On October 21st, it was reported that during the 2024 Double 11 E-commerce Festival, Apple's iPhone 16 series, which had only been released for one month, saw a price reduction across all models, marking the first official channel price reduction since the release of the new phone.
According to the official Tmall Apple flagship store promotion, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods and other series of products enjoy varying degrees of discount. The entire iPhone 16 series can receive a 500 yuan coupon, with a starting price of 5499 yuan. The starting price of the iPhone 16 Pro Max drops to 9499 yuan, which is close to the price of third-party channels. Consumers can also enjoy an additional subsidy of trade in, up to 1100 yuan.
On September 10th of this year, Apple officially released the iPhone 16 series products and officially released them on September 20th.
Previously, many institutions did not give high estimates for the performance of the iPhone 16 series in the Chinese market this year. For example, a certain institution believes that Apple's new phone sales this year are close to the same level as last year, but at the same time, it also states that high-end models are more popular in Apple's overall product structure, and it continues to be optimistic that the opening of Apple's three-year innovation cycle will boost the performance of Apple suppliers.
Therefore, based solely on the sales figures of the first three weeks, Apple's new products have performed better than last year and have exceeded certain expectations. Bloomberg believes that in the world's largest smartphone market, the iPhone 16 series can still achieve better results than its predecessor in the face of competitive pressure from other brands such as Huawei, demonstrating Apple's continued attractiveness in the high-end smartphone market and being seen as a positive signal for Apple in the Chinese market.
However, Counterpoint Research analyst Ivan Lam mentioned that production issues hindered the progress of the iPhone 15 series in the early stages, which may have limited initial sales. At the same time, the iPhone 15 series also faced severe challenges from the Huawei Mate 60 series, which won the favor of Chinese consumers with its domestically produced chips.
Ivan Lam said, "Considering smooth production, consistent pricing strategy, and the first wave of iPhone replacement among existing iPhone users, the iPhone 16 series has experienced significant growth in the Chinese market
At the iPhone 16 series launch event, Apple CEO Tim Cook stated that this year's iPhone is designed specifically for Apple Intelligence. Apple Intelligence made its debut at the 2024 Apple Worldwide Development Conference in the middle of the year. It is a complete set of AI features developed by Apple, but currently, the iPhone 16 series has not yet updated the relevant functions of Apple Intelligence.
According to previous arrangements, Apple's smart features will first be launched in the US market in October, in English speaking countries such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and the UK in December, and will begin to be launched in China, France, Japan, Spain, and other places next year.
At present, the market is full of expectations for the performance of Apple's intelligence. Dan Ives, a well-known analyst at Wedbush Securities, stated that Apple, Nvidia, and Microsoft are gradually breaking through the $3 trillion market value barrier and moving towards $4 trillion. He believes that Apple will be the first American company to reach a market value of $4 trillion, followed closely by NVIDIA and Microsoft.
Dan Ives said, "Apple's AI based super cycle will start with the iPhone 16 and launch in December, when more Apple Intelligence will be introduced. We believe that 20% of the world's population will use AI through Apple devices. In the next 3 to 6 months, Apple will usher in a historic year with iPhone sales exceeding 240 million units Market data shows that since the release of the new iPhone on September 10th, Apple's stock price has risen by about 6%, with a latest market value of $3572.972 billion.
According to Pu Yin International's analysis, as the world's top player in high-end mobile phone rankings and a leader in innovation in multiple electronic products including wireless earphones, Apple has a rich and mature set of scenarios for implementing end-to-end AI, which in turn feeds into cloud side AI and vigorously promotes and leads AI technology. Looking ahead to next year, the shipment volume of hardware products such as iPhone will continue to grow, and the scale and profit of service business are expected to continue to expand. It is expected that the net profit growth rate of the company in the fiscal years 2025 and 2026 will reach around 10%.