Hyper Track | iPhone 16 Series: Pre-sale immediately breaks the price

Author: Zhou Yuan / Wall Street News

The iPhone 16 series will go on sale starting September 20th (models pre-ordered on third-party platforms will be delivered on September 20th). On September 13th, the iPhone 16 series models started pre-orders on platforms such as JD.com, Tmall, Pinduoduo, and the Apple official website.

On September 14th, the e-commerce pre-sale performance of the iPhone 16 series showed that the iPhone 16 Pro Max sold out instantly on multiple platforms.

However, this "highly popular" market performance is actually based on the premise of "price reduction as soon as the full series is released" (pre-sale price drop).

For example, on third-party platforms, the most popular iPhone 16 Pro Max 512GB version saw a price reduction as soon as it was launched (third-party platform subsidy), with a significant decrease of up to 1400 yuan per unit (on September 16th). On September 14th, news headlines such as "iPhone 16 Pro sales are cold" and "iPhone 16 series sees a maximum price drop of 1200 yuan" trended.

In other words, within just two days, the flagship models of the iPhone 16 series saw another price reduction of 200 yuan.

Tianfeng International analyst Guo Mingji, who had repeatedly expressed optimism about the market sales performance of the iPhone 16 series before its release, changed his tune on September 16th, stating that the sales of the iPhone 16 series were lower than expected.

In his report, Guo Mingji stated that the pre-order sales of the iPhone 16 series in the first weekend were approximately 37 million units, a decrease of about 12.7% compared to the iPhone 15 series during the same period in 2023, falling below Apple's expectations.

Guo Mingji believes that the main reason for the poor sales of the iPhone 16 series this year is the lower-than-expected demand for the iPhone 16 Pro series.

Wall Street News reviewed the sales structure of the iPhone 16 series models: approximately 17.3 million units of iPhone 16 Pro Max, 9.8 million units of iPhone 16 Pro pre-sold, 7.3 million units of iPhone 16, and only about 2.6 million units of iPhone 16 Plus.

It is evident that if the popularity of the iPhone 16 Pro Max declines, the sales of the iPhone 16 series will inevitably hit a new low; and as mentioned by Guo Mingji, the lower-than-expected demand for the iPhone 16 Pro series, which accounted for 27% of the 37 million pre-sale sales, could drag down the iPhone 16 series by 12.7% compared to the iPhone 15 series during the same period last year.

To be honest, Apple's iPhone 16 series started pre-sales only three days ago. Despite the price reduction on the first day of pre-sales, the sales volume reached a high of 37 million units in 3 days. If this achievement had been accomplished by Apple's competitors, it would not only be considered good but also a milestone achievement worth highlighting.

However, the market's expectations for Apple are evidently quite high. With the iPhone 16 series sales falling short of expectations, the capital market reacted swiftly: on September 16th, Apple (AAPL.US) fell by over 3.6%, closing at $214.40 (as of 9:33 PM on September 16th) If the sales of the iPhone 16 series in the Chinese market do not improve during the upcoming Double 11 period - according to IDC and Canalys' statistical reports, in the second quarter of this year, Apple's sales in the Chinese market accounted for 21.46% and 22.32% of the global market share respectively - then Apple will certainly adopt more favorable promotional policies.

According to Ming-Chi Kuo's prediction, Apple is likely already prepared: Apple will adopt a more aggressive product strategy to boost market demand by 2025.

What kind of product strategy will it be? Most likely, it will involve price reductions. Due to the attractiveness of Apple Intelligence applications, it is difficult to achieve a fundamental improvement in the short term.

Observers from the Chinese market even believe that during the Double 11 period, the Apple iPhone 16 series will most likely see another price reduction of a thousand yuan, because Apple Intelligence applications were not available to Chinese users in 2024, and the biggest selling point of the iPhone 16 series is Apple AI.

Without Apple Intelligence, the perceived experiential difference between the iPhone 16 series and its predecessors is minimal.

Today, Apple is losing the drive and ability to change the world with products as it did in the Steve Jobs era.

Tim Cook, as a top expert in the supply chain, has prioritized profit over the company's goals; from this perspective, Cook is somewhat similar to Apple's former CEO John Sculley (the professional manager famous for selling sugary water - Pepsi-Cola), as both have succumbed to market forces.

Sculley lacked innovation awareness, like most users in the market, he did not know what he really needed - since he had no ideas of his own, he succumbed to customers' explicit demands; whereas Steve's goal was to lead customers' implicit needs with new products and change the world - before Ford developed cars, the market only needed faster horse carriages.

As observed by Wall Street News before, the technological and application innovations of the Apple iPhone 16 series are lackluster, even the newly released A18 and A18 Pro do not have any special technological highlights, leaving only Tim Cook's self-indulgent self-praise.

For such Apple, market reactions and user acceptance indicate that if Apple lacks ambition again, the "Nokia moment" will come