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there is a widely circulated story about newton: an apple hit newton on the head, which led him to discover the law of universal gravitation, thus opening the curtain of classical physics.

later, on april 27, 1900, the famous british physicist william thomson pointed out that "the beautiful and clear sky of the dynamic theory is shrouded by two dark clouds," "the first dark cloud appears in the wave theory of light," and "the second dark cloud appears in the maxwell-boltzmann theory of energy equipartition.

these are the two dark clouds hanging over the head of well-known classical physics. more than a hundred years later, apple is also facing several dark clouds.

dark cloud 1: apple’s ai progress is slow

the first dark cloud for apple is the slow progress of ai. the theme of this year's apple fall conference was glowtime, but in fact, there was hardly any glowtime in the entire conference.

in this year's iphone update, apple spent a lot of effort to promote apple ai, and even claimed that ai brought a "new era" to the iphone. apple ceo cook even singled out apple intelligence before introducing the iphone 16, saying that "the new generation of iphone is built from the ground up for apple intelligence."

however, apple has already announced the specific functions of apple intelligence in detail at wwdc in june this year. now, three months later, apple intelligence on iphone 16 has not brought more new features. and it will take a long time to land globally.

simply put, the ai ​​functions of iphone 16 are mainly in text generation, picture generation, intelligent notification management, and the new siri that integrates the ai ​​big model, etc. in short, in terms of ai capabilities alone, iphone 16 is not outstanding. its advantage lies mainly in its high integration with the mobile phone. for example, you can generate a greeting email directly in the mailbox without having to go to a third-party ai to generate it and then copy it to the mailbox.

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."

dark cloud 2: apple tax still unresolved

the second dark cloud facing apple is the apple tax. the so-called "apple tax" is not an actual tax, but refers to the channel share, which is the profit that apple mobile phones get from game users recharging or purchasing virtual digital services in the app store through commission. according to users of various platforms, the share ratio of the apple app store is usually 15% to 30%.

recently, the news that "iphone 16 may not support wechat" and "apple or wechat" has continued to ferment on social media platforms. with the launch of the wechat ios version update, the rumor of "apple or wechat" has collapsed on its own, and it also clarified the previous false speculation that apple and tencent's business competition is intensifying and apple may remove wechat.

looking back, the reason why this incident caused such a stir is that both apple and wechat are not without motivation to tear each other apart.

let's first look at apple. 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.

and it suffered a setback in the chinese market. the financial report disclosed that among the five major regions, the 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. this is also the fourth consecutive quarter that apple's sales in greater china have declined year-on-year. data shows that apple's sales in greater china in the third fiscal quarter were us$14.728 billion, a 6.5% decline from us$15.758 billion in the same period last year.

therefore, as apple's sales revenue in china continues to decline, apple has become more jealous of the revenue from small programs in the wechat ecosystem, which is undoubtedly a huge potential source of revenue.

for wechat, if apple tax is imposed on wechat's mini-game ecosystem, it will harm the ecosystem it has accumulated over the years and the small and medium-sized developers who rely on it for survival.

and from a historical perspective, wechat and apple had a confrontation as early as 2017. at that time, wechat announced that it would shut down the "appreciation" function of the ios version of wechat public platform after long negotiations failed because apple demanded a 30% commission. the two giants collided head-on, and countless spectators gathered for a while.

but as ma huateng led a team to visit apple, the two giants called off the battle and embarked on the road to reconciliation. shortly after ma huateng and others met with cook, apple adjusted its rules to allow users to give monetary gifts, also known as "rewards"; apple did not take a commission, but third parties could not take a commission either. in january of the following year, tencent restored the "reward" function.

but until a specific solution is announced, no one will know whether there will be another confrontation between apple and wechat.

dark cloud 3: consumers’ thresholds are getting higher and higher

the third dark cloud facing apple is that consumers’ thresholds are getting higher and higher. it is becoming increasingly difficult for manufacturers to provide consumers with an upgraded experience through regular updates, and even apple is no exception.

the last iphone that amazed people at first sight was the iphone x, which was released seven years ago. this was apple's first phone with a notch screen design, and the background was the full-screen revolution in the smartphone industry. after that, the updates to the iphone's appearance were mainly focused on color matching and camera layout.

every year, apple tries to add a few "firsts" to its new iphone. for example, the iphone 15 series uses a type-c interface, supports usb 3.0 specifications for the first time, and has faster transmission speeds. in recent years, new iphones have also routinely promoted the "newer, faster and stronger" a series and m series chips.

this is basically the product iteration philosophy of the iphone in the cook era - small but steady. after taking office, cook overturned the disruptive innovation product concept advocated by jobs, focusing the company on supply chain security for chips, display screens, etc., and committed to pushing the efficiency of the company's business areas to the extreme.

cook believes that in a rapidly changing technology market, if overly radical or "one-step" technological innovations are used, although they may seem shocking, they may be coldly received because they exceed current market demand. cook's business philosophy cleverly transforms the "unpredictability" in apple's "innovation is king" strategy into a "predictable" growth model. under cook's business model, apple's profit margin expectations, cost control, and revenue growth rate can be stably predicted, which is why apple in the cook era is favored by capital.

conclusion: apple needs new excitement

regardless of whether it is the slow progress of ai, the consumption threshold, or the pending apple tax, they all reflect one problem: apple's products are not that amazing or irreplaceable.

on the one hand, the space for innovation in smartphones is getting smaller and smaller; on the other hand, apple's slowing pace of innovation has weakened the value perception of its product updates by some consumers. in the future, whether apple can break through the growth bottleneck by relying on new categories such as the upcoming ar/vr devices has become a focus of attention.

it can be said that apple is now at a crossroads again.

source: the paper