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Image source / social platform
The scalpers did not expect that the price of the iPhone 14 series plunged so fast. “This should be the fastest price diving Apple mobile phone,” commented some mobile phone industry observers.
On September 16, the day the iPhone 14 series products were released, in just one day, the scalpers encountered Waterloo. Over the past few years, the price of the iPhone’s digital line has tended to break. Therefore, many scalpers focus their hype on the two products of the Pro series. In the morning, they will also pay a premium of two or three thousand “sweeping” iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max. In the evening, they can only pay a premium of two or three hundred, and they only charge certain models, diving several times in a day.
As of the evening of September 19, Shen Ran learned from a number of scalpers that the iPhone 14 was as expected, and the first sale was broken. The actual price of the scalpers was between 100 yuan and 500 yuan lower than the official price. Pro will soon no longer be in short supply. Only the price of the iPhone 14 Pro Max is still strong and can have some premiums, but the scalpers are only willing to increase their income by two or three hundred.
Why is the price of the iPhone 14 series diving so fast? They believe that the direct reason is that Apple has experienced a large number of early shipments. Some of them were originally expected to be shipped in half a month or even a month, but received the spot on the day of the first launch. In addition, the update of the iPhone 14 series products is not satisfactory, and the mobile phone market has encountered a cold winter. Consumers have tightened their wallets and spent more and more rationally.
In the past, the iPhone was like a financial product. If you grab it, you will earn it. The scalpers can make a lot of money by relying on the first launch period of the Apple mobile phone, but now, the era of scalpers relying on the Apple mobile phone to make a fortune is gradually over. The mobile phone market is cold in winter, and behind the broken iPhone 14, the chill is also hitting Apple.
The iPhone 14 can only be shot backwards, scalpers panic
“On the day the iPhone 14 was released, our company entered various models, with more than 300 units in total, but a loss of hundreds of thousands a day.” Luo Wen, a professional scalper from Huaqiangbei, told Shen Ran.
In the morning, the scalpers in Huaqiangbei are still frantically increasing the price and scanning the goods. Among them, the premium of the iPhone 14 Pro can be as high as nearly 2,000, and the premium of the iPhone 14 Pro Max can be as high as 3,000. However, the market is changing at any time. At noon, the scalpers discovered the change in the wind direction, and the price of sweeping goods fell sharply. At 2 pm, Luo Wen began to sigh with emotion: “It’s too miserable, it collapsed”, and also advised colleagues in the circle of friends to hurry up with the goods in their hands.
The oxen panicked. Under the turbulent market situation, some users even “harvested” scalpers at high prices. A user said that on the morning of the release day, he sold the two Pro series with an increase of 1800 yuan compared with the original price, and bought them back at an increase of 100 yuan compared with the original price in the afternoon of the next day, and finally made a net profit of 3400 yuan.
In the past, scalpers robbed mobile phones and sold them at high prices, but now users grab mobile phones and sell them to scalpers at high prices. Some people, after successful pre-orders, go to the offline store on the day of the first launch and sell the goods at a high price. If they cannot be sold, they can return them directly. However, after hoarding iPhones through various channels, the scalpers had no choice but to smash them in their hands if they couldn’t sell them. In short, the days of scalpers are getting worse and worse.
“Compared with last year, the price of the Pro series is diving faster this year.” Huang Can, the owner of the Apple store, told Shen Ran. In his impression, last year, about four or five days after the launch, the price of the Pro series began to dive, but this year, the price jumped two or three times on the first day.
On September 17, the second day of the launch, scalpers who were eager to sell the iPhone 14 set up stalls. Videos of stalls selling iPhones quickly became popular on the Internet. In these short videos of the stalls, bloggers have expressed that “Apple’s situation is not good this year”, “If you lose money, you will lose 10,000 or 20,000 yuan, and if you make money, you will only earn 100 or 200 yuan.”
Scavengers set up stalls to sell iPhone 14 Source/Social Platforms
According to the Qianjiang Evening News, on September 17, a “scalper” complained that he sold the iPhone 14 Pro Max at a price increase of 1,800 yuan on the day of the sale, and sold it for only 600 yuan the next day. Another “scalper” who claimed to be Brother Sun said that the iPhone 14 was posted at a loss of 100 yuan, the iPhone 14 Pro increased by 300 yuan, the 1T gold and white iPhone 14 Pro Max increased by 500 yuan, and black and dark purple increased by 600 yuan. “A few years ago, a mobile phone made five or six thousand, but now you dare to stay overnight and wait for a loss.”
