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Huawei copied the price, the notch, Apple icons, but still uses Android
How the $ 1,000 phone went from unaffordable to "a good deal"
It seems like it's been a long time since Tripp Mickle the Wall Street newspaper and Mark Gurman's Bloomberg took turns as often as possible these false anonymous reports of Nikkei The claimed sales of Apple's iPhone X premium were "disappointing", "weak" and "mediocre", especially because of their high price and perhaps also because of their hack.
According to Flawgic's flamboyant bent, this can only mean that rising prices at Android manufacturers will have the opposite effect! Cheap Android may be hitting a wall, but look for high-priced androids, which bargain hunters will demand at all costs.
Peter Richardson, an analyst at Counterpoint Research, has said that the new Huawei Mate 20 X "looks like a bargain at 899 euros", or $ 1,037. And we know that Android buyers are looking for good deals!
This is not even the new flagship product Huawei the cheapest. "The Mate 20 starts at 799 euros," Richardson said. That's $ 922, a significant premium over Apple's iPhone XR. However, the Mate 20 delivers a small notch so small that it looks like a pile of dead pixels at the top of the screen. It reduces the size of the notch by not including any type of depth sensor or Face ID equivalent. For this you have to switch to Mate 20 Pro (1,049 euros).
Huawei Mate 20 has some kind of guts with nothing like TrueDepth, for $ 172 more than the iPhone XR
It's barely a year ago, but critics about Apple's iPhone X and its price of $ 999 have disappeared and nobody should wonder why the fundamental logic of the pundits changed so quickly by 180 degrees. Apple's innovations take over again the new standard on Android.The torn hand on Apple's iPhone X and its price of $ 999 is gone and no one should wonder why the basic logic of the pundits changed so quickly by 180 degrees
In fact, Android buyers who have dropped the average price that they are willing to pay for a handset at around $ 200 will suddenly pay more than an iPhone for a copy of the price tag. 39, last year's iPhone, if analysts have correctly placed their finger on the pulse of the industry.
But what about the competition?
One problem though: if the demand for iPhones is under siege by low-end androids for all these years, why do high-end Android's do not feel challenged by low-end androids?
It would be cruel to ask Google, which has not been able to sell its own high-end Android tablets or phones, in part because they are not so different from other Androids that sell for much less.
Without specifically addressing this dilemma, Richardson said that he did not see Huawei's latest high-end flagship products as a threat to iPhones sales, saying that "there has always been little likely that a hardened iOS user takes a second look at a Huawei phone ".
Apple "does not have to worry," he wrote, "but Samsung should be in panic mode."
In fact, Samsung is already in full panic. Its latest flagship product, the Galaxy S9, is poorly sold this year in the shadow of the iPhone X: the "expensive handset" of Apple that was not selling well, although its price is about the same as Samsung's. More fanciful offers – the histrionic cut on a $ 999 iPhone was a fictional invention from the first day.
Unable to compete with Apple in the premium segment, Samsung has announced to its investors that it is considering refocusing its efforts on mid-level smartphones. At the same time, Samsung is also discovering its own medicine. Huawei Mate Pro Pro generously copies Apple but also clones the widescreen used by Samsung to differentiate its Galaxy models. Samsung becomes Samsunged by China.
But not everything is good in China either. In the United States, Huawei and ZTE had just been excluded from public procurement. Even apart from that, all the combined production of smartphones in China is very unprofitable – far less than even Samsung. But there are even bigger problems for phone manufacturers in China.
Apple survived its Peak Phone. Is China?
Remember the concept "Peak iPhone"? This catastrophic scenario of 2014 was to be the end of Apple's profitability because the lack of new iPhone sales growth could only accentuate the competitive threat of the iPhone with millions of smartphones good market and usable products produced by Samsung, China and other emerging markets. like India. Suddenly, the experts had a plausible theory of Apple's death.
This did not happen. Instead, Apple has increased the value of its sales by investing in new advanced technologies, from custom silicon to depth-of-imaging sensors, as well as in advanced software ranging from augmented reality to the core, creating thus a new class of luxury iPhone offering many upgrade cycles while increasing average selling prices. , contributing to higher revenues and profitability.
In concert, Apple also continued the development of its Services business to capitalize on the wealth of its vast installed high-end fleet and created new classes of portable devices ranging from Apple Watch to AirPods. Today, even without substantial growth in its iPhone unit sales, Apple is now more profitable and even harder to compete at all costs for lower tier competitors.
