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金淀
2022-11-14
[微笑]
@沙龙君:首款Web3手機廣告榮登央視 重新定義科技以人爲本
金淀
2022-09-27
[微笑]
Jobs' old capital has been eaten for 11 years: fattening Cook and thinning scalpers
Go to Tiger App to see more news
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","listText":"[微笑] ","text":"[微笑]","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/9969857665","repostId":"664770288","repostType":1,"repost":{"id":664770288,"gmtCreate":1668408186949,"gmtModify":1676538051954,"author":{"id":"3534727654658721","authorId":"3534727654658721","name":"沙龙君","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d2d38cc8d7c3009b3d750b9d57e68214","crmLevel":4,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3534727654658721","idStr":"3534727654658721"},"themes":[],"title":"首款Web3手機廣告榮登央視 重新定義科技以人爲本","htmlText":"進入2022年，手機行業面臨着增長下行等諸多考驗。相較於過往全渠道、全媒體的地毯式廣告轟炸，如今社會化精準營銷與創新玩法更加青睞。不過，作爲全球首款Web3手機METAVERTU卻逆勢登陸央視，憑藉超前的視覺影像以及對“科技以人爲本”的經典致敬，引發了廣泛關注。近日，VERTU手機持續亮相CCTV-1《新聞聯播》、CCTV-13《新聞30分》開播前的黃金廣告時段。此舉或向外釋放明確的信號，作爲定位奢侈品品牌手機，VERTU手機意在藉助央視天然的圈層資源，持續聚焦高質感高價值人羣，推動品牌的精準圈層拓展，向外界詮釋“人文科技”的魅力所在。新品廣告登陸央視，VERTU聚焦高圈層價值渠道在新品廣告視頻中，VERTU手機與隕石、天空爲核心元素出現，呈現在用戶眼前的，是一種不言而喻的科技感與質感。在視頻最後，還打出了“科技以人爲本”的口號，顯然是在致敬母公司諾基亞的經典廣告語。這種非功能宣教式的表達，更能夠凸顯VERTU手機融合科技與藝術的人文科技魅力。當下，雙十一購物熱潮涌動，各大手機品牌無不將營銷主陣地聚焦在社交媒體平臺。VERTU手機卻爲何逆勢登陸央視？事實上，當下國內手機品牌的產品定位同質化嚴重，用戶羣體持續下沉。在高端產品上，目標人羣能夠選擇的可代替性產品屈指可數。正是基於這樣的洞察，VERTU手機高調亮相央視黃金時段，也是看中了央視天然高質感高值人羣的資源，推動品牌的精準圈層拓展。在觸達之後，能否做到與精準圈層人羣的共情共感，這是洞察目標羣體消費需求的重要前提。在新品推出之際，VERTU手機沒有落腳於功能的展現和品牌代言人的背書，而是喊出母公司諾基亞最爲經典的廣告語——“科技以人爲本”，通過“重溫經典”的方式，快速喚起目標人羣的情感共鳴。廣告片的精神內核與高價值人羣圈層的價值追求擁有高度的契合。從此次廣告宣傳片中不難看出，VERTU手機其實傳達出兩點信息：一是告知新品上市","listText":"進入2022年，手機行業面臨着增長下行等諸多考驗。相較於過往全渠道、全媒體的地毯式廣告轟炸，如今社會化精準營銷與創新玩法更加青睞。不過，作爲全球首款Web3手機METAVERTU卻逆勢登陸央視，憑藉超前的視覺影像以及對“科技以人爲本”的經典致敬，引發了廣泛關注。近日，VERTU手機持續亮相CCTV-1《新聞聯播》、CCTV-13《新聞30分》開播前的黃金廣告時段。此舉或向外釋放明確的信號，作爲定位奢侈品品牌手機，VERTU手機意在藉助央視天然的圈層資源，持續聚焦高質感高價值人羣，推動品牌的精準圈層拓展，向外界詮釋“人文科技”的魅力所在。新品廣告登陸央視，VERTU聚焦高圈層價值渠道在新品廣告視頻中，VERTU手機與隕石、天空爲核心元素出現，呈現在用戶眼前的，是一種不言而喻的科技感與質感。在視頻最後，還打出了“科技以人爲本”的口號，顯然是在致敬母公司諾基亞的經典廣告語。這種非功能宣教式的表達，更能夠凸顯VERTU手機融合科技與藝術的人文科技魅力。當下，雙十一購物熱潮涌動，各大手機品牌無不將營銷主陣地聚焦在社交媒體平臺。VERTU手機卻爲何逆勢登陸央視？事實上，當下國內手機品牌的產品定位同質化嚴重，用戶羣體持續下沉。在高端產品上，目標人羣能夠選擇的可代替性產品屈指可數。正是基於這樣的洞察，VERTU手機高調亮相央視黃金時段，也是看中了央視天然高質感高值人羣的資源，推動品牌的精準圈層拓展。在觸達之後，能否做到與精準圈層人羣的共情共感，這是洞察目標羣體消費需求的重要前提。在新品推出之際，VERTU手機沒有落腳於功能的展現和品牌代言人的背書，而是喊出母公司諾基亞最爲經典的廣告語——“科技以人爲本”，通過“重溫經典”的方式，快速喚起目標人羣的情感共鳴。廣告片的精神內核與高價值人羣圈層的價值追求擁有高度的契合。從此次廣告宣傳片中不難看出，VERTU手機其實傳達出兩點信息：一是告知新品上市","text":"進入2022年，手機行業面臨着增長下行等諸多考驗。相較於過往全渠道、全媒體的地毯式廣告轟炸，如今社會化精準營銷與創新玩法更加青睞。不過，作爲全球首款Web3手機METAVERTU卻逆勢登陸央視，憑藉超前的視覺影像以及對“科技以人爲本”的經典致敬，引發了廣泛關注。近日，VERTU手機持續亮相CCTV-1《新聞聯播》、CCTV-13《新聞30分》開播前的黃金廣告時段。此舉或向外釋放明確的信號，作爲定位奢侈品品牌手機，VERTU手機意在藉助央視天然的圈層資源，持續聚焦高質感高價值人羣，推動品牌的精準圈層拓展，向外界詮釋“人文科技”的魅力所在。新品廣告登陸央視，VERTU聚焦高圈層價值渠道在新品廣告視頻中，VERTU手機與隕石、天空爲核心元素出現，呈現在用戶眼前的，是一種不言而喻的科技感與質感。在視頻最後，還打出了“科技以人爲本”的口號，顯然是在致敬母公司諾基亞的經典廣告語。這種非功能宣教式的表達，更能夠凸顯VERTU手機融合科技與藝術的人文科技魅力。當下，雙十一購物熱潮涌動，各大手機品牌無不將營銷主陣地聚焦在社交媒體平臺。VERTU手機卻爲何逆勢登陸央視？事實上，當下國內手機品牌的產品定位同質化嚴重，用戶羣體持續下沉。在高端產品上，目標人羣能夠選擇的可代替性產品屈指可數。正是基於這樣的洞察，VERTU手機高調亮相央視黃金時段，也是看中了央視天然高質感高值人羣的資源，推動品牌的精準圈層拓展。在觸達之後，能否做到與精準圈層人羣的共情共感，這是洞察目標羣體消費需求的重要前提。在新品推出之際，VERTU手機沒有落腳於功能的展現和品牌代言人的背書，而是喊出母公司諾基亞最爲經典的廣告語——“科技以人爲本”，通過“重溫經典”的方式，快速喚起目標人羣的情感共鳴。廣告片的精神內核與高價值人羣圈層的價值追求擁有高度的契合。從此次廣告宣傳片中不難看出，VERTU手機其實傳達出兩點信息：一是告知新品上市","images":[{"img":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/65329b94594100d65181b35cdda43843","width":"632","height":"365"},{"img":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/f34f41f9a05aee799d41d044f6144337","width":"632","height":"356"},{"img":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/42ff7fbe3ebf58524acbb8ca6cd99c46","width":"632","height":"356"}],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":2,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/664770288","isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":0,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":4,"langContent":"CN","totalScore":0},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":5797,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":9911751013,"gmtCreate":1664267862633,"gmtModify":1676537422245,"author":{"id":"4111278462862792","authorId":"4111278462862792","name":"金淀","avatar":"https://community-static.tradeup.com/news/6cb206ae11f9ce4e0ffc3964094b1a7d","crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"4111278462862792","idStr":"4111278462862792"},"themes":[],"title":"","htmlText":"[微笑] ","listText":"[微笑] ","text":"[微笑]","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/9911751013","repostId":"1140617695","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1140617695","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1664176713,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/1140617695?lang=en_US&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2022-09-26 15:18","market":"us","language":"zh","title":"Jobs' old capital has been eaten for 11 years: fattening Cook and thinning scalpers","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1140617695","media":"雪豹财经社","summary":"今年的市场注定赚少赔多，有黄牛已亏了四五十万元。","content":"<p><html><head></head><body>By Yan Xuegong</p><p>One scalper earned six figures this year, only a third of what he would have in previous years, but he is already considered one of the best among scalpers. This year's market is destined to yield less profit and more losses; some scalpers have already lost 400,000 to 500,000 yuan. Scalpers who once made a fortune from Apple suffered a setback after the launch of the iPhone 14.</p><p>Apple, under Steve Jobs' leadership, ushered in a golden age of overnight wealth for scalpers. The turning point occurred when the iPhone 8 was launched, when some dealers first discovered that Apple's new opportunities were cold. The iPhone 13, released last year, became the last remnant of the scalper boom.</p><p>Apple firmly holds the title of the world's most valuable technology company, but Tim Cook, who has achieved huge commercial success at the helm of this supercarrier, still seems to have not dispelled external doubts. In the eyes of some Apple fans, Apple is losing its innovative soul and gradually becoming a mediocre wealth-creating company.</p><p>After 11 years of Steve Jobs' savings, Apple has once again faced an embarrassing moment where its reputation has failed.</p><p>The iPhone 14, criticized for \"lacking innovation and soul,\" was neglected by consumers and criticized by influential figures. It also caused scalpers who made a fortune during the Steve Jobs era to fall into a trap, with some suffering net losses of hundreds of thousands of yuan in a single day. What was once a golden apple has become a bitter fruit that many scalpers find hard to swallow.</p><p>Over the past 11 years, thanks to its dazzling brand aura and enormous business momentum, Apple has firmly held the title of the world's most valuable technology company, with revenue increasing nearly 2.5 times and market value increasing more than 6 times. However, Cook, who has taken charge of this supercarrier and achieved huge commercial success, still seems to have not dispelled external doubts.</p><p>The topic of \"Cook shedding Apple's innovation label\" sparks a wave of discussion after almost every new product release. Steve Jobs' daughter criticized the iPhone 14 as unoriginal, and economist Ren Zeping bluntly stated that \"the iPhone 14 may be a sign of Apple's rise and fall.\"</p><p>The iPhone 14's failure has awakened scalpers who were still immersed in the feast and revelry of the past. The fervor of the Jobs era still lingers, but the chill has arrived. Their immediate priority is to rush to the next battlefield and earn more profits.</p><p><b>A bet that is bound to be lost</b></p><p>\"I made thorough preparations, but I didn't expect to still lose 40,000 to 50,000 yuan.\" Ye Jingyue, who has been a scalper for three years, sighed and summarized her situation in the three days since the iPhone 14 was released.</p><p>To win the annual battle for Apple's new products, the experienced Ye Jingyue drafted a detailed plan.</p><p>At 7:00 a.m. on September 16, he and his team staked out three Apple stores in Beijing's Chaoyang Joy City, Sanlitun, and Hopson One. “Our team only has 3 people. Including the temporarily hired foreign players on the queue, there are 15 of them.”</p><p>They hired people to queue up to sell the goods for 100 yuan each. These people, who might be students or housewives, would be paid regardless of whether they got the goods or not. Ye Jingyue's team of three stood guard to the side. If the hired person snatched the phone, they would show up to pay, and then take the new phone and sell it to the users in line at a higher price.