The Chinese market has become an apple "rescue"

On Wednesday, January 24 (Beijing time, January 24), Apple released the financial report for the first quarter of fiscal year 2013. Although the financial report data shows that Apple set a new record for revenue and iPhone, iPad product sales, but Apple's stock price plunged nearly 11% in after-hours trading.

The financial report showed that Apple's revenue for the quarter was US$54.512 billion, an increase of 17.7% year-on-year; net profit was US$13.078 billion, a year-on-year increase of 0.1%. This is the first time in almost a decade that Apple's profits have grown almost. However, the performance in Greater China was eye-catching, with revenues of US$6.83 billion, an increase of 67% from US$4,080 million in the same period of last year.

“We think that sales in China will continue to be higher than the average value in other regions of the world. In a weak growth global market, China will become a life-saving straw for Apple.” Forrest Chief Analyst Wang Ping told the First Financial Daily that this is In the round of data, China's growth rate is close to 70%, which is the only area that has grown by more than 30% year-on-year.

Can Apple continue to grow? Apple CEO Tim Cook feels pressure: Since 2003, in addition to a quarter, Apple's quarterly profit growth has exceeded 10%, the first quarter net profit of 0.1% of low growth means Apple has already bid farewell to the era of profit growth. In the coming quarters, Apple may usher in a negative growth in net profit.

Market analysts said that during the quarter Apple’s iPhone sales reached a record-breaking 47.8 million units, a 29% increase from the same period last year, but the gross margin narrowed from 44.7% to 38.6%.

Apple's CFO Oppenheimer responded to the question of gross profit in a conference call: “There are two factors that can improve the gross profit margin in the future: First, our team has made significant contributions in reducing product and transitional costs, so We expect to see more earnings in the March quarter. Second, we expect to achieve a more typical deferred revenue level in equipment sales. We think these two major factors will offset the decline in gross margin."

The wait-and-see mood in the market is still strong, and the core of the debate is whether investors believe that Apple's performance can continue to grow.

Some investors said that Apple is now very large, which has caused many investors who are looking for revenue growth and stock prices to lose interest in it. Although its P/E ratio is only 10 times lower than the average P/E ratio of the S&P 500 constituents, many value investors still feel that it is not cheap enough.

Cooke said on the conference call: "The most important thing for Apple is to provide the best products in the world and improve the user experience. This is our highest mission. This means that we are not aware of all the things that make money. Interest. We want to provide the best products, so what does this mean for market share? We can do this, we have achieved outstanding results on different models, different pricing of the iPod, and also obtained a reasonable share."

The significance of the Chinese market In this financial report, Apple first released its own revenue data for Greater China. The financial report shows that revenue in Greater China increased by 67% year-on-year. This is a signal that Cook released again after his visit to China this month. The Chinese market is becoming the core of Apple's breakthrough bottleneck.

Although revenues in Greater China are lower than in the Americas and Europe, the growth rate far exceeds that of Apple's other global markets. Cooke once told Chinese media that China is now the second largest market for Apple (referring to the country), and it will become Apple's largest market in the future. In the future, Cook will tap the Chinese market by narrowing and eliminating the Chinese parallel market, enhancing localization services and accelerating channel expansion.

“Our revenue in the Greater China region (including Apple’s retail stores) was US$7.3 billion in this quarter, and revenue increased by 60% compared to the same period of last year. This is incredibly high, and this year’s reduction from 14 weeks to 13 compared to last year Week, so the actual growth is even higher.” Cook said that although they released the iPad (new product) last December, they still see very good growth rates.

Cooke said that Apple will open more stores in China and find more quality distributors. “This year has exceeded 400, compared with just over 200 in the same period last year; in addition, we have increased the iPhone’s sales point from 7,000 to 17,000 in China.”

Recently there is also news that Apple's low-priced iPhone will start soon, priced at around 2,000 yuan.

Cook did not make a positive response, but he also admitted that Apple had previously used different pricing strategies to achieve success. "We have a very successful historical experience in this area. The iPod has different price points and this has also gained a considerable market share."

“Low prices are the most rapid and effective damage to the brand. In the iPhone product line, I think Apple would rather put the market share behind the gross profit margin and enjoy the huge high profit brought by the brand.” Some analysts told reporters Said that if Apple really launched a low-cost mobile phone, it would damage the brand.

Recently, a person from the upstream factory area told reporters that Apple could quickly reduce the cost by replacing the materials on the back of the mobile phone with cheap materials, and the factory had similar product research and development, but it was unclear whether it would be used by the iPhone in the future.

Wang Ping believes that the iPhone 4 and 4s currently play a large role in the low-cost iPhone version in China. “As far as we know, the current iPhone 4 is still in greater demand among consumers in the second and third tier markets. Therefore, Apple will definitely continue to increase its expansion in the second and third tier markets. But the monitored data point of view, Apple's channel dealers The growth in performance last year was mainly in the first-tier cities. We think there may be some breakthroughs this year."