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arrived as promised.

after the opening inspirational video, cook opened the event with "good morning" as usual. during this one and a half hour apple conference, the iphone 16 series, apple watch series 10, and airpods 4 were launched one after another.

this time, apple rarely raised the prices. the starting prices of iphone 16 and iphone 16 plus are 5,999 yuan and 6,999 yuan respectively, while the starting prices of iphone 16 pro and iphone 16 pro max are 7,999 yuan and 9,999 yuan respectively, which is the same as iphone 15.

what is quite dramatic is that in a few hours, huawei will also hold a new product launch conferencethe number of reservations on the official website for huawei mate xt, its first tri-fold screen mobile phone, has reached a staggering 3.3 million.after many twists and turns, what we didn’t expect is that apple’s biggest rival is still huawei.

iphone 16 is coming

the first ai mobile phone, priced from 5999 yuan

the most anticipated is still the iphone 16 series of mobile phones.

this time, apple officially released four new mobile phones: iphone 16, iphone 16 plus, iphone 16 pro, and iphone 16 pro max. in terms of appearance, iphone 16 has five colors: ultramarine, dark cyan, pink, white, and black; the iphone 16 pro series chooses the more technological black titanium, white titanium, natural titanium, and the new desert titanium.among them, the iphone 16 pro max has a screen size of 6.9 inches, which is also the largest screen size ever for iphone.

interestingly, apple’s ugly color scheme unexpectedly became a hot topic on weibo.

of course, the changes visible to the naked eye also include the camera: the iphone 16 and iphone 16 plus are equipped with a 48mp main camera and a new 12mp ultra-wide-angle lens. the former supports 2x lossless cropping, and the latter adds support for macro shooting. apple claims that these two lenses can achieve the effect of four lenses. in addition, the iphone 16 series can also shoot space videos and play them on vision pro. in order to take care of the shooting of space videos, the camera module has been changed from a diagonal arrangement to a vertical arrangement.

a slightly innovative change is that the iphone 16 series has added an action button that was only available on the previous generation pro models, and a camera control button has been added to the side, which can be controlled by sliding. it can start the camera, shoot video, set zoom and other control options with one click.

in terms of gaming performance, apple said that the iphone 16 series has a 30% improvement in gaming performance and supports ray tracing. therefore, the iphone 16 series can run 3a games such as "resident evil 7" and "assassin's creed: phantoms", which were previously only available for the iphone 15 pro series. in addition, the iphone 16 pro series is equipped with a larger battery and longer battery life.

however, these are not the focus of iphone 16. its focus this year is ai. as the first model designed specifically for apple intelligence, iphone 16 is equipped with a new a18 processor, which uses second-generation 3nm technology. apple said that the cpu performance of the a18 chip is 30% higher than that of the previous generation a16 bionic chip. the chip supports hardware-accelerated ray tracing, which can improve graphics rendering in games and access generative models more efficiently.

apple intelligence is undoubtedly the highlight of the iphone 16 series. as early as this year's worldwide developers conference, apple demonstrated most of its functions, such as polishing text, generating emoji expressions, and siri has become smarter. the newly added function is linked to the newly added camera button and upgraded to "visual intelligence". by starting the camera with the camera control button, it can analyze the pictures captured by the camera. for example, if you aim at a restaurant, you can extract the detailed information, price and special dishes of the restaurant; if you aim at a dog, you can display its breed information.

although apple entered the ai ​​market relatively late, the integration of the product with apple products still makes people feel the convenience of ai. however, we should not be too happy too soon. apple officially stated that the apple intelligence function will be launched in october and will not support chinese until next year.

overall, this year's apple conference was a little quiet. as one tech blogger commented: "like in previous years, apple brought another 'smooth' upgrade in the much-anticipated conference. although apple's conference is called the spring festival gala of technology every year, everyone's expectations and discussions about this spring festival gala are fading year by year, which is similar to the real spring festival gala."

finally, back to the price, this time apple rarely raised the price. the starting prices of iphone 16 and iphone 16 plus are 5,999 yuan and 6,999 yuan respectively; the starting prices of iphone 16 pro and iphone 16 pro max 256gb are 7,999 yuan and 9,999 yuan respectively, which are the same as the launch prices of iphone 15 series last year.

no price increase for upgrading, all new iphone models will be available for pre-order on friday and will go on sale on september 20. will you buy them again this time?

"i want to buy a watch instead of a mobile phone." as the first product to be unveiled this year, the apple watch series 10 has the largest screen of any apple watch to date, with a 30% increase in screen area compared to the previous generation. it is also the thinnest apple watch, with a thickness of only 9.7 mm, 10% thinner than the previous generation.

in terms of price, the apple watch series 10 starts at 2,999 yuan, and the gps and cellular network version is priced at 3,199 yuan. the apple watch ultra 2 is available in black, with a starting price of 6,499 yuan. pre-orders are open today and will be shipped on september 20.

apple's sense of crisis

“let’s wait for next year’s iphone 17.”

there are many people who feel this way. in fact, a few months ago, when the leaked pictures of iphone 16 were exposed, luo yonghao complained in the live broadcast room that the iphone had no innovation in recent years except for the constant change of the camera placement.

apple is now in a turbulent time. according to bloomberg, apple, which rarely laid off employees in the past, has laid off employees four times this year, and the loss of senior executives is also quite serious. cook even had to resort to the "leave the job but not the company" operation, allowing apple veteran luca maestri, who will step down as chief financial officer at the end of this year, to continue to hold other positions at apple.