</p><p>Having done her homework, Ye Jingyue had a very clear goal. The night before Apple's launch date, he gave his foreign aides a task: \"This year, we will only grab the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max, with purple being the top priority.\"</p><p>On the first day, he snagged two 14 Pros at the original price and resold them at a premium of 1,000 yuan, making a profit of 2,000 yuan. However, after acquiring more than 20 units from users at a premium of 1,500 yuan, he began to lose money. “I was very happy when I first received the phone, thinking that I would resell it at a markup of about 3,000 yuan per unit, with a profit of 1,500 yuan per unit,” he told Snow Leopard Finance. “But after I got the phone, I found that I couldn’t sell it at all.”</p><p>The price premium of Apple's new phones has plummeted faster than Ye Jingyue had imagined. By noon that day, he realized something was wrong and only offered the \"original price\" at a premium of 1,500 yuan, but no one paid any attention. On the first day, Ye Jingyue sold most of her phones at a premium of about 600 yuan, losing 20,000 yuan. In the following two days, losses gradually widened as the premium price of Apple's new iPhones plummeted in the scalper market.</p><p>Ye Jingyue is not the only scalper who has stumbled upon Apple's new products.</p><p>“The scalpers lost their bet, and there are no winners this year.” Lü Fan, who has been a mobile phone distributor since the iPhone 4 era, told Snow Leopard Finance. “The price was inflated too high before the release this year. After I got the phone before the release, my competitors set the premium for the purple version of the 14 Pro Max at around 3,000 yuan. The extremely high profits aroused the scalpers’ gambling spirit.”</p><p>The vast majority of the first batch of 14 Pros that Lü Fan received were \"snapped up\" by scalpers who marked them up by more than 1,500 yuan. \"There was nothing I could do, they gave me too much.\"</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c574cba0d5ceaa884d5e2767fe3b96b7\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"227\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8a3bed490702142b38c2567108d3af6f\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"255\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/>Price comparison between the first day and 3 days after release. (Image source: provided by Lü Fan)</p><p>Lü Fan dealt with scalpers for a long time, and he divided the scalpers into three levels: high, medium, and low.</p><p>At the lowest level are newcomers who follow the trend, and these people have lost the most this year. Intermediate users have their own team and can snag phones at the original price. High-end scalpers can get ahead of the curve, ordering goods from distributors before they are released. Given this year's market trends, only high-level scalpers have the opportunity to make a small fortune.</p><p>Li Nan, who ordered a batch of new phones directly from the dealer, was one of the lucky ones who made a small fortune. But in his view, \"for a product like Apple, a small profit is a loss.\"</p><p>Li Nan told Snow Leopard Finance that before each order, he receives pre-orders from customer groups and personal friends to determine the quantity to be purchased. However, the number of customers booking this year has decreased significantly, \"at least by more than half.\"</p><p>Loyal customers who once paid extra to buy new Apple phones have calmed down a lot this year, and their reasons for losing enthusiasm mostly point to criticisms of the iPhone 14's lack of innovation. One customer told Li Nan, \"I don't think there's any value in showing off by being the first to receive a phone that is extremely similar to the iPhone 13 I have.\"</p><p>Apple fans should remain calm; scalpers' wallets will inevitably shrink.</p><p>Li Nan earned six figures this year, only one-third of what she earned in previous years, but she is already considered one of the best among scalpers. He told Snow Leopard Finance that this year's market is destined to yield less profit and more losses, with some competitors already losing 400,000 to 500,000 yuan.</p><p><b>Retail investors betray scalpers</b></p><p>\"Thank you, scalper.\" Liu Wei posted this on his WeChat Moments on the evening of the first day Apple's new iPhone went on sale.</p><p>That day, after buying two iPhone 14 Pros, he was stopped by scalpers at the door. They added 1,800 yuan to each phone and sold it to the other party, making a profit of 3,600 yuan.</p><p>Sensing a business opportunity, Liu Wei gathered several classmates that evening to rush to buy the iPhone 14 Pro. In his view, this was a sure-fire business. It's best to sell it to scalpers; if it doesn't sell, you can get a 14-day unconditional refund. He joked, \"There will always be scalpers taking over.\"</p><p>Individual retail investors like Liu Wei, who harvest scalpers in reverse, are known online as \"scalper hunters\". Among the foreign players in the scalper team, some have figured out the tricks and begun to \"betray\" the scalpers.</p><p>Among the foreign aides hired by Ye Jingyue who were queuing up, two of them snapped up the new phones and immediately \"betrayed\" them. They refused to let Ye Jingyue's team pay on their behalf, but instead bought the phones themselves and resold them to another wave of scalpers at a high price as soon as they left. In Ye Jingyue's view, \"I'm practically working for them.\"</p><p>In Lü Fan's eyes, the more sophisticated scalper was an Apple distributor.</p><p>In an effort to hype up the market, major distributors released information after receiving the phones, jointly driving up the prices of new products and targeting the purple iPhone 14 Pro Max as this year's \"premium king\". Not many of the first batch of premium-priced phones reached ordinary users; instead, most were sold to scalpers at high prices.</p><p>In the past, the Apple scalper market was like a funnel. The upstream distributors have a stable portion of profits and a certain premium right. Midstream scalpers profit from the price difference by reselling, while downstream users are eager to get their hands on new phones, and they are the ones who ultimately pay for the high premium.</p><p>However, the iPhone 14's poor reputation turned this hidden trading market into a game where more losers than winners. Distributors' profits remained relatively stable, but the enthusiasm of Apple fans suddenly cooled down, and the pressure was transmitted to scalpers.</p><p>Scalpers, still reluctant to wake up from the Apple feast dream of \"huge profits on a single device,\" have suddenly become targets for hunters to harvest.</p><p><b>Farewell to the Golden Age</b></p><p>Scalpers who dare to spend money to gamble on huge profits have witnessed the enormous wealth dream created by Apple iPhones.</p><p>Twelve years ago, Steve Jobs, dressed in a black sweater and jeans, appeared holding an iPhone 4, becoming a milestone in the history of smartphones and ushering in the golden age of scalpers.</p><p>\"The iPhone 4 is a groundbreaking product, and the market is incredibly enthusiastic. A phone that costs 5,000 yuan can be resold for 15,000 yuan no matter what channel you get it from.\" Lü Fan, a graduate of a 985 university, sensed a business opportunity and started a business reselling Apple phones. At that time, in order to rush to buy Apple phones, scalpers set up tents and waited 48 hours in advance in Sanlitun and Joy City in Beijing.</p><p>As Apple's flagship device, the first batch of iPhone 4 sold 1.7 million units within three days of its launch, and demand exceeded supply. At that time, the first sale in the domestic market was about four months late, and scalpers made a fortune by taking advantage of this time difference.</p><p>Lü Fan told Snow Leopard Finance that he discovered that Apple stores in Hong Kong were limited to five units per person, so he organized a group of people to fly to Hong Kong to queue up. The largest order earned him hundreds of thousands of yuan. \"Back then, even a slightly more diligent scalper team could earn a million yuan in three months, which was considered a small amount.\" Even when the iPhone 4S was launched a year later, you still had to pay an extra 1,000 yuan to buy an iPhone 4 from scalpers.</p><p>The turning point occurred when the iPhone 8 was launched, which was the first time Lü Fan discovered that Apple's new opportunities were cold.</p><p>Lü Fan, who was already an Apple distributor at the time, recalled that the iPhone 8 did not sell very well, queues at Apple stores and in Zhongguancun decreased significantly, and many scalpers who hoarded goods at high prices lost money.