Some people ridiculed the status of the scalpers on this day: “In the morning, the price will be increased by 2,000 yuan; at noon, the price will be increased by 1,500 yuan; in the afternoon, the price will be increased by 800 yuan; in the evening, the price will be increased by 300 yuan. Blocks are fine.”
As of the afternoon of September 19, Rowan was still selling at a loss, and his momentum was significantly weaker than the expected big fight. “This year’s market is too bad.” He claimed to be a “low-price sale”. The mobile phone that was recovered at a high price on the first day of sale can only be sold at a loss. As for whether he will become an apple scalper with such fanfare in the future, he has already begun to retire.
In addition to “reselling” the iPhone 14 and losing money, this year, many scalpers have also been tricked by the platform Yiliangou.
According to @小丽helped on Weibo, on September 14, Xiaokang, who claimed to be a mobile phone salesman, came to ask for help. He said that a few days ago, he snapped up more than a dozen iPhones on the Yiliangou applet, and paid a total of 158,000 Yuan, but the other party has not delivered the goods, and the customer service has not responded. There are many friends in the same situation as him. According to the registered address, he found that the company was in Chongqing, and Xiaokang also asked a friend to go to the site to verify, and found that the company was empty.
A user with a similar experience told Shen Ran that he ordered the iPhone 13 from the Yiliangou platform at the end of August and received it normally, but after the iPhone 14 was released on September 9, he ordered 4 more iPhones. However, none of the 13 series products and 4 iPhone 14 series products have been shipped, and the money of more than 60,000 yuan will not be returned. At present, the police have been reported.
It was announced on the Internet that Yiliangou ran away, and the person in charge of Youle Shopping told the media that “this is fake”
Netizens reported that Yiliangou had been operating normally for more than a month, and after expanding the user pool, it was time for the release of the iPhone 14, and the volume ran away.
The bleak market and arrogant liars made this year the worst year for scalpers to be tricked.
Why did the iPhone 14 become a “cow-killing assassin”?
The era of scalpers making huge profits is passing.
Recalling that in 2010, when the iPhone 4, Apple’s masterpiece, was released, scalpers had already begun to speculate on mobile phones like speculating in futures, stockpiling and shipping products by judging future price increases. At that time, the price of a mobile phone with an original price of 4,000 to 5,000 yuan was directly doubled, and it was not uncommon for it to be hyped up to tens of thousands of yuan.
In recent years, although the iPhone is not as hard to find as it used to be. After the first release period, the market supply will become more and more abundant, and the premium will gradually disappear. However, there are still many people who are reluctant to line up and hope that the product will be released once it is released. You can use the new products yourself, and you are willing to pay a premium for your favorite color scheme and preferred memory capacity. Therefore, scalpers have been living well. Last year, there were also scalpers who earned more than 300,000 in two months with the iPhone 13 series.
But I didn’t expect that many scalpers had a big somersault with the iPhone 14 wave. In the early morning of the day the iPhone 14 was released, Rowan was still communicating with his peers. Last year, he made hundreds of thousands of dollars from the iPhone 13 series, but he did not expect that the iPhone 14 would make him lose blood.
The business of scalpers is getting more and more difficult. Rowan believes that the most important reason is that there are a large number of spot products in the market. The iPhone 14 series products ordered by many users were shipped one to two weeks in advance. In his opinion, scalpers have been placed by Apple this year.
On social platforms, “Apple’s early shipment” has also become one of the hot topics in iPhone 14-related topics. Some users said that they originally expected to ship the iPhone 14 Pro from September 22 to 27, but they received it early on September 17. Some users have found that they can directly “picked up” to buy the iPhone 14 in stock when they go to the offline store.
Some analysts believe that the optimization of Apple’s production capacity has led to a large number of spot products in the market, leaving the time for Apple scalpers to make money from the price difference is getting shorter and shorter.
Product upgrades failed to meet user expectations, which also affected users’ enthusiasm for this iPhone. As early as the day of Apple’s conference, users have found that this year’s iPhone product update is not very obvious. The most significant change is that the performance gap between the digital series and the Pro series has widened further.
The senior product manager judge believes that the users of the iPhone digital product line and the user group of the Pro and Pro Max product lines are no longer a group. The former demand is, “I want to buy an iPhone”; while the latter demand is, “I want to buy a good camera phone”.