After the history of PCs and tablets, overall sales of smartphone units are now decreasing. How will volume producers stay afloat? Over the past four years, columnists have enthusiastically explained how various Chinese Android-based dealerships have "beat Apple" in sales volumes, at least before they sink into financial failure. After Xiaomi, it was Oppo in 2016. This year, it is Huawei.
Yet during all this time, all collective production in China, plus Samsung, was far behind Apple's profitability in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and this year. As huge growth opportunities in sales volume reach the end of the runway, how will Chinese companies compete with Apple in the future? According to analysts: by increasing their prices as Apple while continuing to copy the drawings of Apple.
China is trying to raise its prices
As the smartphone industry continues to contract, the logic that the future mega-producers of low-volume, high-volume smartphones is seen as a future continues to seem inept. If cheap iPhone imitations did not bring in money at the height of smartphone demand, their performance would be really poor as the market matured and demand began to decline. The cadavers littered with cheap PC and tablet producers provide ample evidence.
At some point, companies producing a large number of low-end smartphones will either have to create the Apple-like service business that Xiaomi claimed to have as its goal before it fails miserably and switch into household appliances, or they will have to copy the other top-of-the-range high-end product construction strategies that can remain profitable even in markets where volumes have decreased.
The problem is that analysts and experts have said for years that Apple was wrong and that the only way for the company to survive in 2014 was to develop an iPhone that can be sold for less than $ 300. Instead, Apple opted for the iPhone 6 Pro, then the iPad Pro, then the high-end MacBook Pro, then iMac Pro, and then in the portable devices and with HomePod and Apple TV 4K.
Since 2014, Apple has earned more money than the entire Chinese production. This is important because these years have been a furious growth spurt for smartphones. The growth period for expanding volumes is now complete. It is therefore clear that the speculative production of tens of millions of low-end devices will be even less profitable than during the period when about half of China's smartphone manufacturers have been forced to leave the market . business because they could not stay afloat.
Unbearably wrong
After reluctantly admitting, without liability, that the ceaseless logic of their "iPhone X is unaffordable" was completely futile and totally false, analysts now claim that Apple has simply paved the way for higher prices for all, and that companies that could not generate high profits from many low and medium power devices were now allowed to sell iPhone imitations at iPhone prices, which would naturally make them as profitable as Apple. Why Samsung has not been able to sell high-end phones at iPhone prices and at a profitability comparable to that of Apple, while it was trying to desperately to do it since 2011?
The obvious question is: why was Samsung not able to sell high-end phones at iPhone prices and at a profitability comparable to Apple's when it was trying desperately to do it since 2011 – seven years ago? Samsung builds its own components, has unhindered access to US markets and has more experience building handsets than Apple. She even offered expensive phones before Apple.
Still, Samsung's mobile unit sales are in a funk state, its Galaxy S9, sold at a premium price, is actually selling below expectations (according to Samsung itself, not just its uninformed critics) and, armed with everything he knows about the smartphone market, he is now engaging. to increase sales of intermediate phones, rather than hoping to sell more upscale high-end devices in competition with Apple.
Samsung attributes poor performance of its IM unit to sales below expectations of its Galaxy S9
Follow Apple seems so simple, but so difficult
Samsung is not the only example of a company that "should" be able to beat Apple at its own high-priced game, but has not done so yet. Think of Microsoft, which has struggled to build laptops, high-end smartphones, business tablets and a high-end chain of stores over the last decade, but failed all the respects, despite the considerable expenditure devoted to the new branding, then to the financing of a company. Chain of marketing campaigns billions of dollars. Having tons of money does not necessarily lead to skill.
You may also want to consider Google, which has publicly changed its original strategy of dropping cheap phones and tablets like the Nexus 7 to a new Apple-like strategy to sell the expensive Chromebook Pixel sold by MacBook. ; Nexus 10 at iPad price; and three generations of Pixel phones at iPhone prices. These are all absolute trading flops.
Android apologists can claim that Google was simply spending billions of dollars to offer its Android users a theoretical way to earn money successfully – as one of those real estate speculation experts visiting your city to show you how to become rich. rather than enriching it by following its own advice – but if Google's global brand and expertise with Android and Chrome OS are not enough to make high-end hardware disappear, how will a group of failing licensees go? it better known for associating spyware with rival copycat hardware designs, Apple?
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