</p><p>It was at this time that criticism of Apple's lack of innovation began to rise. From the iPhone 5 to the iPhone 8, several generations of Apple products have been criticized for being too similar in appearance, like \"four generations under one roof,\" without any substantial innovation in functionality.</p><p>The highly anticipated iPhone X delivered a slap in the face to scalpers with a more lukewarm market response. Users are not buying into this so-called \"unprecedented smartphone,\" and the iPhone X's two most proud innovations—full-screen display and facial recognition—are considered to be no longer originals.</p><p>Scalpers lost money, and Apple suffered even worse losses. Following poor sales of the iPhone X, Apple repeatedly cut production, causing its stock price to plummet by more than 7% at one point, wiping out over $60 billion in market value.</p><p>The iPhone X has been met with a lukewarm reception, and Apple's innovation capabilities have been brought down from their pedestal, leaving scalpers with increasingly smaller opportunities to profit from price differences. A new phone usually costs a few hundred yuan more, which is a far cry from the difficulty in obtaining one before the iPhone 6S, which often doubled in price.</p><p>The iPhone 13, released last year, became the last remnant of the scalper boom.</p><p>At that time, there was a global chip shortage, and Apple was facing a supply chain crisis. The supply and demand relationship during this special period has given scalpers an opportunity to take advantage of it. Ye Jingyue later summarized, \"It wasn't that the iPhone 13 was particularly popular, but rather that Apple didn't have enough stock in the first place, which made that time a good opportunity to make money.\"</p><p>But the iPhone 14 wasn't so lucky. On the one hand, the new phone has been criticized for being almost indistinguishable from its predecessor, with \"slow Dynamic Island,\" multiple bugs exposed, and new features repeatedly failing. On the other hand, Cook learned from his lesson and paid more attention to the supply chain management of the iPhone 14, resulting in a very ample supply of the new model. Some netizens said that the new Pro version will arrive in about half a month.</p><p>This means that the fertile ground for scalpers to make money is becoming increasingly barren.</p><p><b>A turning point of rise and fall?</b></p><p>After staying up all night watching this year's new product launches, Apple enthusiast Hu Yiwen made up his mind not to spend extra money on scalpers to buy new phones this year.</p><p>She has bought all iPhone models except the iPhone 14, and has paid more than once for the first new model. In her view, taking the lead in showing off the latest iPhone is not about showing off wealth, but about reflecting a pursuit of top-notch new technology consumer products. \"It's very geeky.\" But the iPhone 14 made her feel that \"stealing such overly similar models is not geeky at all.\"</p><p>This is certainly not a good thing for Cook, who is widely recognized as being more conservative than ambitious.</p><p>Since \"Extraordinary\" was adopted as Apple's slogan in 1997, innovation has been regarded as the soul of Apple. During the Steve Jobs era, Apple launched more than one groundbreaking product, thus firmly establishing itself as the top tech company.</p><p>However, since Cook became CEO in 2011, Apple has rarely made any groundbreaking innovations, and has even gradually degenerated from a leader to a follower. The successful iPhone 6 marked Apple's first large-screen phone and is seen as following in the footsteps of brands like Samsung. The iPhone 14's Dynamic Island and other features have also been accused of plagiarizing Android manufacturers.</p><p>Economist Ren Zeping bluntly stated on social media that \"Apple is living off Steve Jobs' past achievements,\" and even believed that 2022 was a turning point in Apple's rise and fall.</p><p>Undeniably, in terms of sales volume and company market capitalization, Apple under Cook's leadership has achieved great success. Part of the reason is that Apple phones, which were once expensive, have begun to \"bow down\" in pricing.</p><p>Hu Yiwen noted that starting with the iPhone 11, Apple phones have become \"cheaper\".</p><p>On the one hand, the starting price of the iPhone 11 has dropped from 6,499 yuan for its predecessor, the iPhone XR, to 5,499 yuan. On the other hand, the prices of flagship Android phones continue to rise, with the OPPO Find X2 Pro starting at 5,999 yuan and the Xiaomi 10 Ultra starting at 5,299 yuan, on par with or even higher than the iPhone. Since then, Apple has continued its strategy of not raising prices for new phones.</p><p>Today, Jobs' legacy is still enough to feed Apple for a while. According to Counterpoint Research, in Q2 2022, Apple still held more than half of the high-end smartphone market, setting a new record for the iPhone since 2007 with a market share of 57%, and capturing more than 60% of global mobile phone profits.</p><p>Even Apple fans like Hu Yiwen won't easily abandon Apple. Despite the lack of innovation, the stable annual hardware (mainly chip) updates and stable software systems still hold great appeal for them.</p><p>In other words, the enormous momentum created during the Jobs era was enough to keep the Apple empire, which was somewhat mediocre in terms of innovation, moving forward by inertia. But as Apple's halo fades, the chilly cicada that knows autumn has already faintly smelled the chill and sensed the consequences of a lack of innovation.</p><p>For Lü Fan, a mobile phone distributor who relies on Apple for a living, Apple remains the main source of his revenue. \"Whether the scalpers fail or not does not affect all of this; the sun will rise as usual.\"</p><p>Scalpers who profit from scarcity and time differences have no time to grieve over this. Their immediate priority is to rush to the next battlefield and earn more profits.</p><p>Ye Jingyue has now focused all her efforts on the Huawei Mate 50. He told Snow Leopard Finance that the premium level of Huawei's new phones has always been relatively stable. Currently, even the lowest model costs an extra 1,000 yuan, and the rarest Porsche model has been resold for more than 25,000 yuan, nearly double the original price (12,999 yuan).</p><p>For Apple, which still stands at the top of the global software and hardware integration pyramid, the iPhone 14 is unlikely to be the swan song. But the final chapter in the scalpers' dream of getting rich quick may be a prelude to the end of Apple's easy win.</p><p>(All characters in this article are pseudonyms)</p><p></body></html></p>","source":"lsy1634697401643","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Jobs' old capital has been eaten for 11 years: fattening Cook and thinning scalpers</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 12.5px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nJobs' old capital has been eaten for 11 years: fattening Cook and thinning scalpers\n</h2>\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n<p class=\"head\">\n<strong class=\"h-name small\">雪豹财经社</strong><span class=\"h-time small\">2022-09-26 15:18</span>\n</p>\n</h4>\n</header>\n<article>\n<p><html><head></head><body>By Yan Xuegong</p><p>One scalper earned six figures this year, only a third of what he would have in previous years, but he is already considered one of the best among scalpers. This year's market is destined to yield less profit and more losses; some scalpers have already lost 400,000 to 500,000 yuan. Scalpers who once made a fortune from Apple suffered a setback after the launch of the iPhone 14.</p><p>Apple, under Steve Jobs' leadership, ushered in a golden age of overnight wealth for scalpers. The turning point occurred when the iPhone 8 was launched, when some dealers first discovered that Apple's new opportunities were cold. The iPhone 13, released last year, became the last remnant of the scalper boom.</p><p>Apple firmly holds the title of the world's most valuable technology company, but Tim Cook, who has achieved huge commercial success at the helm of this supercarrier, still seems to have not dispelled external doubts. In the eyes of some Apple fans, Apple is losing its innovative soul and gradually becoming a mediocre wealth-creating company.</p><p>After 11 years of Steve Jobs' savings, Apple has once again faced an embarrassing moment where its reputation has failed.