Before the press conference, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun described Apple's situation: Apple's total market value exceeds 400 trillion yen (19.82 trillion yuan), the world's largest, equivalent to more than 60% of Japan's GDP. But recently its total market value fell by about $190 billion in two days, "1.8 Sonys lost in two days."
India's New Delhi TV commented on the 12th that "competition is hovering in the world's largest company by market value", and it will have to face competition from Huawei, which began selling Mate 60 Pro last week, which uses chips made by China itself. Huawei also hopes to gain an edge with features such as satellite calls. Reuters also said that Apple must deal with competition from Huawei.
In recent years, Huawei has been unable to launch new phones that support the latest wireless technology due to U.S. sanctions, and the lack of competitors has made Apple's iPhone the top-selling smartphone in China in recent quarters. But with Huawei's return, the first Mate 60 Pro phones sold out within hours, and the Huawei Mate X5 sold out in seconds. Hua 'an Securities Research report believes that Huawei is expected to regroup in the mobile phone market and achieve a full return of high-end mobile phone business. This also means that Apple's dominant advantage in the high-end market is being challenged by Huawei, and Huawei is likely to regain the users it lost to Apple earlier in the Chinese market. The Wall Street Journal also reported on the 12th that Huawei's new phone will put Apple under greater pressure in China's high-end smartphone market.
At the end of August, Huawei raised its 2023 mobile phone shipment target to 40 million units, a significant increase of 10 million units from the 30 million level set at the beginning of the year.
Fang Xingdong, executive director of the International Communication Research Center of Zhejiang University and director of the Wuzhen Digital Civilization Research Institute, told the Global Times reporter on the 12th that although there is a certain pressure on Huawei's supply chain to support such hot sales, as long as the United States does not intervene in the market by political means to ensure the fairness and justice of the market, then by 2024, Huawei mobile phone shipments of 60 million should be no problem, even a more conservative number.
Bloomberg said that the slowdown in global demand for smart phones is also a crisis facing Apple's new product conference. The entire smartphone industry has been in a funk this year, with slow sales of Apple's biggest revenue source, the iPhone, dragging down the company's overall revenue, which is expected to fall this year for the first time since 2019.
In addition, Apple has not officially announced any current hot generative artificial intelligence (AI) research and development plans. Analysts have repeatedly urged Apple to make plans to develop such technology, but the company has given few hints beyond CEO Tim Cook's statement in July that they were increasing funding for research and development.
