A Brief History of Apple repairer
Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “letter list” (ID: wujicaijing), Author: Zhao Jinjie.
Apple’s first electric car, Apple Car, originally planned to be launched in 2023-2025, was recently revealed by the media that it is expected to advance to the third quarter of 2021. As soon as the news of Apple building the car came out, Tesla’s stock price (as of the close of US stocks on December 21) immediately fell 6.49%, and the market value evaporated by US$42.7 billion, or about 280 billion yuan.
Car manufacturing is a new growth curve that Apple can see right now, especially when the smartphone market is peaking. This is also an excellent opportunity for Cook to prove himself. Even if it led Apple to rise from $400 billion to $2 trillion, nine years after taking over as Jobs, doubts about Cook still exist. For Cook, the “child of someone else’s family” is called Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
The outside world voted for Elon Musk as the best candidate to succeed Jobs. Even Steve Wozniaks, a former friend of Jobs and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniaks, in an interview with National Geographic in 2015, thought that Musk was “the best person in the world to fill the vacancy left by Jobs.” “.
Because they can turn their forward-looking visions into real products that change the lives of the people. Now, Apple Car has given Cook an opportunity to reflect the same dream into reality.
In the six years when Apple was making a complete car or a system swing, Tesla gradually grew into a subdivision giant in the electric vehicle field, becoming the world’s highest market value car company, exceeding $600 billion.
After learning about the latest rumors about Apple’s car building, Tesla CEO Musk remembered his old hatred, “In the darkest days of the Model 3 project, I tried to find Tim Cook to discuss Apple’s acquisition of Tesla. Possibility (at one-tenth of our current market value). He refused to attend the meeting.”
Actually, the rumors that Apple should acquire Tesla have been spread many times. As early as 2013, when Cook was in charge of Apple for two years, in the face of Tesla’s declining stock price and continued losses, external shareholders suggested that “Apple should acquire Tesla.”
But this is obviously not in line with Cook’s pursuit.
From the history of Apple’s acquisition, this is a company that is not keen on large-scale mergers and acquisitions. So far, Apple’s highest acquisition is the $3 billion acquisition of Beats headphones in 2014.
It’s not that Apple doesn’t like itThe ranking of the two dimensions of power and execution ability divides mainstream players in the global autonomous driving field into four levels: leader, competitor, challenger, and follower.
(Left: 2019, Right: 2020)
In the past four sessions, Apple has only been on the list in 2018 and 2019. The reason given by NR for not being on the list is that in 2017, Apple has not yet obtained the qualification for drive test, and in 2020, Apple “has no clear business plan at all.” Even in 2019, when it was last on the list, Apple was only classified into the Challenger quadrant.
From the NR list, the main car-building problem facing Apple has never been a question of availability, but whether Cook is willing or not.
As of now, Apple’s automotive patents have covered three categories: intelligent driving systems, innovative vehicle hardware design, and human-vehicle interactive experience, both soft and hard.
Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty (Katy Huberty) said that Apple will control the entire car experience of its Apple Car and will establish a “vertical system program” that is expected to “redefine the car. And to achieve differentiation from other peer products”.
Li Bin, the founder of Weilai, is also optimistic about the prospects for Apple to build cars. At the China Automotive Blue Book Forum in August, he mentioned that the global high-end automotive sector will eventually be reduced to five in the future, “which will include some new entrants, such as Apple “.
Essence Securities pointed out that the automotive electronics industry will become another major development opportunity for the entire industry chain after home appliances, PCs and mobile phones. At present, automotive electronics has entered a new round of technological innovation cycle. The penetration rate of automotive electronics and the value of bicycles will be greatly increased, and the market space will exceed one trillion US dollars.
As early as 2018, Ming-Chi Kuo, a well-known Apple analyst, predicted that once an Apple car was successfully sold, it would push Apple’s market value to a new high.
The market value of Apple just exceeded $1 trillion that year. Guo Mingchi said that the car is the engine for Apple to enter the $2 trillion market value.
As Apple’s market value exceeded US$2 trillion in August 2020, this goal has now been stacked to US$3 trillion.
At the 2020 Ohio State University graduation ceremony, Cook mentioned Jobs again in his speech, saying that when he joined Apple that year”I can’t believe my luck. I hope I can work for Steve Jobs for the rest of my life, but fate is like a thief. When we lose Steve, I feel lonely.”
In 1998, Jobs planned to dig out Cook’s interview scene from Compaq, and Cook has been vividly remembered, “I was very shocked by this, and his eyes flashed with light that I had never seen before.”
This kind of light comes from the ability to turn a forward-looking vision into a real product that changes people’s lives. Now, Cook is also waiting for such an opportunity.
Reference material:
1. Apple Car: It’s no secret, Apple’s actively working on Car tech, macrumors
2, Apple could begin producing its own car with a’next level’ battery in 2024, appleinsider
3, “Why is the country’s wealthy Apple not keen on large-scale acquisitions? “, Wei Xi points to the north
4, “Tesla’s biggest rival is coming? Apple’s electric car may come out in September next year, Taiwan’s supply chain has exploded”, The Financial Association
5. Navigant Research autonomous driving competitiveness ranking report.