</p><p>The iPhone 14, criticized for \"lacking innovation and soul,\" was neglected by consumers and criticized by influential figures. It also caused scalpers who made a fortune during the Steve Jobs era to fall into a trap, with some suffering net losses of hundreds of thousands of yuan in a single day. What was once a golden apple has become a bitter fruit that many scalpers find hard to swallow.</p><p>Over the past 11 years, thanks to its dazzling brand aura and enormous business momentum, Apple has firmly held the title of the world's most valuable technology company, with revenue increasing nearly 2.5 times and market value increasing more than 6 times. However, Cook, who has taken charge of this supercarrier and achieved huge commercial success, still seems to have not dispelled external doubts.</p><p>The topic of \"Cook shedding Apple's innovation label\" sparks a wave of discussion after almost every new product release. Steve Jobs' daughter criticized the iPhone 14 as unoriginal, and economist Ren Zeping bluntly stated that \"the iPhone 14 may be a sign of Apple's rise and fall.\"</p><p>The iPhone 14's failure has awakened scalpers who were still immersed in the feast and revelry of the past. The fervor of the Jobs era still lingers, but the chill has arrived. Their immediate priority is to rush to the next battlefield and earn more profits.</p><p><b>A bet that is bound to be lost</b></p><p>\"I made thorough preparations, but I didn't expect to still lose 40,000 to 50,000 yuan.\" Ye Jingyue, who has been a scalper for three years, sighed and summarized her situation in the three days since the iPhone 14 was released.</p><p>To win the annual battle for Apple's new products, the experienced Ye Jingyue drafted a detailed plan.</p><p>At 7:00 a.m. on September 16, he and his team staked out three Apple stores in Beijing's Chaoyang Joy City, Sanlitun, and Hopson One. “Our team only has 3 people. Including the temporarily hired foreign players on the queue, there are 15 of them.”</p><p>They hired people to queue up to sell the goods for 100 yuan each. These people, who might be students or housewives, would be paid regardless of whether they got the goods or not. Ye Jingyue's team of three stood guard to the side. If the hired person snatched the phone, they would show up to pay, and then take the new phone and sell it to the users in line at a higher price.</p><p>Having done her homework, Ye Jingyue had a very clear goal. The night before Apple's launch date, he gave his foreign aides a task: \"This year, we will only grab the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max, with purple being the top priority.\"</p><p>On the first day, he snagged two 14 Pros at the original price and resold them at a premium of 1,000 yuan, making a profit of 2,000 yuan. However, after acquiring more than 20 units from users at a premium of 1,500 yuan, he began to lose money. “I was very happy when I first received the phone, thinking that I would resell it at a markup of about 3,000 yuan per unit, with a profit of 1,500 yuan per unit,” he told Snow Leopard Finance. “But after I got the phone, I found that I couldn’t sell it at all.”</p><p>The price premium of Apple's new phones has plummeted faster than Ye Jingyue had imagined. By noon that day, he realized something was wrong and only offered the \"original price\" at a premium of 1,500 yuan, but no one paid any attention. On the first day, Ye Jingyue sold most of her phones at a premium of about 600 yuan, losing 20,000 yuan. In the following two days, losses gradually widened as the premium price of Apple's new iPhones plummeted in the scalper market.</p><p>Ye Jingyue is not the only scalper who has stumbled upon Apple's new products.</p><p>“The scalpers lost their bet, and there are no winners this year.” Lü Fan, who has been a mobile phone distributor since the iPhone 4 era, told Snow Leopard Finance. “The price was inflated too high before the release this year. After I got the phone before the release, my competitors set the premium for the purple version of the 14 Pro Max at around 3,000 yuan. The extremely high profits aroused the scalpers’ gambling spirit.”</p><p>The vast majority of the first batch of 14 Pros that Lü Fan received were \"snapped up\" by scalpers who marked them up by more than 1,500 yuan. \"There was nothing I could do, they gave me too much.\"</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c574cba0d5ceaa884d5e2767fe3b96b7\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"227\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8a3bed490702142b38c2567108d3af6f\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"255\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/>Price comparison between the first day and 3 days after release. (Image source: provided by Lü Fan)</p><p>Lü Fan dealt with scalpers for a long time, and he divided the scalpers into three levels: high, medium, and low.</p><p>At the lowest level are newcomers who follow the trend, and these people have lost the most this year. Intermediate users have their own team and can snag phones at the original price. High-end scalpers can get ahead of the curve, ordering goods from distributors before they are released. Given this year's market trends, only high-level scalpers have the opportunity to make a small fortune.</p><p>Li Nan, who ordered a batch of new phones directly from the dealer, was one of the lucky ones who made a small fortune. But in his view, \"for a product like Apple, a small profit is a loss.\"</p><p>Li Nan told Snow Leopard Finance that before each order, he receives pre-orders from customer groups and personal friends to determine the quantity to be purchased. However, the number of customers booking this year has decreased significantly, \"at least by more than half.\"</p><p>Loyal customers who once paid extra to buy new Apple phones have calmed down a lot this year, and their reasons for losing enthusiasm mostly point to criticisms of the iPhone 14's lack of innovation. One customer told Li Nan, \"I don't think there's any value in showing off by being the first to receive a phone that is extremely similar to the iPhone 13 I have.\"</p><p>Apple fans should remain calm; scalpers' wallets will inevitably shrink.</p><p>Li Nan earned six figures this year, only one-third of what she earned in previous years, but she is already considered one of the best among scalpers. He told Snow Leopard Finance that this year's market is destined to yield less profit and more losses, with some competitors already losing 400,000 to 500,000 yuan.</p><p><b>Retail investors betray scalpers</b></p><p>\"Thank you, scalper.\" Liu Wei posted this on his WeChat Moments on the evening of the first day Apple's new iPhone went on sale.</p><p>That day, after buying two iPhone 14 Pros, he was stopped by scalpers at the door. They added 1,800 yuan to each phone and sold it to the other party, making a profit of 3,600 yuan.</p><p>Sensing a business opportunity, Liu Wei gathered several classmates that evening to rush to buy the iPhone 14 Pro. In his view, this was a sure-fire business. It's best to sell it to scalpers; if it doesn't sell, you can get a 14-day unconditional refund. He joked, \"There will always be scalpers taking over.\"</p><p>Individual retail investors like Liu Wei, who harvest scalpers in reverse, are known online as \"scalper hunters\". Among the foreign players in the scalper team, some have figured out the tricks and begun to \"betray\" the scalpers.</p><p>Among the foreign aides hired by Ye Jingyue who were queuing up, two of them snapped up the new phones and immediately \"betrayed\" them. They refused to let Ye Jingyue's team pay on their behalf, but instead bought the phones themselves and resold them to another wave of scalpers at a high price as soon as they left. In Ye Jingyue's view, \"I'm practically working for them.\"</p><p>In Lü Fan's eyes, the more sophisticated scalper was an Apple distributor.</p><p>In an effort to hype up the market, major distributors released information after receiving the phones, jointly driving up the prices of new products and targeting the purple iPhone 14 Pro Max as this year's \"premium king\". Not many of the first batch of premium-priced phones reached ordinary users; instead, most were sold to scalpers at high prices.</p><p>In the past, the Apple scalper market was like a funnel. The upstream distributors have a stable portion of profits and a certain premium right. Midstream scalpers profit from the price difference by reselling, while downstream users are eager to get their hands on new phones, and they are the ones who ultimately pay for the high premium.</p><p>However, the iPhone 14's poor reputation turned this hidden trading market into a game where more losers than winners. Distributors' profits remained relatively stable, but the enthusiasm of Apple fans suddenly cooled down, and the pressure was transmitted to scalpers.