Apple’s official website Smart Island VS users using Smart Island
The upgrades to the digital series are unattractive, and neither is the upgrade to the Pro series. Even Smart Island, which surprised users the most at the time, was ridiculed as a seller’s show and a buyer’s show before and after the release, which became a major slot. The Smart Island was very smooth at the press conference. After the user got it, they found out that Smart Island is not a status bar, and it is not compatible with many softwares such as WeChat and Tencent Video. Many users complained that “Smart Island is the largest cattle slaughtering farm”.
In addition, in 2022, with repeated epidemics and economic downturn, users will become more rational in purchasing mobile phones at higher prices.According to data, the current average replacement cycle for domestic users is 28-31 months, and the user’s replacement motivation is declining. A user who pays attention to Apple’s conference every year and changes his phone every year before the release of the iPhone XR asked himself a few questions after the release of the iPhone 14, “Why do I want to buy it”, “Is the current phone still available? Use”, “Is it easy to replace a new machine”.
After careful consideration, she found that she was actually changing the phone just for the sake of freshness. After the iPhone 14 was updated, the improvement in battery life, pixels, chips, and memory was just the icing on the cake for her current self. Expenses, although affordable, but still reluctant. After comprehensive consideration, she gave up this replacement.
Chill, hit Apple?
After the release of the iPhone 14, pre-sale was very popular. After the appointment was opened, according to Apple Insider, the high demand for the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max in the Chinese market caused Apple’s servers to crash, and consumers booked more than 2 million units within 24 hours.
A recent research report from CITIC Securities stated that it is optimistic about the sales of the iPhone 14 series this year. Apple is expected to ship 230 million units globally in 2022, and the iPhone 14 series will sell about 83.5 million units in 2022. Among the four models of the iPhone 14 series, the two models of the iPhone 14 Pro series this year are obviously more popular with users than the digital series.
However, this year, Apple adjusted its product strategy, widened the performance gap between the standard version and the Pro version, and wanted to use the standard version as an entry-level product, and it is also carefully observing the feedback from the market.
In 2022, the mobile phone industry is in the midst of a cold winter. Both the global and the Chinese market, smartphone shipments in the first and second quarters are declining. In the first half of this year, major mobile phone manufacturers have cut orders. The China Academy of Information and Communications Technology‘s recently updated July domestic mobile phone market report showed that shipments were 19.908 million units, down 30.6% year-on-year.
Under the cold winter of the market, the owners of Apple mobile phone stores also felt the chill.Huang Can mentioned that users have begun to pay attention to careful planning. Since the launch, the year-on-year sales of the iPhone 14 series in his store have declined compared with the same period after the release of the iPhone 13 last year. “Customers who used to be rich and rich are now starting to make money. I used to be able to make money, but this year they are thinking about how to buy it in a cost-effective way. The bosses are waiting for the price to drop.”
Tianfeng International analyst Ming-Chi Kuo believes that Apple’s product segmentation strategy for standard models this year has failed.
The iPhone 14 offline pre-order survey he released showed that pre-orders of Apple’s high-end products were more popular in the early days. In China, the iPhone 14 Pro series accounted for about 85% of orders, and the iPhone 14 Plus was only about 5%. The pre-order results for the new iPhone 14 Plus were significantly lower than expected.
He also pointed out that it is unclear whether Apple will increase its Pro model shipment forecast, and that Apple will make a decision based on how long the strong demand for Pro models can last during a recession. But the chances of the Phone 14 and 14 Plus being cut off are increasing.
With technological innovation in a bottleneck period, the competition among mobile phone manufacturers is no longer a technological arms race, but a real business, and it is a zero-sum game.
When the product itself cannot motivate users to generate consumption impulses, it is also difficult for users to continue to pay. Optimizing the product mix, taking the inflexible Smart Island as a bright spot, Apple’s product updates seem to be exhausted. Even many senior fruit fans believe that there is no need to chase new models of Apple mobile phones now, and you can replace them with new ones when you use them.
Sun Yanbiao, chairman of Chaodian Think Tank, once told Shen Ran that the iPhone 14’s hot sales cycle may last for about 5 months, and it is not easy for Apple to reproduce the highlights of last year’s iPhone 13 in the Chinese market.
However, the iPhone 14 has already been put together by scalpers. As for the shipment volume, whether it will be strong, whether it is “really fragrant” or “unfinished”, we will wait for Apple’s third-quarter financial report.
*The title image is from Apple’s official website. At the request of the interviewee, Luo Wen and Huang Can are pseudonyms in the text.