Why does it seem that Apple is getting cheaper and cheaper, while Android is getting more expensive? What is the reason?

It is just an illusion that Apple products are becoming cheaper. Apple itself is the culprit that drives up the prices of mobile phones.

Android is becoming more and more expensive, which is a correct strategic model. Android manufacturers have finally learned how to make better mobile phones.

Apple's price increase strategy

Why is it said that Apple has driven the price growth of the entire mobile phone industry? Here we give two examples: storage capacity and full screen.

How much storage capacity should you buy when buying a mobile phone? It has always been a mysterious question. Some people say 64G is enough, some say 128G is enough, and some say 256G is enough. However, behind the entire consumer behavior is the marketing routine led by Apple.

In the past, in the era of iPhone 4s, the storage capacity versions were 16G and 32G. For a while, Apple also launched the crazy 8G version of iPhone 4, which was much cheaper and was quite popular among some consumers.

• The first trick was that Apple suddenly cancelled the 32G configuration at a certain point in time and raised the price to upgrade to 64G. There were only 16G and 64G machines on the market. At this time, for 32G consumers, they could only spend more money to buy the 64G version.
• The second time, Apple canceled 16G, retained 32G, and added 128G. At this time, 16G users can only spend more money to upgrade to 32G, while 64G users are likely to choose 128G.
• The third time, Apple cancelled 32G and 128G, leaving only 64G and 256G. At this time, users who used 64G and 128G in the past only have 256G of capacity to choose from, which naturally costs more.

After three shuffles, many users spent more money to buy 128G and 256G models, but found that they could not use up all the storage even if they used the phone until it was scrapped... You spend more money to buy something you will never use. This is Apple.

When did the iPhone price increase? The first time was when the iPhone 5s was replaced by the iPhone 6. The increase in screen size naturally led to an increase in hardware costs, so raising the price was an inevitable choice. For this reason, Apple also launched a small-sized iPhone se and a cheap version of the iPhone 5c to lower the price.

The real price increase is in the iPhone X series. When Apple released it in 2017, the price of iPhone X was close to 10,000 yuan. However, Apple, being cunning, launched the iPhone 8 series to ensure sales. However, judging from the market reaction, the iPhone X, which was priced at nearly 10,000 yuan, sold well, directly pushing Apple's market value into 1 trillion US dollars...

As a result, in 2018, the prices of Xs and Xs Max directly exceeded 10,000 yuan. Of course, this is the choice of consumers. If the sales of iPhone X were not ideal at that time, Apple would not have raised the price so aggressively. It should be said that from this time on, Apple, as a benchmark company for global smartphones, successfully raised the price from around 6,000 yuan in the past to 9,000 yuan.

What followed was the price increase of Samsung and Huawei. In 2019, the price of Samsung's flagship Note 10+ reached 8,000 yuan, and that of Huawei reached 7,000 yuan.

Android manufacturers are beginning to learn how to make bucket phones

In the past, Android companies, especially domestic companies, although cheap, all made long-term machines. They either focused on performance, photography, screen, music or other messes. Each has its own strengths, but also its own weaknesses... Either occupy the market through cost-effectiveness, or harvest users through advertising and offline channels.

However, since 2018, there has been a clear change, because the mobile phone market has become a zero-sum game. Instead of occupying each other's market, the only way to survive is to grab each other's users. At this time, only by making bucket phones can you have a chance to survive. And only by impacting the high-end market and making machines that really make money instead of selling in large quantities can you get more cash flow.

Therefore, in 2020, the flagship phones of Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo are all water-cooler phones, especially the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro and OPPO Find X2 Pro. They all use Samsung's best high-resolution + high-refresh screens, rank in the top three in the world in the DXO rankings for photography, have full memory, full storage chips, fast charging, large batteries, linear motors, dual speakers, WIFI-6, and everything they need. In Samsung's words, "Whether you need it or not, I'll give it to you first."

In this way, the best materials are used, and the overall price is naturally raised. This year, the starting price of Android flagship phones has reached 4,000 yuan, and many have reached more than 7,000 yuan. In 2018, any manufacturer who dares to do this will be doomed.

However, there are many sales tricks behind the scenes, such as giving away a lot of gifts, opening up old-for-new services, such as the 10 billion subsidy policy of some platforms, and adopting a model of interest-free installments up to 24 periods. In short, although the price has increased, the purchase threshold for consumers has not increased, but has been reduced a lot. The price of iPhone 11 has reached less than 4,500 yuan under the e-commerce subsidy. If you apply for a 24-period interest-free service on the official website, you can still pay more than 200 yuan per month for personal use... That is the price of drinking one less bottle of beverage a day.

Is the price change sustainable?

What consumers are most concerned about is whether this trend of price changes will continue.

Apple has launched the 2020 iPhone SE series, with the selling price lowered to 3,299 yuan, which is cheaper than the selling price of many Android flagship machines... Obviously, in the face of the global economic downturn and the Android camp's crazy attack on the high-end market, Apple has chosen to launch models with lower thresholds to harvest those consumers who want to buy iPhones but have not bought them because of the high price. At least in this way, Apple will not hand in a bad answer sheet in terms of market share in 2020.

Can this approach continue? It is difficult. If Apple launches an iPhone similar to the iPhone XR and lowers the price to 3,000 yuan, such a machine will be the core driving force for Apple to seize the Android market. Unfortunately, the iPhone SE launched by Apple cuts off all the functions and configurations that should have been available, and combines all the things that were launched from 2014 to 2019 and should have been eliminated in 2020 into one machine...

For Apple, such a machine can only boost sales, but cannot generate huge profits like in the past. What will happen after the price of 3,299 yuan? Will the price continue to be pushed down?

What about Android manufacturers? The problem after the price increase is whether they can use products to retain existing users. For example, Xiaomi's users used to be a group of consumers who pursued cost-effectiveness. Xiaomi has high configuration and low price. Putting aside the actual experience, at least the configuration is full of sincerity. The same configuration sold by other companies for 4,000 yuan, Xiaomi sells for 2,000 yuan. This is Xiaomi's competitiveness.

Now the price has risen to 4,000-5,000. What is being tested is the actual experience of Xiaomi products, and even more so, Xiaomi's control over the supply chain after the price increase. In the past, it would cost 1 billion to stock 1 million units, but now it may cost 2 billion or even 3 billion to stock 1 million units.

If you don’t have enough money, you can’t control the supply chain, you can’t get the best parts, you can’t make the best quality products, and you can’t even have a stable supply. Ultimately, the flagship machine is still in great demand... In the past, consumers rushed to buy it because it was cost-effective. Now that it’s no longer cost-effective, will consumers still wait for you and not choose other brands at the same price of 5,000 yuan?

In summary, Apple's increasingly cheaper products are just an illusion, and they are "electronic waste" launched to grab market share; Android's more expensive products depend on whether they can gain a firm foothold in the market with their products and control the supply chain with high prices. If they can't do that, they will eventually have to return to the stage of cost-effectiveness. In 2020, for mobile phone manufacturers, each of them is crossing into areas that they have never reached before.