</p><p>Scalpers, still reluctant to wake up from the Apple feast dream of \"huge profits on a single device,\" have suddenly become targets for hunters to harvest.</p><p><b>Farewell to the Golden Age</b></p><p>Scalpers who dare to spend money to gamble on huge profits have witnessed the enormous wealth dream created by Apple iPhones.</p><p>Twelve years ago, Steve Jobs, dressed in a black sweater and jeans, appeared holding an iPhone 4, becoming a milestone in the history of smartphones and ushering in the golden age of scalpers.</p><p>\"The iPhone 4 is a groundbreaking product, and the market is incredibly enthusiastic. A phone that costs 5,000 yuan can be resold for 15,000 yuan no matter what channel you get it from.\" Lü Fan, a graduate of a 985 university, sensed a business opportunity and started a business reselling Apple phones. At that time, in order to rush to buy Apple phones, scalpers set up tents and waited 48 hours in advance in Sanlitun and Joy City in Beijing.</p><p>As Apple's flagship device, the first batch of iPhone 4 sold 1.7 million units within three days of its launch, and demand exceeded supply. At that time, the first sale in the domestic market was about four months late, and scalpers made a fortune by taking advantage of this time difference.</p><p>Lü Fan told Snow Leopard Finance that he discovered that Apple stores in Hong Kong were limited to five units per person, so he organized a group of people to fly to Hong Kong to queue up. The largest order earned him hundreds of thousands of yuan. \"Back then, even a slightly more diligent scalper team could earn a million yuan in three months, which was considered a small amount.\" Even when the iPhone 4S was launched a year later, you still had to pay an extra 1,000 yuan to buy an iPhone 4 from scalpers.</p><p>The turning point occurred when the iPhone 8 was launched, which was the first time Lü Fan discovered that Apple's new opportunities were cold.</p><p>Lü Fan, who was already an Apple distributor at the time, recalled that the iPhone 8 did not sell very well, queues at Apple stores and in Zhongguancun decreased significantly, and many scalpers who hoarded goods at high prices lost money.</p><p>It was at this time that criticism of Apple's lack of innovation began to rise. From the iPhone 5 to the iPhone 8, several generations of Apple products have been criticized for being too similar in appearance, like \"four generations under one roof,\" without any substantial innovation in functionality.</p><p>The highly anticipated iPhone X delivered a slap in the face to scalpers with a more lukewarm market response. Users are not buying into this so-called \"unprecedented smartphone,\" and the iPhone X's two most proud innovations—full-screen display and facial recognition—are considered to be no longer originals.</p><p>Scalpers lost money, and Apple suffered even worse losses. Following poor sales of the iPhone X, Apple repeatedly cut production, causing its stock price to plummet by more than 7% at one point, wiping out over $60 billion in market value.</p><p>The iPhone X has been met with a lukewarm reception, and Apple's innovation capabilities have been brought down from their pedestal, leaving scalpers with increasingly smaller opportunities to profit from price differences. A new phone usually costs a few hundred yuan more, which is a far cry from the difficulty in obtaining one before the iPhone 6S, which often doubled in price.</p><p>The iPhone 13, released last year, became the last remnant of the scalper boom.</p><p>At that time, there was a global chip shortage, and Apple was facing a supply chain crisis. The supply and demand relationship during this special period has given scalpers an opportunity to take advantage of it. Ye Jingyue later summarized, \"It wasn't that the iPhone 13 was particularly popular, but rather that Apple didn't have enough stock in the first place, which made that time a good opportunity to make money.\"</p><p>But the iPhone 14 wasn't so lucky. On the one hand, the new phone has been criticized for being almost indistinguishable from its predecessor, with \"slow Dynamic Island,\" multiple bugs exposed, and new features repeatedly failing. On the other hand, Cook learned from his lesson and paid more attention to the supply chain management of the iPhone 14, resulting in a very ample supply of the new model. Some netizens said that the new Pro version will arrive in about half a month.</p><p>This means that the fertile ground for scalpers to make money is becoming increasingly barren.</p><p><b>A turning point of rise and fall?</b></p><p>After staying up all night watching this year's new product launches, Apple enthusiast Hu Yiwen made up his mind not to spend extra money on scalpers to buy new phones this year.</p><p>She has bought all iPhone models except the iPhone 14, and has paid more than once for the first new model. In her view, taking the lead in showing off the latest iPhone is not about showing off wealth, but about reflecting a pursuit of top-notch new technology consumer products. \"It's very geeky.\" But the iPhone 14 made her feel that \"stealing such overly similar models is not geeky at all.\"</p><p>This is certainly not a good thing for Cook, who is widely recognized as being more conservative than ambitious.</p><p>Since \"Extraordinary\" was adopted as Apple's slogan in 1997, innovation has been regarded as the soul of Apple. During the Steve Jobs era, Apple launched more than one groundbreaking product, thus firmly establishing itself as the top tech company.</p><p>However, since Cook became CEO in 2011, Apple has rarely made any groundbreaking innovations, and has even gradually degenerated from a leader to a follower. The successful iPhone 6 marked Apple's first large-screen phone and is seen as following in the footsteps of brands like Samsung. The iPhone 14's Dynamic Island and other features have also been accused of plagiarizing Android manufacturers.</p><p>Economist Ren Zeping bluntly stated on social media that \"Apple is living off Steve Jobs' past achievements,\" and even believed that 2022 was a turning point in Apple's rise and fall.</p><p>Undeniably, in terms of sales volume and company market capitalization, Apple under Cook's leadership has achieved great success. Part of the reason is that Apple phones, which were once expensive, have begun to \"bow down\" in pricing.</p><p>Hu Yiwen noted that starting with the iPhone 11, Apple phones have become \"cheaper\".</p><p>On the one hand, the starting price of the iPhone 11 has dropped from 6,499 yuan for its predecessor, the iPhone XR, to 5,499 yuan. On the other hand, the prices of flagship Android phones continue to rise, with the OPPO Find X2 Pro starting at 5,999 yuan and the Xiaomi 10 Ultra starting at 5,299 yuan, on par with or even higher than the iPhone. Since then, Apple has continued its strategy of not raising prices for new phones.</p><p>Today, Jobs' legacy is still enough to feed Apple for a while. According to Counterpoint Research, in Q2 2022, Apple still held more than half of the high-end smartphone market, setting a new record for the iPhone since 2007 with a market share of 57%, and capturing more than 60% of global mobile phone profits.</p><p>Even Apple fans like Hu Yiwen won't easily abandon Apple. Despite the lack of innovation, the stable annual hardware (mainly chip) updates and stable software systems still hold great appeal for them.</p><p>In other words, the enormous momentum created during the Jobs era was enough to keep the Apple empire, which was somewhat mediocre in terms of innovation, moving forward by inertia. But as Apple's halo fades, the chilly cicada that knows autumn has already faintly smelled the chill and sensed the consequences of a lack of innovation.</p><p>For Lü Fan, a mobile phone distributor who relies on Apple for a living, Apple remains the main source of his revenue. \"Whether the scalpers fail or not does not affect all of this; the sun will rise as usual.\"</p><p>Scalpers who profit from scarcity and time differences have no time to grieve over this. Their immediate priority is to rush to the next battlefield and earn more profits.</p><p>Ye Jingyue has now focused all her efforts on the Huawei Mate 50. He told Snow Leopard Finance that the premium level of Huawei's new phones has always been relatively stable. Currently, even the lowest model costs an extra 1,000 yuan, and the rarest Porsche model has been resold for more than 25,000 yuan, nearly double the original price (12,999 yuan).