Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

In 2022, which just ended, Apple, in its heyday, was caught in a round of trouble.

Recently, Apple released its report for the first quarter of fiscal 2023 (corresponding to the fourth quarter of 2022). According to the data, Apple's revenue for the quarter was $117.15 billion, down 5.48% from a year earlier; net profit was $29.998 billion, down 13.38% from a year earlier, and revenue and net profit growth declined. It is understood that this is Apple's first revenue decline in four years, and the decline is the highest since September 2016.

A year ago, Apple's market capitalization was as high as $3 trillion. However, due to multiple factors such as the exchange rate and the decline in iPhone sales, the company's market capitalization has fallen frequently, falling below $2 trillion at the beginning of the year. At the same time, news such as the loss of core executives and the failure of communication chip research and development have also attracted frequent attention from the outside world.

A series of problems at Apple are gradually being put into the spotlight.

According to the revenue structure of the financial report, Apple's revenue from services and iPad increased in the first quarter of fiscal 2023, while revenue from iPhone, Mac and wearables, home and accessories all declined compared with the same period last year. Among them, iPhone smartphone revenue fell 8.17% year-on-year, Apple's "cash cow" business declined seriously.

According to the previous financial data and Apple product line, Apple's launch period is generally in the third and fourth quarter. After all, iPhone and iPad, the main shipping force, began to ship on a large scale around October. It can even be said that Apple's performance in the third and fourth quarter determines Apple's performance throughout the year. But according to apple's earnings report, iPhone's revenue for the quarter was only $65.775 billion, down 8% from $71.628 billion a year earlier, the only time iPhone has lost in recent years.

The decline in revenue from its core business is becoming the main reason why Apple's market performance is not as good as expected. "the decline in revenue is due to the exchange rate and iPhone supply," Apple CEO Cook said at an earnings briefing after the release of this quarter's results. "had it not been for the supply chain problems of iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max, the company would have estimated that iPhone revenue would have increased year-on-year."

In fact, in addition to the supply problem, the general decline in consumer demand for smartphones in China and around the world is also becoming a key factor affecting Apple's revenue growth. China shipped 286 million smartphones in 2022, down 13% from a year earlier and the biggest decline in the industry in nearly a decade, according to market research firm IDC. Among them, the iPhone fell 4.4% from the same period last year.

Due to the influence of external factors such as the global economy and weak consumer demand, Apple's market capitalization briefly exceeded 3 trillion US dollars at the beginning of the year in 2022, but due to the decline in product sales and exchange rate and other factors, the company's market value began to fluctuate and decline. The company's market capitalization has fallen sharply in the past year, with a current market capitalization of $2.45 trillion, falling below $2 trillion at the start of the year.

The change in market capitalization reflects a decline in market confidence in Apple's future development. In addition, the departure of Apple's core executives and the failure of communications chip research and development over the past year are also attracting frequent attention from the outside world.

Apple is sick, or "core disease" on the last day of the Spring Festival holiday in 2023. On January 27, Tianfeng Securities analyst Guo Mingyi pointed out that according to his latest survey of the semiconductor industry, Apple has stopped developing its own Wi-Fi chip, devoting most of its IC design resources to processor development. Although Apple has not made a formal response to whether it has officially suspended its own research on Wi-Fi chips, the industry's concern and speculation on this matter has not stopped.

For a long time, although Apple has made obvious achievements in A-series and M-series chips, the research and development of Apple-related chips has repeatedly failed in the field of network communications. From the previous failure and repeated postponement of the development of 5G baseband chips to the suspension of self-research on Wi-Fi chips, Apple's research and development plans in the field of communications chips have repeatedly stalled.

According to Liang Ming, the technical director of a listed chip company, "as the analog signal is transmitted through the sine wave, it will be affected by climate, wavelength, blocking and other factors when it travels in the air, so a lot of tuning and iterative work needs to be done in transmitting, receiving, filtering, modulation, amplification and other links, which leads to Apple's self-developed 5G baseband, Wifi chip and other analog chips." It is much more complex and difficult than the digital chip in the ordinary sense. "

"similar to Soc processors such as CPU and GPU, they are more digital chips. They only need to handle 0101 binary transmissions. When the team that has been working on digital chips starts to make analog chips, it will be very difficult. This cannot be done right away by a team with analog experience. The analog chips in communications are constantly tuned and iterated, constantly summing up experience in order to adjust to the ideal value little by little, and to maintain continuous stability. " Liang Ming told Sina Finance.

Following the success of self-developed A-series mobile phone processor chips, Apple began to replace Intel CPU products with self-developed M-series processors in 2018, which was highly recognized by the market. Now, Apple is trying to develop its own chips to replace Qualcomm and Broadcom's communications chips. Unfortunately, however, the current progress of this plan is not smooth.

In addition to communications chips such as 5G baseband and Wi-Fi chips, in the past year, Apple has also faced hidden worries about the departure of core executives and the departure of R & D personnel in the field of digital chips such as GPU.

According to incomplete statistics from the industry media, nearly 10 core executives left and announced their retirement from Apple in the past year, including Mary Demby, Jane Horvath, chief privacy officer, and Tony Blevins, vice president in charge of Apple's purchasing business.

In addition, on December 27 last year, The Information quoted sources as saying that Apple's chip division had suffered a setback and was in a mess "unprecedented in history." On the one hand, Apple's GPU research and development is facing a new crisis, with little improvement in the GPU performance of its latest generation of iPhone 14 Pro smartphones, so Apple has reorganized its GPU team. On the other hand, the company is facing a brain drain, with dozens of key Apple talents going to chip startups and more mature chip companies in the past three or four years.

In order to protect the company's technology loss, Apple has also filed lawsuits against two chip start-ups founded by former Apple employees, accusing them of poaching Apple chip engineers, according to The Information.

For a long time, Apple has been complained of "lack of innovation" because of the long-term revenue generated by products created by Jobs era such as iPhone and Mac, but the lack of amazing works in the launch of new products. Nowadays, with the decline in revenue of hardware products such as iPhone, the exodus of core talents and the failure of self-developed chips, how to stabilize the situation and find the next new growth point has become a "disease" that haunts Apple.

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