apple has come to a crossroads. cook must have seen it more clearly, and he recently expressed his attitude, "we will seize the development opportunities in the field of generative ai. we are making significant investments and look forward to sharing some very exciting things with our customers soon."

but it's not that simple.

in early august, apple released its third quarter financial report for fiscal year 2024 (three months ending june 29, 2024), showing growth in both revenue and net profit. this means that after the downturn in the previous quarter, apple finally ushered in a growing quarter. but it is worth noting that iphone revenue was us$39.296 billion, a year-on-year decline of 0.9%, which has been declining for two consecutive quarters.

meanwhile, apple suffered a setback in the chinese market. the financial report disclosed that among the five major regions, americas, europe, japan, and other asia-pacific regions all achieved varying degrees of year-on-year growth, and only greater china experienced a year-on-year decline, which was the fourth consecutive quarter of year-on-year decline in apple's sales in greater china. data showed that apple's sales in greater china in the third fiscal quarter were us$14.728 billion, down 6.5% from us$15.758 billion in the same period last year.

not long ago, the term "apple wechat" was trending on weibo. there was news that wechat might not support iphone 16, and reminded users not to update the system. the controversy was about the "apple tax". obviously, apple underestimated the reaction of chinese consumers. in the words of netizens: "if wechat and apple compete, i don't think apple can win at all. wechat is irreplaceable, and apple can be replaced at will."

subsequently, apple's technical consultant for china responded: "we are currently actively communicating with tencent about the app store commission issue, and both parties will deal with it. don't worry too much." tencent management also stated in the earnings call that there are some misunderstandings about the nature of the current situation. that is, tencent is not currently commercializing small games on ios through in-app purchases (bypassing payment), and relevant discussions are underway.

there was also a small episode at the conference. apple showed tencent tianmei studio's new game "honor of kings: world" on the iphone 16 series and announced that it will be launched on iphone 16 next year. this suggests that the relationship between apple and tencent is still very close.

"it's hard to build an empire, but it's even harder to keep it." over the past decade, cook has led apple to create one sales and market value legend after another. but in the eyes of the outside world, cook always lacks the innovation and passion that jobs possessed. perhaps he never pretended to be or intended to be jobs.

huawei vs apple

encounter on the same day

in a few hours, huawei will also hold the extraordinary brand ceremony and the hongmeng intelligent driving new product launch conference. it is rare for the two technology giants to choose to hold press conferences on the same day. in other words, huawei has chosen to confront apple head-on.

the last time the two held a press conference on the same day was in october 2018, when the huawei mate 20 series and iphone xr were released on the same day.

richard yu, huawei's executive director, chairman of the device bg, and chairman of the intelligent automotive solutions bu, said on weibo that huawei's most leading, innovative, and disruptive product is here. "this is an epoch-making product that others have thought of but cannot make. after five years of persistence and investment, we have turned science fiction into reality. this is huawei's pinnacle work, so stay tuned!"

as expected, the highlight of huawei's press conference will be the first three-fold screen mobile phone huawei mate xt extraordinary master. on the huawei mall official website, although there is no price for this new product, the number of people who have made reservations to buy it has reached nearly 3.3 million. this means that mate xt may reproduce the hot sales of the mate60 series, and it has even been regarded as the "new generation of electronic moutai".

of course, there are also controversial voices. some people think that apple has never won online, but never lost in sales, so people online only verbally support huawei and really buy apple. li nan, a former executive of meizu, posted several weibo posts in succession, saying that mobile phones thicker than 10mm are not easy to use, "design and technology have begun to pay attention to style instead of cost-effectiveness. this is a rare and serious and high-end pleasure for middle-aged men who are not short of money."

but it is undeniable that huawei once defeated apple. now in china, perhaps only huawei can beat apple.

looking back, during the three years when huawei was silent, no other domestic manufacturers could compete with apple, and the latter easily sat at the top of the chinese high-end market. however, during this period, apple seemed to be a little "unmotivated", and the iphone 14 launched in 2022 became the worst-selling model in apple's history.

last year, the huawei mate 60 series became a hit, which marked a good start for huawei's comeback. according to canalys data, huawei has regained the top spot in the domestic smartphone market in the first quarter of this year after 13 quarters, with a year-on-year growth of 70% to 11.7 million units and a market share of 17%; apple had the largest decline among the top five manufacturers, ranking fifth with 10 million units shipped, a year-on-year decrease of 25%.

apple is also well aware of the importance of the chinese market. in march this year, cook personally visited china to clearly express his determination to win the favor of chinese consumers. on social media, he shared food exploration trips, interacted with local celebrities, and participated in activities such as the opening of a new store in shanghai. obviously, he hopes that his charm offensive will be effective.

not only that, apple also gave the biggest price cut in history during the 618 shopping festival on e-commerce platforms this year. among them, the iphone 15 pro 1tb version has the largest discount in the tmall apple flagship store, which is directly reduced from the original price of 12,999 yuan to 10,699 yuan, a price difference of 2,300 yuan; the iphone 15 series in jd apple's self-operated store has a maximum discount of 2,350 yuan. it should be noted that in previous shopping festivals such as 618, apple's official channels did not participate in the event.

as yu chengdong said before, "no one in the world remembers the second, everyone remembers the first. the highest peak in the world is mount everest, what is the second highest peak? many people can't answer. if you want to have a future, you must focus on high-end products for end consumers."

this epic battle is about to begin.