</p><p>For Apple, which still stands at the top of the global software and hardware integration pyramid, the iPhone 14 is unlikely to be the swan song. But the final chapter in the scalpers' dream of getting rich quick may be a prelude to the end of Apple's easy win.</p><p>(All characters in this article are pseudonyms)</p><p></body></html></p>\n<div class=\"bt-text\">\n\n\n<p> source：<a href=\"http://finance.sina.com.cn/tech/csj/2022-09-26/doc-imqqsmrp0494572.shtml\">雪豹财经社</a></p>\n\n\n</div>\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e5f2cbfd4e34e8ec82c7adfe60fe60a9","relate_stocks":{"AAPL":"苹果"},"source_url":"http://finance.sina.com.cn/tech/csj/2022-09-26/doc-imqqsmrp0494572.shtml","is_english":false,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1140617695","content_text":"文/闫学功一位黄牛今年赚了六位数，只有往年的三分之一，但在黄牛党中已算佼佼者。今年的市场注定赚少赔多，有黄牛已亏了四五十万元。曾靠苹果赚得盆满钵满的黄牛们在iPhone 14推出后栽了跟头。乔布斯掌舵下的苹果，曾为黄牛构筑了一夜暴富的黄金时代。转折点发生在iPhone 8推出时，有经销商头一次发现苹果新机遇冷。而去年发布的iPhone 13，成了黄牛生意热潮最后的余温。苹果稳坐全球市值最高科技公司宝座，但执掌这艘超级航母取得巨大商业成功的库克，却似乎仍未打消外界的质疑。在一些果粉眼中，苹果正在失去创新的灵魂，逐渐沦为一家平庸的造富公司。乔布斯的老本吃了11年，苹果又一次迎来了口碑翻车的尴尬时刻。被诟病“毫无创新，失去灵魂”的iPhone 14，被消费者冷落，被大V吐槽，也让在乔布斯时代赚得盆满钵满的“黄牛们”踩到了坑里，有人一天净亏几十万元。曾经的金苹果，成为不少黄牛眼中难以下咽的苦果。11年来，凭借耀眼的品牌光环和巨大的商业势能，苹果稳坐全球市值最高科技公司宝座，营收增长了近2.5倍，市值涨了6倍多。但执掌这艘超级航母并取得巨大商业成功的库克，却似乎仍未打消外界的质疑。关于“库克揭下苹果创新标签”的话题，在几乎每一次新品发布后都会掀起一波讨论的热潮。乔布斯女儿吐槽iPhone 14毫无新意，经济学家任泽平直言“iPhone 14可能是苹果盛极而衰的标志”。iPhone 14的翻车，惊醒了还沉浸在昔日盛宴狂欢中的黄牛们。乔布斯时代的狂热余温尚存，但寒意已至。马不停蹄地奔赴下一个战场，赚取更多利润，才是他们的当务之急。一场必输的赌局“做了万全的准备，没想到还是亏了四五万。”做了3年黄牛的叶静跃叹了口气，总结iPhone 14发售3天以来自己的战况。为了打好一年一度的苹果新品之战，经验丰富的叶静跃拟定了一份翔实的方案。9月16日早上7点，他和他的团队便分别在北京朝阳大悦城、三里屯和合生汇的3家苹果门店蹲守。“我们团队只有3人，算上临时雇的排队外援，有15个。”他们以每人100元的价格雇人排队抢售，这些人可能是学生、家庭主妇，不管抢没抢到都会付报酬。叶静跃团队3人则在一旁蹲守，如果雇来的人抢到手机，他们就会现身付款，随后便拿着新机向排队的用户加价售卖。做足功课的叶静跃目标十分清晰。苹果发售日前一天晚上，他便给外援们下了任务：“今年只抢iPhone 14 Pro和Pro Max，紫色是最优先款式。”第一天，他以原价抢到了两台14 Pro，转手加价1000元卖出，赚了2000元。但随后以1500元的溢价从用户手中收购了20多台后，他便开始亏损。“刚拿到手机时觉得很开心，想着一台加价3000元左右倒卖，每台还有1500元的利润。”他告诉雪豹财经社，“但手机到手后，发现根本卖不出去。”苹果新机溢价的跳水，比叶静跃想象中来得快。他到当天中午已经觉察不对，只以1500元溢价的“原价”吆喝，但已无人问津。第一天，叶静跃大部分手机加价600元左右卖出，亏了两万元。此后两天，随着苹果新机溢价在黄牛市场的跳水，亏损逐渐扩大。在苹果新品上栽了跟头的黄牛，远不止叶静跃一人。“黄牛们赌输了，今年没有赢家。”从iPhone 4时代开始做手机经销商的吕樊告诉雪豹财经社，“今年发售前价格被炒得太高，我在发售前拿到机子后，同行们都将14 Pro Max紫色款的溢价定在3000元左右，超高利润唤起了黄牛们的赌性。”吕樊拿到的第一批14 Pro，绝大部分被加价1500元以上的黄牛们“抢”走了，“没办法，他们给的太多了”。首日与发售3日后价格对比 图源：吕樊提供吕樊长年跟黄牛打交道，他将黄牛党分为高中低三个层级。最低层级的是跟风的新手，这些人今年赔得最惨。中级的自己有团队，能以原价抢购到手机。高级黄牛则能够先人一步，在发售前便已从销商手中订到货。按照今年的行情，只有高级黄牛才有机会小赚一笔。从经销商手中直接预订了一批新机的李楠，是小赚一笔的幸运儿之一。但在他看来，“对于苹果这种产品来说，小赚就是亏。”李楠告诉雪豹财经社，他每次订货前，都会在客户群和个人好友那里收到预订单，以此来确定进货数量。但今年预订的客户明显减少，“起码少了一大半”。曾不惜加价购买苹果新机的忠实客户今年冷静了许多，他们不再热忱的理由大多指向对iPhone 14缺乏创新的诟病。有客户告诉李楠，“我不觉得率先拿到一款与我手中iPhone 13极其相似的手机，有什么炫耀的价值。”果粉冷静，黄牛的钱包必然缩水。李楠今年赚了六位数，只有往年的1/3，但在黄牛党中已经算是佼佼者。他告诉雪豹财经社，今年的市场注定赚少赔多，有的同行已经亏了四五十万元。散户背刺黄牛“谢谢你，黄牛君。”苹果新机开售首日晚上，刘威发表了这样一条朋友圈。当天，他买到两台iPhone 14 Pro后，便被门口的黄牛拦下，每台加价1800元把手机卖给对方，赚了3600元差价。嗅到商机的刘威当晚便召集了几个同学，一起去抢购iPhone 14 Pro。在他看来，这是一桩稳赚不赔的生意。能卖给黄牛最好，卖不出去还可以14天无条件退款。他笑称，“总会有黄牛们接盘。”像刘威这样反向收割黄牛的个人散户，在网上被称为“黄牛猎手”。黄牛团队的外援中，也有人摸清了门道，开始“背刺”黄牛。叶静跃雇来排队的外援中，有两个人抢购到新机后当场“反水”，拒绝叶静跃团队代为付钱，而是自己买下手机，出门就高价转手卖给了另一波黄牛。在叶静跃看来，“我简直是在给他们打工。”吕樊眼中更高级的黄牛猎手，是苹果经销商。为了炒热市场，大经销商们在拿到手机后就对外放出消息，联合将新品价格炒到很高，并瞄定紫色iPhone 14 Pro Max为今年的“溢价王”。第一批溢价手机没有多少流到普通用户手中，而是大部分高价卖给了黄牛。以往的苹果黄牛市场就像一个漏斗。最上游的经销商拥有一部分稳定的利润和一定的溢价权。中游的黄牛通过倒买倒卖赚取差价，最下游的是急于抢先拿到新机的用户，他们是最终为高溢价买单的人。但iPhone 14的口碑翻车，让这个水面下的隐秘交易市场，变成了一个输多赢少的牌局。经销商的利润仍然相对稳定，但果粉的热情骤然降温，压力便被传导到了黄牛们身上。依旧沉浸在“一机暴利”的苹果盛宴梦中不愿醒来的黄牛，突然成了被猎手们反向收割的对象。告别黄金时代敢砸钱赌暴利的黄牛们，曾见证过苹果手机造就的巨大财富梦幻。12年前，身穿黑色毛衣、牛仔裤的乔布斯手拿iPhone 4亮相，成为智能手机历史上的里程碑，也开启了黄牛的黄金时代。“iPhone 4算是划时代的产品，市场热情的不得了，一台5000元的手机，不管任何渠道拿到，转手就是15000元卖出去。”985高校毕业的吕樊嗅到商机，做起了倒卖苹果手机的生意。当时，为了抢购苹果手机，黄牛们带着帐篷，在北京三里屯和大悦城提前48小时蹲守。作为苹果的一代神机，首批iPhone 4上市3天就售出了170万部，而且供不应求。当时，国内市场的首售时间晚了4个月左右，利用这段时间差，黄牛们赚得盆满钵满。吕樊告诉雪豹财经社，他当时发现香港的苹果店每人限购5台，于是组织了一行人坐飞机去香港排队，最大的一单赚了几十万元。“那时候稍微勤快点的黄牛团队，3个月下来赚百万都算少的。”甚至一年后iPhone 4S推出时，找黄牛买iPhone 4仍需要加价1000元。转折点发生在iPhone 8推出时，那是吕樊头一次发现苹果新机遇冷。当时已经是苹果经销商的吕樊回忆道，iPhone 8卖得不是很好，苹果门店和中关村排队的现象大幅减少，不少高价囤货的黄牛党亏了钱。也正是在这个时候，外界对苹果缺乏创新的批判甚嚣尘上。从iPhone 5到iPhone 8，苹果几代产品被吐槽外形过于相似，好比“四世同堂”，功能也没有实质性革新。被寄予厚望的iPhone X，以更冷淡的市场反应给了黄牛们一记耳光。用户对这款号称“从未有过的智能手机”并不买账，iPhone X 最得意的两个创新——全面屏和人脸识别，被认为早已不是首创。黄牛们亏钱，苹果损失更惨。iPhone X销量不佳后苹果屡次减产，股价一度暴跌7%以上，超600亿美元市值蒸发。iPhone X遇冷，苹果的创新能力被拉下神坛，黄牛们赚差价的空间日渐缩小。一台新机通常加价小几百元，与iPhone 6S之前的一机难求、动辄价格翻倍相差甚远。去年发布的iPhone 13，成了黄牛生意热潮最后的余温。彼时正值全球缺芯，苹果遭遇供应链危机。特殊时期的供需关系，让黄牛们找到了可乘之机。叶静跃事后总结道，“并不是iPhone 13多受欢迎，而是苹果在第一时间没有那么多备货，那个时间点就成了赚钱的好机会。”但iPhone 14没有这样的幸运。一方面，新机被吐槽与上一代产品几乎毫无区别，“灵动岛不灵动”，多项bug曝光，新功能屡屡翻车。另一方面，库克吸取教训，更注重iPhone 14的供应链管理，新机供货十分充足。有网友表示，Pro版本新机等半个月左右便可到货。这意味着，黄牛赚钱的土壤越来越贫瘠。盛极而衰的拐点？熬夜看完今年的新品发布会后，苹果发烧友胡艺文下定决心，今年不再找黄牛加钱抢购新机。她买过iPhone 14以外的所有iPhone机型，而且不止一次加价购买首发新机。在她看来，抢先一步晒出最新款iPhone并非炫富，而是体现一种对顶级新科技消费产品的追求，“这很极客”。但iPhone 14让她觉得，“抢这种过度相似的机型一点也不极客”。对被公认守成有余、进取不足的库克而言，这当然不是件好事。从1997年将“不同凡响”定为slogan开始，创新便被视为苹果的灵魂。在乔布斯时代，苹果曾推出不止一款开创性的产品，并凭此坐稳了科技公司的头把交椅。但自2011年库克担任CEO以来，苹果便鲜有令人眼前一亮的创新，甚至从引领者的角色逐渐沦为追随者。在销量上取得成功的iPhone 6，是苹果首次推出大屏手机，被认为步了三星等品牌的后尘。iPhone 14的灵动岛等功能，也被质疑抄袭安卓厂商。经济学家任泽平在社交平台上直言，“苹果是在吃乔布斯的老本”，甚至认为2022年是苹果盛极而衰的转折点。不可否认，从销量和公司市值来看，库克掌舵下的苹果取得了巨大的成功。部分原因在于，昔日价格高高在上的苹果手机，在定价上开始“低头”。胡艺文注意到，从iPhone 11开始，苹果手机变得“便宜起来”。一方面，iPhone 11的起售价从上一代产品iPhone XR的6499元降至5499元。另一方面，安卓阵营的旗舰机价格持续上涨，OPPO Find X2 Pro版本5999元起，小米10至尊版也要5299元起，与iPhone持平甚至更高。此后，苹果一直延续新机不涨价的策略。如今，乔布斯留下的老本仍然够苹果吃上一阵子。据Counterpoint Research数据，2022年Q2，苹果在高端智能手机市场仍占据着过半江山，以57%的市场份额创下iPhone自2007年以来的历史纪录，并将全球手机六成多的利润收入囊中。胡艺文这样的果粉也不会轻易抛弃苹果。虽然创新不足，但一年一度的硬件（主要是芯片）稳定更新、软件系统稳定，仍对他们有巨大的吸引力。换句话说，乔布斯时代创造的巨大势能，足以让在创新方面略显平庸的苹果帝国靠惯性继续向前滑行。但随着苹果光环褪色，知秋的寒蝉已经隐隐嗅到寒意，感知到创新乏力的后果。对于靠苹果吃饭的手机经销商吕樊而言，苹果仍然是他营收的大头，“黄牛的失败与否，不影响这一切，太阳照常升起”。靠稀缺性和时间差赚钱的黄牛们则无暇为此悲春伤秋。马不停蹄地奔赴下一个战场，赚取更多利润，才是他们的当务之急。叶静跃已全力转战华为Mate 50。他告诉雪豹财经社，华为新机溢价水平一直比较稳定，目前最低配都要加价1000元，最稀有的保时捷款已被炒到了2.5万元以上，较原价（12999元）翻了近一倍。对于仍站在金字塔尖的全球顶级软硬件一体的苹果公司而言，iPhone 14不可能成为绝唱。但黄牛们暴富梦的终章，或许将为苹果躺赢的终结，奏响一段前奏。（本文人物均为化名）","news_type":1,"symbols_score_info":{"AAPL":0.9}},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":4862,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0}],"hots":[{"id":9969857665,"gmtCreate":1668408785957,"gmtModify":1676538052001,"author":{"id":"4111278462862792","authorId":"4111278462862792","name":"金淀","avatar":"https://community-static.tradeup.com/news/6cb206ae11f9ce4e0ffc3964094b1a7d","crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"4111278462862792","idStr":"4111278462862792"},"themes":[],"title":"","htmlText":"[微笑] ","listText":"[微笑] ","text":"[微笑]","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/9969857665","repostId":"664770288","repostType":1,"repost":{"id":664770288,"gmtCreate":1668408186949,"gmtModify":1676538051954,"author":{"id":"3534727654658721","authorId":"3534727654658721","name":"沙龙君","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d2d38cc8d7c3009b3d750b9d57e68214","crmLevel":4,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3534727654658721","idStr":"3534727654658721"},"themes":[],"title":"首款Web3手機廣告榮登央視 重新定義科技以人爲本","htmlText":"進入2022年，手機行業面臨着增長下行等諸多考驗。相較於過往全渠道、全媒體的地毯式廣告轟炸，如今社會化精準營銷與創新玩法更加青睞。不過，作爲全球首款Web3手機METAVERTU卻逆勢登陸央視，憑藉超前的視覺影像以及對“科技以人爲本”的經典致敬，引發了廣泛關注。近日，VERTU手機持續亮相CCTV-1《新聞聯播》、CCTV-13《新聞30分》開播前的黃金廣告時段。此舉或向外釋放明確的信號，作爲定位奢侈品品牌手機，VERTU手機意在藉助央視天然的圈層資源，持續聚焦高質感高價值人羣，推動品牌的精準圈層拓展，向外界詮釋“人文科技”的魅力所在。新品廣告登陸央視，VERTU聚焦高圈層價值渠道在新品廣告視頻中，VERTU手機與隕石、天空爲核心元素出現，呈現在用戶眼前的，是一種不言而喻的科技感與質感。在視頻最後，還打出了“科技以人爲本”的口號，顯然是在致敬母公司諾基亞的經典廣告語。這種非功能宣教式的表達，更能夠凸顯VERTU手機融合科技與藝術的人文科技魅力。當下，雙十一購物熱潮涌動，各大手機品牌無不將營銷主陣地聚焦在社交媒體平臺。VERTU手機卻爲何逆勢登陸央視？事實上，當下國內手機品牌的產品定位同質化嚴重，用戶羣體持續下沉。在高端產品上，目標人羣能夠選擇的可代替性產品屈指可數。正是基於這樣的洞察，VERTU手機高調亮相央視黃金時段，也是看中了央視天然高質感高值人羣的資源，推動品牌的精準圈層拓展。在觸達之後，能否做到與精準圈層人羣的共情共感，這是洞察目標羣體消費需求的重要前提。在新品推出之際，VERTU手機沒有落腳於功能的展現和品牌代言人的背書，而是喊出母公司諾基亞最爲經典的廣告語——“科技以人爲本”，通過“重溫經典”的方式，快速喚起目標人羣的情感共鳴。廣告片的精神內核與高價值人羣圈層的價值追求擁有高度的契合。從此次廣告宣傳片中不難看出，VERTU手機其實傳達出兩點信息：一是告知新品上市","listText":"進入2022年，手機行業面臨着增長下行等諸多考驗。相較於過往全渠道、全媒體的地毯式廣告轟炸，如今社會化精準營銷與創新玩法更加青睞。不過，作爲全球首款Web3手機METAVERTU卻逆勢登陸央視，憑藉超前的視覺影像以及對“科技以人爲本”的經典致敬，引發了廣泛關注。近日，VERTU手機持續亮相CCTV-1《新聞聯播》、CCTV-13《新聞30分》開播前的黃金廣告時段。此舉或向外釋放明確的信號，作爲定位奢侈品品牌手機，VERTU手機意在藉助央視天然的圈層資源，持續聚焦高質感高價值人羣，推動品牌的精準圈層拓展，向外界詮釋“人文科技”的魅力所在。新品廣告登陸央視，VERTU聚焦高圈層價值渠道在新品廣告視頻中，VERTU手機與隕石、天空爲核心元素出現，呈現在用戶眼前的，是一種不言而喻的科技感與質感。在視頻最後，還打出了“科技以人爲本”的口號，顯然是在致敬母公司諾基亞的經典廣告語。這種非功能宣教式的表達，更能夠凸顯VERTU手機融合科技與藝術的人文科技魅力。當下，雙十一購物熱潮涌動，各大手機品牌無不將營銷主陣地聚焦在社交媒體平臺。VERTU手機卻爲何逆勢登陸央視？事實上，當下國內手機品牌的產品定位同質化嚴重，用戶羣體持續下沉。在高端產品上，目標人羣能夠選擇的可代替性產品屈指可數。正是基於這樣的洞察，VERTU手機高調亮相央視黃金時段，也是看中了央視天然高質感高值人羣的資源，推動品牌的精準圈層拓展。在觸達之後，能否做到與精準圈層人羣的共情共感，這是洞察目標羣體消費需求的重要前提。在新品推出之際，VERTU手機沒有落腳於功能的展現和品牌代言人的背書，而是喊出母公司諾基亞最爲經典的廣告語——“科技以人爲本”，通過“重溫經典”的方式，快速喚起目標人羣的情感共鳴。廣告片的精神內核與高價值人羣圈層的價值追求擁有高度的契合。從此次廣告宣傳片中不難看出，VERTU手機其實傳達出兩點信息：一是告知新品上市","text":"進入2022年，手機行業面臨着增長下行等諸多考驗。相較於過往全渠道、全媒體的地毯式廣告轟炸，如今社會化精準營銷與創新玩法更加青睞。不過，作爲全球首款Web3手機METAVERTU卻逆勢登陸央視，憑藉超前的視覺影像以及對“科技以人爲本”的經典致敬，引發了廣泛關注。近日，VERTU手機持續亮相CCTV-1《新聞聯播》、CCTV-13《新聞30分》開播前的黃金廣告時段。此舉或向外釋放明確的信號，作爲定位奢侈品品牌手機，VERTU手機意在藉助央視天然的圈層資源，持續聚焦高質感高價值人羣，推動品牌的精準圈層拓展，向外界詮釋“人文科技”的魅力所在。