Apple’s every move is stirring the Chinese parts market on the other side of the Pacific.
Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “20 Club” (ID: quancaijing_20she) , Author: Li Xianhuan .
The “environmentally friendly” Apple no longer comes standard with charging heads and earphones, and the mobile phone accessories market centered on Shenzhen was immediately detonated.
Apple’s every move is stirring the Chinese parts market on the other side of the Pacific.
Half a month has passed since the launch of the iPhone 12 series. Since this year, Apple will no longer be equipped with charging heads and earphones. The first batch of users who placed orders have already received thinner and lighter mobile phone boxes. When they wanted to turn their heads and place an order for a new fast-charging charging head, they found that the out-of-stock situation of the charging head seemed more serious than that of a mobile phone.
According to CNBC reports, Deutsche Bank analysts believe that although Apple said that the purpose of canceling earphones and chargers is to protect the environment, this decision will bring new growth to Apple’s accessories and wearable devices (mainly earphones) power.
Except for Apple, the entire third-party accessory market began to surging after the press conference. They all know that the impact of Apple, which is no longer equipped with charging heads as standard, on the global accessory market will be directly transmitted back to the Pearl River Delta, the center of China’s accessory industry.
Charging head, I can’t buy it
After the release of the iPhone 12 series, when everyone was still buying and complaining about “environmental protection” issues, third-party charger manufacturers had already started to move early.
Anker, well-known for its third-party accessories and power banks, began to push its 20W fast charging head soon after the iPhone 12 went online. “Born for iPhone 12”, these characters are quite eye-catching on Anker’s Tmall store. The 20W specification can be said to be specially built for iPhone 12, and the price is much cheaper than the original Apple charger.
But in the first few days, the results that I saw when I clicked on the link were basically: sales of chimes. The business scope is similar, and a similar situation has occurred in Zimi under the Xiaomi ecological chain. The staff of the Zimi Taobao flagship store said that in the first few days of the phone’s release, the PD charging heads were out of stock. At that time, the iPhone 12 series had just been released, and even the phone had not been officially shipped.
Apple’s every move can be said to affect the direction of the accessory market, from the previous mobile phone film, mobile phone case, to AirPods. And this year’s third-party accessory manufacturers, large and small, are focusing on chargers.
About 2-3 days after the Apple conference, Zhou Ke, who is engaged in wholesale of mobile phone accessories in ChongqingReceived a quotation from an upstream supplier. Normally, the prices of products such as data cables, earphones, and charging heads will not change much, and the categories are very fixed. And this time, the content of the change is marked under the supplier’s quotation, one of which is: a new PD fast charging head.
Zhou Ke said to Quan now that the price of the PD fast charging head he came into contact with is about 20-70 yuan, and the specifications are the same, but the prices of different manufacturers are quite different.
But getting the quotation is only the first step. As an offline sales channel that has been seriously impacted by e-commerce today, they may not be able to get even a PD fast charge for a long time.
For Zhou Ke, the normal purchase process is that after the order is placed, the supplier sends in the accessories, and then pays back the payment. Only the PD fast charging head, he must pay the full payment when ordering, and it is impossible to have the goods in stock, and the goods can only be shipped after the upstream supplier gets the goods.
In the case of the overall shortage, the upstream supplier cannot promise the arrival time, only saying that “it may take 10 days, or it may be half a month.”
“I ordered a batch before, but I can’t get the goods.” Zhou Ke ordered a batch of PD fast chargers on October 19, and he finally got them on Friday, October 30 The first batch of goods sent by the supplier, but the number of charging heads that arrived is only 20% of the order. For the rest, Zhou Ke is still waiting.
However, the current situation of short supply has not significantly affected prices. Zhou Ke said that after manufacturers set the price in the early stage, there will be no more fluctuations. For wholesalers, the current market price of accessories is very transparent, and there is almost no room for price adjustment. “The rules are like this. The prices of each company are similar. Out of stock means out of stock, but there are rarely price increases.” Zhou Ke finished, and casually complained about the difficulties of the offline accessories market.
In his opinion, the price of charging heads in offline channels is already higher than that in online channels. Apple may bring a small wave of PD charging head sales, but for him, the difference is only one more category. The benefits are actually very limited.
Now, half a month has passed since the iPhone 12 conference, and the scalpers have also stopped work and started to settle their profits and losses in this year’s Apple season, but the charging head is still in a stage of partial shortage.
According to all now, the daily arrival volume of Anker Taobao store still cannot meet the order volume of the day. The store’s customer service said that there will be a replenishment in the store at 9 am and 7 pm every day. At 10 pm on October 30th, please inquire again When I asked the store, the 20W fast charger was still out of stock .
Magsafe revives wireless charging with fire?
On the other hand, Apple announced the launch of Magsafe magnetic charging, which directly detonated the third-party wireless charger market, and even magnet manufacturers are in short supply.
Magsafe charging head Picture: CFP
On October 29, an industry vertical exhibition called “Wireless Charging Asia Exhibition” was held in Shenzhen. Apple’s Magsafe magnetic wireless charging has become a must-mentioned topic for almost every manufacturer.
