstanding.

The reason is that, comparing the release time of new products in various mobile phone factories, it can be found that most of the domestic factories are concentrated before the 618 promotion in the first half of the year. Apart from Huawei, which has been reduced to "other" purposes, Apple Inc is the only manufacturer to release new products in September.

Therefore, in the second half of the year, it will be a special show for Apple Inc and his family. Naturally, it is not surprising that Apple Inc's performance increased in the third quarter.

Second:Apple Inc's achievementsIt's growing, but it's growing.But inDown.

Sales of iPhone products rose 7 per cent year-on-year in 2022 and 39 per cent year-on-year in 2021.

Third: the release node of iPhone14There are also some tricks behind it.。

This year, Apple Inc's new plane was released a week earlier than usual. This also makes the latest quarter's results just enough to cover the first week's sales of the new product.

Apple Inc's new financial report this quarter is a week more than the sales performance of new products in the past.

As a result, iPhone sales rose 9.7% year-on-year in the fourth quarter (third quarter).

There is only one reason behind all the tricks-Apple Inc's innovative magic seems to be running out.

For example, at the launch of this year's new machine, this year's iPhone 14 used an enhanced version of the A15 chip released last year, while the A16 carried on the 14 pro simply compared it with the A13 chip released in 2019 because the performance growth was so weak.

In terms of software, Apple Inc has also abandoned the concept of cleanliness and simplicity, saying publicly that he will increase the intensity of marketing advertising in the ios system and software. The goal is to increase the annual revenue of the digital advertising business from $3 billion to $10 billion.

During the whole press conference, the only surprise was an one called "Smart Island"UI interactive innovation.

Then again, no matter how little innovation Apple Inc has, it is only a three-move move that is absolutely crushed. As long as the price of iPhone has not been reduced, it shows that Apple Inc is still in no hurry.