新品廣告登陸央視，VERTU聚焦高圈層價值渠道在新品廣告視頻中，VERTU手機與隕石、天空爲核心元素出現，呈現在用戶眼前的，是一種不言而喻的科技感與質感。在視頻最後，還打出了“科技以人爲本”的口號，顯然是在致敬母公司諾基亞的經典廣告語。這種非功能宣教式的表達，更能夠凸顯VERTU手機融合科技與藝術的人文科技魅力。當下，雙十一購物熱潮涌動，各大手機品牌無不將營銷主陣地聚焦在社交媒體平臺。VERTU手機卻爲何逆勢登陸央視？事實上，當下國內手機品牌的產品定位同質化嚴重，用戶羣體持續下沉。在高端產品上，目標人羣能夠選擇的可代替性產品屈指可數。正是基於這樣的洞察，VERTU手機高調亮相央視黃金時段，也是看中了央視天然高質感高值人羣的資源，推動品牌的精準圈層拓展。在觸達之後，能否做到與精準圈層人羣的共情共感，這是洞察目標羣體消費需求的重要前提。在新品推出之際，VERTU手機沒有落腳於功能的展現和品牌代言人的背書，而是喊出母公司諾基亞最爲經典的廣告語——“科技以人爲本”，通過“重溫經典”的方式，快速喚起目標人羣的情感共鳴。廣告片的精神內核與高價值人羣圈層的價值追求擁有高度的契合。從此次廣告宣傳片中不難看出，VERTU手機其實傳達出兩點信息：一是告知新品上市","images":[{"img":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/65329b94594100d65181b35cdda43843","width":"632","height":"365"},{"img":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/f34f41f9a05aee799d41d044f6144337","width":"632","height":"356"},{"img":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/42ff7fbe3ebf58524acbb8ca6cd99c46","width":"632","height":"356"}],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":2,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/664770288","isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":0,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":4,"langContent":"CN","totalScore":0},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":5797,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":9911751013,"gmtCreate":1664267862633,"gmtModify":1676537422245,"author":{"id":"4111278462862792","authorId":"4111278462862792","name":"金淀","avatar":"https://community-static.tradeup.com/news/6cb206ae11f9ce4e0ffc3964094b1a7d","crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"4111278462862792","idStr":"4111278462862792"},"themes":[],"title":"","htmlText":"[微笑] ","listText":"[微笑] ","text":"[微笑]","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/9911751013","repostId":"1140617695","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1140617695","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1664176713,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/1140617695?lang=en_US&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2022-09-26 15:18","market":"us","language":"zh","title":"Jobs' old capital has been eaten for 11 years: fattening Cook and thinning scalpers","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1140617695","media":"雪豹财经社","summary":"今年的市场注定赚少赔多，有黄牛已亏了四五十万元。","content":"<p><html><head></head><body>By Yan Xuegong</p><p>One scalper earned six figures this year, only a third of what he would have in previous years, but he is already considered one of the best among scalpers. This year's market is destined to yield less profit and more losses; some scalpers have already lost 400,000 to 500,000 yuan. Scalpers who once made a fortune from Apple suffered a setback after the launch of the iPhone 14.</p><p>Apple, under Steve Jobs' leadership, ushered in a golden age of overnight wealth for scalpers. The turning point occurred when the iPhone 8 was launched, when some dealers first discovered that Apple's new opportunities were cold. The iPhone 13, released last year, became the last remnant of the scalper boom.</p><p>Apple firmly holds the title of the world's most valuable technology company, but Tim Cook, who has achieved huge commercial success at the helm of this supercarrier, still seems to have not dispelled external doubts. In the eyes of some Apple fans, Apple is losing its innovative soul and gradually becoming a mediocre wealth-creating company.</p><p>After 11 years of Steve Jobs' savings, Apple has once again faced an embarrassing moment where its reputation has failed.</p><p>The iPhone 14, criticized for \"lacking innovation and soul,\" was neglected by consumers and criticized by influential figures. It also caused scalpers who made a fortune during the Steve Jobs era to fall into a trap, with some suffering net losses of hundreds of thousands of yuan in a single day. What was once a golden apple has become a bitter fruit that many scalpers find hard to swallow.</p><p>Over the past 11 years, thanks to its dazzling brand aura and enormous business momentum, Apple has firmly held the title of the world's most valuable technology company, with revenue increasing nearly 2.5 times and market value increasing more than 6 times. However, Cook, who has taken charge of this supercarrier and achieved huge commercial success, still seems to have not dispelled external doubts.</p><p>The topic of \"Cook shedding Apple's innovation label\" sparks a wave of discussion after almost every new product release. Steve Jobs' daughter criticized the iPhone 14 as unoriginal, and economist Ren Zeping bluntly stated that \"the iPhone 14 may be a sign of Apple's rise and fall.\"</p><p>The iPhone 14's failure has awakened scalpers who were still immersed in the feast and revelry of the past. The fervor of the Jobs era still lingers, but the chill has arrived. Their immediate priority is to rush to the next battlefield and earn more profits.</p><p><b>A bet that is bound to be lost</b></p><p>\"I made thorough preparations, but I didn't expect to still lose 40,000 to 50,000 yuan.\" Ye Jingyue, who has been a scalper for three years, sighed and summarized her situation in the three days since the iPhone 14 was released.</p><p>To win the annual battle for Apple's new products, the experienced Ye Jingyue drafted a detailed plan.</p><p>At 7:00 a.m. on September 16, he and his team staked out three Apple stores in Beijing's Chaoyang Joy City, Sanlitun, and Hopson One. “Our team only has 3 people. Including the temporarily hired foreign players on the queue, there are 15 of them.”</p><p>They hired people to queue up to sell the goods for 100 yuan each. These people, who might be students or housewives, would be paid regardless of whether they got the goods or not. Ye Jingyue's team of three stood guard to the side. If the hired person snatched the phone, they would show up to pay, and then take the new phone and sell it to the users in line at a higher price.</p><p>Having done her homework, Ye Jingyue had a very clear goal. The night before Apple's launch date, he gave his foreign aides a task: \"This year, we will only grab the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max, with purple being the top priority.\"</p><p>On the first day, he snagged two 14 Pros at the original price and resold them at a premium of 1,000 yuan, making a profit of 2,000 yuan. However, after acquiring more than 20 units from users at a premium of 1,500 yuan, he began to lose money. “I was very happy when I first received the phone, thinking that I would resell it at a markup of about 3,000 yuan per unit, with a profit of 1,500 yuan per unit,” he told Snow Leopard Finance. “But after I got the phone, I found that I couldn’t sell it at all.”</p><p>The price premium of Apple's new phones has plummeted faster than Ye Jingyue had imagined. By noon that day, he realized something was wrong and only offered the \"original price\" at a premium of 1,500 yuan, but no one paid any attention. On the first day, Ye Jingyue sold most of her phones at a premium of about 600 yuan, losing 20,000 yuan. In the following two days, losses gradually widened as the premium price of Apple's new iPhones plummeted in the scalper market.</p><p>Ye Jingyue is not the only scalper who has stumbled upon Apple's new products.</p><p>“The scalpers lost their bet, and there are no winners this year.” Lü Fan, who has been a mobile phone distributor since the iPhone 4 era, told Snow Leopard Finance. “The price was inflated too high before the release this year. After I got the phone before the release, my competitors set the premium for the purple version of the 14 Pro Max at around 3,000 yuan. The extremely high profits aroused the scalpers’ gambling spirit.”</p><p>The vast majority of the first batch of 14 Pros that Lü Fan received were \"snapped up\" by scalpers who marked them up by more than 1,500 yuan. \"There was nothing I could do, they gave me too much.\"</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c574cba0d5ceaa884d5e2767fe3b96b7\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"227\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8a3bed490702142b38c2567108d3af6f\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"255\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/>Price comparison between the first day and 3 days after release. (Image source: provided by Lü Fan)</p><p>Lü Fan dealt with scalpers for a long time, and he divided the scalpers into three levels: high, medium, and low.</p><p>At the lowest level are newcomers who follow the trend, and these people have lost the most this year. Intermediate users have their own team and can snag phones at the original price. High-end scalpers can get ahead of the curve, ordering goods from distributors before they are released. Given this year's market trends, only high-level scalpers have the opportunity to make a small fortune.