“Magnetic suction” itself is not the first application in the charging field. Take Apple as an example. Apple introduced Magsafe wired chargers for MacBook notebooks in 2006. It was not until 2015 that they switched to supporting Type-C interfaces. .
This is why Magsafe’s appearance on the iPhone 12 series is called a “resurrection”. And this is the first time that magnetic wireless charging has been applied in the mobile phone field.
What can be said is that magnetic wireless charging has improved the experience defect that was difficult to align during wireless charging. On the other hand, Apple is no longer equipped with charging heads as standard, which will encourage more users to choose wireless charging when shopping.
Judging from past experience, Apple has a huge brand influence in the entire mobile phone industry and is capable of starting a wave of new charging methods. In fact, early Nokia and Samsung introduced mobile phones that support wireless charging. But the upsurge of wireless charging was finally detonated by the iPhone 8.
“Whether it is for other mobile phone manufacturers or the accessory market, Apple’s influence is still greater.” Shenzhen CityBeiland Technology Semiconductor Division Chief Zhang Yuehua told Quan Now, The wireless charging market has been extremely hot after the launch of the iPhone 12 series.
Belande is a wireless charging solution chip supplier and is in the upper reaches of the charging accessories supply chain. Zhang Yuehua revealed that in the past, orders for wireless charging chips were between 100,000 and 200,000 sets per day. About half a month after the iPhone series was released, the number of daily orders reached 400,000 sets a day, more than doubled.
“Downstream manufacturers, including circuit boards, chargers, etc., are stepping up stocking, and the response is very obvious.” Zhang Yuehua said.
Unexpectedly, the resurrection of the magnetic charging method on the iPhone has also caused the magnet industry to suddenly enter a state of short supply. There are charged magnetic magnets and neodymium iron boron magnets, the latter of which is currently the most magnetic Permanent magnets are also the most commonly used rare earth magnets.
According to Zhang Yuehua, in order to achieve magnetic charging for the iPhone 12 series, both the charging board and the mobile phone need to have 36 built-in neodymium iron boron magnets. In addition, the mobile phone case also needs the same number of magnets. “Now the purchase cost of magnets for each receiving end (mobile phone, charging board, mobile phone card package) is 10 yuan, but even this price is not available.”
NdFeB magnets have long been a mature industry, but they have never been equipped on mobile phones before. Considering that there may be hundreds of millions of mobile phones and wireless chargers that need to use neodymium iron boron magnets in the future, this will also have a significant impact on the magnet industry.
Picture: Apple official website
Compared with the stepped-up production of wireless chargers at the end of the supply chain, Chinese consumers are more indifferent to wireless charging.
Zhou Ke told Quan that he hasn’t sold wireless chargers for a long time. On the one hand, consumer demand for this is not high, on the other hand, the purchase price of wireless chargers is more than 100 yuan. “If you can’t sell it, don’t you just throw it in your own hands?” The excessively high unit price made Zhou Ke give up this. Category.
Zhang Yuehua also expressed a similar view: charging efficiency is one of the core reasons limiting the popularity of wireless charging. Chinese mobile phone manufacturers are more aggressive in increasing the speed of wired charging. Some speeds have been increased to more than 100 watts, while the power of wireless charging is around 15 watts. The experience gap between the two is too big. Foreign mobile phone manufacturers are relatively more conservative. Apple’s “five fortunes and one security” for many years is the most typical embodiment. Therefore, the speed gap between wired and wireless charging is relatively small, and the acceptance of wireless charging is higher.
This point is more obvious in the comparison of shipments. Of the wireless charger chip orders shipped by BlackRock, only about 20% are reserved for Chinese consumers, and the remaining 80% of the chips are It will be assembled and produced in the Pearl River Delta and sold to overseas markets.
As for Magsafe, can more Chinese consumers switch to wireless charging? Zhang Yuehua gave a conservative answer. He said that the magnetic charging method does improve the wireless charging experience in some scenarios, but the real pain points of wireless charging-slow charging speed, short charging distance, and low charging freedom-have not improved at all.
In this way, magnetic charging is just a clever technical route born when the freedom of mobile phone charging is low. To promote wireless charging on a large scale, both charging speed and charging distance must be solved.
According to Zhang Yuehua, since 2017, iPhone 8 has started to support wireless charging and the AirPods series fire, which has driven the wireless charging market to maintain a rapid growth of 30%-40% in the past few years. Now that magnetic charging is available on the market, it may bring short-term popularity, but it is still not enough to have a longer-term impact on the development of wireless charging.
Technically speaking, Zhang Yuehua said that wireless charger manufacturers are fully capable of producing 60, 80 watt chargers, and even 200, 1000 watts are not too technically difficult. But the bottleneck appears at the receiving end, that is, the mobile phone cannot support the corresponding charging speed. Higher wireless charging power may require mobile phones to be equipped with more components, take up more mobile phone space, and cost more. Therefore, the development of wireless charging depends largely on the technology and cost breakthroughs of mobile phone manufacturers in charging.
In physical andIn the face of market laws, even Apple is not a panacea.
(The week in the text can be a pseudonym)