On January 15th, Apple China announced on its official website that it will launch a "New Year discount" campaign. Specifically, from January 18th to January 21st, purchasing products designated by Apple through eligible payment methods can result in price reductions ranging from 50 yuan to 800 yuan.
The Financial Investment News reporter noticed that the three keywords of this discount plan are limited time, limited quantity, and limited sales. Although Apple phones have had various promotional activities on e-commerce platforms before, the sudden price reduction on the Apple China official website is still quite rare and once topped the hot search list.
Official website first promotes collective price reduction activity
According to Apple's official website, this event almost includes the entire range of Apple products. Among them, all models of the latest iPhone 15 series, iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, or iPhone 13 can be reduced by up to 500 yuan; 13 inch or 15 inch MacBook Air (M1 or M2 chip models) laptops can save up to 800 yuan; The entire range of iPad tablets (iPad Pro/iPad Air/iPad/iPad mini) can be reduced by up to 400 yuan; The Apple Watch SE, Apple Earphones AirPods, and Apple Pencil can be reduced by up to 200 yuan, 100 yuan, and 50 yuan respectively.
According to Apple's official website
In addition, Apple said that this activity is only for consumers who use Alipay, Huabei, WeChat payment, or use credit cards with Visa and MasterCard logo and pay in a specific way, and they cannot enjoy it together with any other promotions, discounts or concessions. Each customer is limited to two products per product category, and there is no limit to the number of products participating in online promotional activities.
The discount plan for Apple's offline stores is consistent with the official website, but the number of products available for this promotion in the store is limited. For example, there are 30000 iPhone products, 5200 iPad products, and 750 Mac and laptop products, which are sold out.
On January 16th, a reporter from Financial Investment News visited an Apple direct store located in Taikoo Li, Chengdu and learned that the discount plans offered by offline stores are consistent with the official website.
"It is expected that on January 18th, which is the first day of the promotional event, the foot traffic will likely far exceed the same period, and offline stores may have queues to buy." The salesperson of the store said that this price reduction may trigger a new round of panic buying, especially the latest iPhone 15 series, which has discounts on all models and may become the first out of stock Apple product.
In fact, as a popular model for Apple, the iPhone 15 series is not the first time it has lowered its price. As early as the Double Eleven period in 2023, various e-commerce platforms offered discounts of up to 700 yuan to benefit consumers.
At present, the official website of iPhone 15 is still selling at the original price of 5999 yuan, and various promotional activities have already been launched on e-commerce platforms. The official flagship store price of Suning.com is 5538 yuan, while the price of Apple products at JD's self operated flagship store is 5199 yuan.
Therefore, can the "collective" price reduction of almost all products by Apple achieve the expected sales targets? Industry insiders have stated that it does not have much appeal to consumers, and in terms of price reduction, it is far less than third-party platforms such as channel merchants and e-commerce platforms.
Sales face pressure from competitors
Financial Investment News reporters have noticed that exchanging price for quantity may be the main motivation for Apple to "let go" and embrace more consumers.
Apple offline stores
Previously, with the launch of the Apple phone, it not only gained attention but also achieved unparalleled sales. According to data from third-party market research firm Counterpoint Research, the sales of the latest iPhone 15 series within 17 days of its debut in the Chinese market have decreased by 4.5% compared to the iPhone 14 series released in 2022.
An analyst at investment bank Jeffrey also stated in a report that Apple has suffered a heavy blow in the Chinese market, with iPhone 15 sales experiencing a cliff like decline in the first week of 2024, a 30% drop from the same period last year. According to its prediction, Apple will continue to face significant pressure from local Chinese competitors in 2024.
In addition, the financial report shows that Apple's revenue for the fourth quarter of 2023 was $89.498 billion, a decrease of 1% year-on-year; The net profit was 22.956 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 11%. Although Apple's fourth quarter revenue and earnings per share exceeded analysts' expectations, this was also the first consecutive four quarters of year-on-year decline in revenue since 2001.
It is worth mentioning that, by region, the revenue of the Greater China region during the above-mentioned reporting period was 15.084 billion US dollars, a decrease of 2% compared to the same period last year's 15.47 billion US dollars.
Industry insiders have pointed out that the reason behind Apple's official promotional activities catering to Chinese consumers may be that the sales prospects are not ideal. In addition, there is a common problem of excessive performance in current smartphones, and Apple has not achieved a leading breakthrough in artificial intelligence, making it difficult to stimulate users' willingness to switch phones.
Journalist's note
Apple urgently needs to actively seek change
Recently, there has been a lot of public opinion surrounding Apple, with companies such as Barclays Bank in the UK lowering their ratings and predicting multiple risks they will face in the future. In addition to sluggish hardware sales, other risks include the possibility of Apple's service business facing stricter regulatory review challenges.
Another market value was once surpassed by Microsoft. On January 12th local time, Microsoft Inc. closed up 1% at $388.47 per share, with a market value of $2.89 trillion that day, while Apple Inc. closed with a market value of $2.87 trillion that day.
Of course, Apple's competitors not only include Microsoft, which has made significant progress in fields such as cloud computing and artificial intelligence, but also manufacturers who are "fiercely grasping" the market share of high-end smartphones.
According to data from third-party market research firm Counterpoint Research, in 2023, Apple's market share in the high-end smartphone market (wholesale prices above $600) decreased from 75% to 71%, while Samsung's market share increased from 16% to 17%, and Huawei's market share increased from 3% to 5%.
At this point, Apple can no longer win by lying down like it used to. At the beginning of 2024, Apple took a new move by launching the aforementioned "New Year discounts". Looking ahead, innovation, change, and iteration may become key. In the new consumer era, Apple urgently needs to actively seek change and once again find reasons for consumers to easily pay for it.
