Apple's large-screen iPhone: a passive upgrade without innovation

Leaked blunder

The last time an Apple product was exposed so thoroughly was when an iPhone 4 was lost in a bar four years ago. The exposure of the engineering machine bought by the technology media Gizmodo brought huge traffic, but also led to Apple banning it for several years. This time, Apple's "good teammates" came from Chinese operators. From pictures to parameters to the real machine, two iPhone 6s were almost nakedly displayed to the world before the launch conference.

The complete leak has made this most important annual Apple event lose most of its suspense, and the new iPhone is only a routine introduction of product parameters. If there is no smartwatch release, this may be the most boring event Apple has held in recent years. The only surprise is that the iPhone 6 is not available in mainland China for the first time, and the Chinese operators who were too busy to accept pre-orders were given a cold shower.

If Apple cannot be blamed for the leak by its "good teammates", then the blunder in the simultaneous interpretation during the official website live broadcast of the press conference made Apple feel embarrassed. The simultaneous interpretation in multiple languages ​​was originally considerate, but due to the problem of voice settings, the Chinese simultaneous interpretation voice lingered for half an hour, and the volume was even higher than that of the Apple speaker, allowing Apple fans around the world to appreciate the beauty of Chinese pronunciation. Watching foreign Apple fans complain about Apple's partiality to the Chinese market, there is a strange joy.

Yes, the complete leak made the Apple conference lose its surprise and turned it into a happy complaining show. Of course, disappointment is disappointment, but it will not affect the sales of Apple products at all. Because Apple still has advantages in the combination of software and hardware that other manufacturers can hardly match. It’s just that Apple’s belated large-screen iPhone is more like a passive upgrade rather than an active subversion.

Passive concession

After three years of stubborn resistance, Apple finally couldn't stand the market trend and joined the trend of large-screen smartphones led by Samsung. After all, three years ago, when smartphones were generally less than 4 inches, it was Samsung that first predicted the large-screen trend of mobile Internet and popularized the 5-inch large-screen mobile phone with the Note series.

With the continuous development of mobile Internet technology and applications, smartphones have become the most commonly used computing devices for consumers. Large-screen mobile phones have undisputed advantages in browsing the Internet, inputting text, reading news, playing mobile games, and watching videos. From high-end Samsung and HTC to mid-range Huawei and Xiaomi to low-end Honor and Redmi, the entire smartphone industry has joined this trend, except for Apple.

Of course, the bigger the smartphone screen, the better. However, 4.7-5.5 inches is a size that most people think is balanced. Nowadays, smartphone screens are basically above 5 inches. In order to avoid being left behind by the market, even the most stubborn Apple has to follow the trend and gradually open up to the voices of users. The iPhone 5 in 2012 was enlarged to 4 inches, and the iPhone 6 in 2014 was further increased to 4.7 and 5.5 inches. The powerful Apple is also making concessions little by little.

Jobs believed that a 3.5-inch screen that can be operated with one hand was the best size, and Apple has always believed in his philosophy: do not conduct market research and believe that consumers don't know what they want. But as the previous rapid growth began to slow down, Apple, which was at its peak, also faced performance pressure and was forced to make changes.

Although Apple has achieved huge sales success with its small-screen iPhone, it has not significantly affected its market share. However, with Apple's technical strength, it could have released a 4.7-inch iPhone two or three years ago and taken the lead in the large-screen market. Now it can only passively make adjustments and become a follower of Samsung. The iPhone 6 only has a passive screen upgrade, but no technological innovation that is ahead of the industry.

Competing with Samsung

Of course, being late is not a big problem. Compared with Google's Android platform, Apple's mobile operating system still has certain advantages. The gradually open iOS 8 has made up for some of the inherent defects of the previous iPhone compared to Android. Even if the large-screen iPhone is late, even if there is no major upgrade, there is no doubt that the iPhone 6 is a hot seller.

iPhone has a very loyal user base. Even if they complain that Apple is slow to release a large-screen phone, most of them are still waiting. For iPhone 4s and iPhone 5 users whose contracts have expired, upgrading to the large-screen iPhone 6 is a natural thing to do. The user base of these two generations of products provides a solid sales guarantee for the iPhone 6. As long as the purchase support of this part of users is obtained, the sales of the iPhone 6 will at least not be lower than that of the iPhone 5s.

In today's smartphone industry, the mid-to-low-end market below 3,000 yuan has become a fierce red ocean for Chinese manufacturers, and the large-screen iPhone cannot affect this user group. At least in the next two years, Apple's real competitor will still be Samsung in the high-end market, especially the competition between the 5.5-inch iPhone 6+ and the Samsung Note 4. According to the current pricing rules, the actual price of the iPhone 6+ will reach 6,300 yuan, which may be 1,000 yuan higher than the Note 4.

In order to cope with the competition from the large-screen iPhone, Samsung has invested a lot of money in Note 4 and brought out the best technology available. Although Apple has an advantage in industrial design and operating system, it does not have much chance of winning in hardware parameters. Samsung also has down-to-earth designs such as Micro-SD card expansion and replaceable batteries. It is worth mentioning that Apple is very confident in only equipping the 5.5-inch iPhone 6+ with 1GB of RAM (Note 4 has 3GB). In the face of the continuous emergence of large-screen adaptation applications (especially games) in the future, how the iPhone 6+ will perform remains to be measured.

Look at mobile payments

Perhaps the most noteworthy highlight of this year's Apple conference is the mobile payment function based on NFC technology. Although Apple Senior Vice President Schiller once publicly denied the prospects of NFC technology, the small-screen iPad and large-screen iPhone both show Apple's increasingly practical attitude.

Mobile payment is the most promising technology field at present. In the US market alone, there are 200 million card swipe services every day, with a transaction amount of US$12 billion. Veteran manufacturers PayPal, Internet giant Google, and emerging company Square are all competing for offline merchants and users with their respective advantages, hoping to seize the market opportunity. Although Apple was the last to launch mobile payment, they have accumulated greater advantages in this field.

800 million iTunes users are the cornerstone of Apple's mobile payment. Last year, Apple's single application sales reached 10 billion US dollars. These users have already bound their credit card information, which provides convenient conditions for the popularization of Apple payment. Moreover, compared with users of other Android manufacturers, Apple users have a more unified technical experience and are more inclined to use Apple's new technology.

Although iCloud vulnerabilities were recently exposed, Apple's system security is still higher than that of the fragmented Android camp, making it easier to gain user trust. Apple's iBeacon technology also provides more convenient possibilities for developing location-based marketing for offline merchants. If Apple can provide reliable and easy-to-use mobile payment services for hundreds of millions of iPhone users, then compared with the competitive prospects of iPhone in the high-end market, mobile payment is more likely to become Apple's new explosive market.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.