On the morning of October 31st, Apple and Huawei, two consumer electronics giants, simultaneously launched new products and once again faced off head-on. Although the product lines are different, the accelerated iteration of the products shows that the competition for the end market between the two major brands is becoming increasingly fierce.
Data shows that Apple's market share in the Chinese mobile phone market was poor in the third quarter, with all versions of the iPhone 15 Pro breaking, and dealers shouting that Apple is not as good at selling as the Huawei Mate60. This trend is vastly different from the situation in recent years where "Apple is full, Huawei falls". Famous Wall Street investment firm Jeffrey stated in a report that Huawei has now taken away the title of China's market leader from Apple.
The shortest press conference in Apple's history
On October 31st at 8:00 Beijing time, Apple held a product launch event called "Scary Fast", but the entire event was only 30 minutes long, known as the "shortest launch event in Apple's history".
At the press conference, Apple officially released the M3 series of chips, M3, M3 PRO, and M3 Max. The M3 series chip is the first PC chip to adopt 3nm process technology.
At the new product launch, Apple launched a new 14-inch MacBook Pro equipped with standard M3 chips, as well as a MacBook Pro equipped with M3 PRO and M3 MAX chips. The new MacBook Pro starts at $1599.
Apple has launched a new 24 inch iMac with an M3 chip, starting at $1299.
Apple claims that the M3 chip will reduce power consumption by four fifths compared to typical computer chips, and its light rendering performance will be greatly improved compared to previous M2 and M1 chips. Compared to the previous M1 chip, the M3 chip has increased rendering speed by up to 2.5 times. The CPU, GPU, and unified memory of the M3 chip have increased by 20%, 10%, and 20% respectively compared to the M2 series. This is a huge change for games, virtual worlds, and more.
Huawei Announces Nova New Product
On the same day, Huawei also held a nova new product launch event, officially releasing the nova 11 SE. At present, this model has opened reservations with major e-commerce platform merchants.
The Huawei Nova11 SE body comes in three color schemes: No. 11, obsidian black, and snowy white. It is equipped with the Hongmeng 4.0 system and starts at a price of 1999 yuan. Imaging is a major highlight of Huawei Nova 11 SE, with the new machine equipped with a 100 million pixel light and shadow three camera system, allowing even the image novice to easily navigate various complex shooting scenes.
Compared to the Mate series, Nova has relatively low requirements for components, which makes it possible for the domestic supply chain to further increase its supply share in Nova smartphones. From the shipment volume and domestic supply chain proportion of Nova phones, the performance elasticity brought by the Nova series is greater.
As early as this spring, He Gang, the CEO of Huawei's BG terminal, stated in an interview that Huawei has overcome many difficulties in recent years. As various supplies have stabilized, the pace of Huawei's product release has finally returned to normal. Afterwards, since the beginning of this year, Huawei's product releases, especially new mobile phone releases, have indeed returned to normal. At the end of August this year, Huawei's flagship "flagship dish" Mate 60 series arrived as scheduled in the autumn, followed by the nova series update.
Thanks to the newly launched Mate 60 series, Huawei's mobile phone sales in the third quarter increased by 37% year-on-year. In addition, Huawei sold 1.6 million Mate 60 Pro units within six weeks, of which over 400000 were sold within two weeks.
Dealers shout that Apple is not as easy to sell as Huawei
Compared to Huawei's strength, the price of Apple's flagship iPhone 15 series model, which has just been released for more than a month, has started to plummet, and this topic has also become a hot topic on Weibo.
At present, on official channels, Apple JD's self operated flagship store offers a maximum discount of 801 yuan for iPhone 15 series phones when receiving coupons; Starting from 8pm on October 31st, the official flagship store of Apple Tmall offers a 700 yuan coupon for iPhone 15/Plus and a 500 yuan coupon for iPhone 15 Pro/Pro Max.
According to a quote from a channel provider in Huaqiang North, all colors and stored versions of the popular models iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max have been broken, lower than the official website price. The price of the iPhone 15 Pro 1TB blue titanium version has experienced the largest decline, with a current price of 11500 yuan, 1499 yuan lower than the official website price.
In fact, some domestic third-party distributors have shown a very calm attitude towards such results, with many people directly claiming that Apple is not selling as well as Huawei this year, even if the price reduction effect is not too significant.
Some dealers even bluntly stated that this year's Huawei Mate 60 series is better sold and more popular among users. Currently, many people who book their phones will not receive them until at least November, although Huawei is working tirelessly.
Industry insiders have stated that Huawei's mobile phone brand effect has always been there, and with the emergence of Mate 60, everyone's support for it can be said to be comprehensive.
Wall Street analysts downgrade Apple's rating
In the view of Wall Street analysts, the iPhone 15 series products are "not starting well" in the Chinese market, largely reflecting the weak trend of global consumption and the strong rise of Huawei, the most powerful competitor. This trend is vastly different from the situation in recent years where "Apple is full, Huawei falls".
In mid October, renowned Wall Street investment firm Jeffrey released a report stating that preliminary sales data for the iPhone in the Chinese market suggest that the decline in Apple's smartphone sales may reach double digits, partly due to Huawei, one of Apple's largest competitors, releasing its new Mate 60 Pro in August. Jeffrey emphasized in his report that in the Chinese market, Huawei has now taken away the title of market leader from Apple.
Some industry analysts, including Pu Deyu from Haitong International Securities, estimate that Huawei may be able to produce up to 70 million smartphones using its Kirin chips in 2024, which is not small compared to Apple's approximately 220 million iPhone series products annually.
In addition, Seeking Alpha statistics show that Apple's analyst rating scores have been continuously declining since the beginning of this year, largely reflecting Wall Street's unease about the profit prospects of the world's highest company in the market. At present, the Analyst Ratings of Apple's stock price is only 4 points (out of 5 points, compared to Nvidia and Microsoft, which are close to 5 points), reflecting an increasing number of analysts downgrade Apple's rating from "buy" to "cautious hold" or "sell".
Who will ultimately lead far in the fierce competition?
In the just released report on the Chinese smartphone market for the third quarter, terminal retail volume showed a trend of recovery. IDC predicts that the shipment volume of China's smartphone market is expected to reach a turning point in the fourth quarter of 2023, achieving its first rebound in nearly 10 quarters.
It is expected that there is a high possibility of continued year-on-year growth in the first half of next year, "said Guo Tianxiang, a senior analyst at IDC China. Market growth still depends on the performance of the product side, and whether each company can come up with more products that attract consumers is a key factor in allowing market enthusiasm to continue.
In addition to Apple and Huawei, other mobile phone manufacturers have quietly joined this smokeless battle during the Double Eleven. Most of them have launched new phones or are about to launch new ones, such as OPPO's Find N3, vivo's upcoming vivo X100, and some manufacturers have adopted pricing strategies, such as realme.
The investment in research and development and technological breakthroughs have created Huawei's products to be "far ahead". Therefore, recently Huawei has also applied for the registration of this "label" as a trademark, covering multiple types of products such as smartphones, computers, tablets, headphones, etc.
Faced with the "Double Eleven" battle in consumer electronics, some industry insiders point out that it is not clear who will be "far ahead" next quarter.
The institution believes that looking forward to Q4 and even 2024 at the current time point, the efforts of leading manufacturers are expected to become an important driving force for the recovery of consumer electronics in 2024. When top brands compete around technologies such as mobile phone folding screens, AI big models, and computational photography, the industry chain can only stimulate more vitality.