iPhone demand is sluggish Apple is forced to adopt a series of rare marketing strategies

On the evening of December 4th, Beijing time, Bloomberg News quoted a number of people familiar with the matter as saying that due to the sluggish demand in the iPhone market, Apple (hereinafter referred to as "Apple") is adopting some marketing strategies that were rarely used before, trying to promote iPhone sales. increase.

One person familiar with the matter said that since October of this year, Apple executives have seconded some marketing staff from other projects to help boost iPhone sales. This means that after the iPhone XS has just been on the market for about a month, Apple has suffered from a downturn in market demand.

Since then, Apple has adopted a series of radical incentives to temporarily reduce the cost of the iPhone, hoping to boost its sales. Bloomberg said that for Apple, this is very rare, because in recent years, in order to increase revenue and profits, Apple has been raising the price of the iPhone.

According to people familiar with the matter, since last Sunday night, Apple has further increased the promotion of the iPhone, and launched a new banner on its official website. The iPhone XR is only sold for $499, which is $300 lower than the previous official price. Of course, such incentives are also conditional and require users to trade in the iPhone 7 Plus.

Since the signs of sluggish demand in the iPhone market in early October, the iPhone's market capitalization has shrunk by about 20%. On Monday, iPhone component supplier Cirrus Logic cut its revenue forecast by about 16%. Prior to this, at least four major iPhone component suppliers have lowered their performance expectations, namely Austrian optical sensor supplier AMS, iPhone screen supplier Japan Display, Face ID 3D sensor supplier Lumentum and RF chip supply. Qorvo.

Bloomberg said Apple's new marketing strategy may drive iPhone sales growth during the Christmas shopping season this season, but this may break a core reason why Wall Street analysts are still bullish on Apple: higher prices will make up for the downturn in sales.

Another person familiar with the matter said that Apple increased its efforts to trade-in last week, adding an additional $25 to $100 for the value of some of the old iPhones. At the same time, Apple retail store employees have been told in recent weeks that they should frequently introduce trade-in activities to customers.

In addition, since last week, several mobile operators in Japan have begun to cut the iPhone XR price through subsidies. In fact, there were reports on November 22 that Apple is preparing to provide subsidies to Japanese mobile operators to stimulate sales of the iPhone XR.