Chinese mobile phones have clearly risen, but why do many people still only buy iPhones when buying high-end phones?

According to the standards of the authoritative market research organization Counterpoint Research, from a global perspective, the core battlefield of high-end mobile phones is above 600 US dollars. To put it simply, we judge whether a mobile phone manufacturer has established a firm foothold in the high-end market by mainly looking at the market share of the 4,000 yuan price range or above.

Many people have overlooked the fact that Apple is the dominant player in the high-end market, with a market share that almost crushes all domestic mobile phone manufacturers. According to the market share data for April 2021 provided by "Anhuduhufu Changshi", in the 4,000-5,000 yuan market, Apple's advantage is not obvious, only about 32%. As for the remaining share, it is divided up by domestic mobile phone manufacturers.

We are all familiar with this price range. Mainstream domestic flagships such as Xiaomi 11, Huawei Mate40, and OnePlus 9 are all within this range. But when the price goes up further, we will find that the gap between domestic manufacturers and Apple is really obvious. In the price range of 5,000 yuan to 8,000 yuan, Apple's market share is 57.3%. Except for Huawei, other mobile phone manufacturers basically only have a fraction of Apple's.

What is more worth mentioning is that Apple almost controls the high-end market of more than 8,000 yuan, with a market share of 86.3% - what does this mean? In other words, the market share of Apple phones in the price range of more than 8,000 yuan is approximately equal to the position of the Windows operating system in the PC industry, which is close to a monopoly! The question is, domestic mobile phones have obviously risen collectively, why do many people buy high-end phones and still only focus on iPhones? In my opinion, there is actually only one reason: the gap in soft power.

If we talk about fast charging speed, screen refresh rate, and camera pixels, even if Apple waits until the iPhone 14, it will not be possible for it to surpass domestic mobile phones. The "selling point" of high-end Android phones is nothing more than crazy stacking of hardware. However, the real core technology cannot be bought. Even though it is already 2021, the theoretical performance of the Snapdragon 888, the top processor on the Android side, is only between the A12 and A13.

There is hardly any brand that can achieve the same level of perfection in the combination of software and hardware as Apple. Take the iPhone 6S as an example. A machine that has been released for 6 years, there are still a large number of die-hard users using it, and it can be upgraded to iOS 15. As for the Android flagship phone released in 2015, it has long been exchanged for an iron basin.

Secondly, the privacy and security of the iOS system has always been the benchmark in the industry. As we all know, Apple did not hesitate to offend major Internet companies around the world in iOS14.5, adding the "APP anti-tracking" function and returning the authority to users. Not only that, iOS15 can also record all activity records of the APP. After upgrading to iOS15 beta4, iCloud also added the "hide email address" function to protect privacy information in all aspects.

There is another piece of news that many people have overlooked. In June this year, Apple pushed iOS12.5.4 to older models such as iPhone 6 and iPhone 5S to update security patches and ensure device security. You know, iPhone 5S was released in 2013, when 4G networks were not yet popular. Let's not talk about the superiority of the iOS system. From the perspective of system maintenance, Apple really stands out.

For mobile phone manufacturers, hard power is the foundation, and soft power can make a difference. Of course, the advantages of the iOS system are far more than these three points, and here are just a few examples. After reading this, I believe everyone understands why the collective rise of domestic mobile phone manufacturers cannot affect the position of iPhone in the high-end market. Many people who buy high-end mobile phones are not short of money. Compared with hardware performance, they pursue "safe use" more.