</p><p>Li Nan, who ordered a batch of new phones directly from the dealer, was one of the lucky ones who made a small fortune. But in his view, \"for a product like Apple, a small profit is a loss.\"</p><p>Li Nan told Snow Leopard Finance that before each order, he receives pre-orders from customer groups and personal friends to determine the quantity to be purchased. However, the number of customers booking this year has decreased significantly, \"at least by more than half.\"</p><p>Loyal customers who once paid extra to buy new Apple phones have calmed down a lot this year, and their reasons for losing enthusiasm mostly point to criticisms of the iPhone 14's lack of innovation. One customer told Li Nan, \"I don't think there's any value in showing off by being the first to receive a phone that is extremely similar to the iPhone 13 I have.\"</p><p>Apple fans should remain calm; scalpers' wallets will inevitably shrink.</p><p>Li Nan earned six figures this year, only one-third of what she earned in previous years, but she is already considered one of the best among scalpers. He told Snow Leopard Finance that this year's market is destined to yield less profit and more losses, with some competitors already losing 400,000 to 500,000 yuan.</p><p><b>Retail investors betray scalpers</b></p><p>\"Thank you, scalper.\" Liu Wei posted this on his WeChat Moments on the evening of the first day Apple's new iPhone went on sale.</p><p>That day, after buying two iPhone 14 Pros, he was stopped by scalpers at the door. They added 1,800 yuan to each phone and sold it to the other party, making a profit of 3,600 yuan.</p><p>Sensing a business opportunity, Liu Wei gathered several classmates that evening to rush to buy the iPhone 14 Pro. In his view, this was a sure-fire business. It's best to sell it to scalpers; if it doesn't sell, you can get a 14-day unconditional refund. He joked, \"There will always be scalpers taking over.\"</p><p>Individual retail investors like Liu Wei, who harvest scalpers in reverse, are known online as \"scalper hunters\". Among the foreign players in the scalper team, some have figured out the tricks and begun to \"betray\" the scalpers.</p><p>Among the foreign aides hired by Ye Jingyue who were queuing up, two of them snapped up the new phones and immediately \"betrayed\" them. They refused to let Ye Jingyue's team pay on their behalf, but instead bought the phones themselves and resold them to another wave of scalpers at a high price as soon as they left. In Ye Jingyue's view, \"I'm practically working for them.\"</p><p>In Lü Fan's eyes, the more sophisticated scalper was an Apple distributor.</p><p>In an effort to hype up the market, major distributors released information after receiving the phones, jointly driving up the prices of new products and targeting the purple iPhone 14 Pro Max as this year's \"premium king\". Not many of the first batch of premium-priced phones reached ordinary users; instead, most were sold to scalpers at high prices.</p><p>In the past, the Apple scalper market was like a funnel. The upstream distributors have a stable portion of profits and a certain premium right. Midstream scalpers profit from the price difference by reselling, while downstream users are eager to get their hands on new phones, and they are the ones who ultimately pay for the high premium.</p><p>However, the iPhone 14's poor reputation turned this hidden trading market into a game where more losers than winners. Distributors' profits remained relatively stable, but the enthusiasm of Apple fans suddenly cooled down, and the pressure was transmitted to scalpers.</p><p>Scalpers, still reluctant to wake up from the Apple feast dream of \"huge profits on a single device,\" have suddenly become targets for hunters to harvest.</p><p><b>Farewell to the Golden Age</b></p><p>Scalpers who dare to spend money to gamble on huge profits have witnessed the enormous wealth dream created by Apple iPhones.</p><p>Twelve years ago, Steve Jobs, dressed in a black sweater and jeans, appeared holding an iPhone 4, becoming a milestone in the history of smartphones and ushering in the golden age of scalpers.</p><p>\"The iPhone 4 is a groundbreaking product, and the market is incredibly enthusiastic. A phone that costs 5,000 yuan can be resold for 15,000 yuan no matter what channel you get it from.\" Lü Fan, a graduate of a 985 university, sensed a business opportunity and started a business reselling Apple phones. At that time, in order to rush to buy Apple phones, scalpers set up tents and waited 48 hours in advance in Sanlitun and Joy City in Beijing.</p><p>As Apple's flagship device, the first batch of iPhone 4 sold 1.7 million units within three days of its launch, and demand exceeded supply. At that time, the first sale in the domestic market was about four months late, and scalpers made a fortune by taking advantage of this time difference.</p><p>Lü Fan told Snow Leopard Finance that he discovered that Apple stores in Hong Kong were limited to five units per person, so he organized a group of people to fly to Hong Kong to queue up. The largest order earned him hundreds of thousands of yuan. \"Back then, even a slightly more diligent scalper team could earn a million yuan in three months, which was considered a small amount.\" Even when the iPhone 4S was launched a year later, you still had to pay an extra 1,000 yuan to buy an iPhone 4 from scalpers.</p><p>The turning point occurred when the iPhone 8 was launched, which was the first time Lü Fan discovered that Apple's new opportunities were cold.</p><p>Lü Fan, who was already an Apple distributor at the time, recalled that the iPhone 8 did not sell very well, queues at Apple stores and in Zhongguancun decreased significantly, and many scalpers who hoarded goods at high prices lost money.</p><p>It was at this time that criticism of Apple's lack of innovation began to rise. From the iPhone 5 to the iPhone 8, several generations of Apple products have been criticized for being too similar in appearance, like \"four generations under one roof,\" without any substantial innovation in functionality.</p><p>The highly anticipated iPhone X delivered a slap in the face to scalpers with a more lukewarm market response. Users are not buying into this so-called \"unprecedented smartphone,\" and the iPhone X's two most proud innovations—full-screen display and facial recognition—are considered to be no longer originals.</p><p>Scalpers lost money, and Apple suffered even worse losses. Following poor sales of the iPhone X, Apple repeatedly cut production, causing its stock price to plummet by more than 7% at one point, wiping out over $60 billion in market value.</p><p>The iPhone X has been met with a lukewarm reception, and Apple's innovation capabilities have been brought down from their pedestal, leaving scalpers with increasingly smaller opportunities to profit from price differences. A new phone usually costs a few hundred yuan more, which is a far cry from the difficulty in obtaining one before the iPhone 6S, which often doubled in price.</p><p>The iPhone 13, released last year, became the last remnant of the scalper boom.</p><p>At that time, there was a global chip shortage, and Apple was facing a supply chain crisis. The supply and demand relationship during this special period has given scalpers an opportunity to take advantage of it. Ye Jingyue later summarized, \"It wasn't that the iPhone 13 was particularly popular, but rather that Apple didn't have enough stock in the first place, which made that time a good opportunity to make money.\"</p><p>But the iPhone 14 wasn't so lucky. On the one hand, the new phone has been criticized for being almost indistinguishable from its predecessor, with \"slow Dynamic Island,\" multiple bugs exposed, and new features repeatedly failing. On the other hand, Cook learned from his lesson and paid more attention to the supply chain management of the iPhone 14, resulting in a very ample supply of the new model. Some netizens said that the new Pro version will arrive in about half a month.</p><p>This means that the fertile ground for scalpers to make money is becoming increasingly barren.</p><p><b>A turning point of rise and fall?</b></p><p>After staying up all night watching this year's new product launches, Apple enthusiast Hu Yiwen made up his mind not to spend extra money on scalpers to buy new phones this year.</p><p>She has bought all iPhone models except the iPhone 14, and has paid more than once for the first new model. In her view, taking the lead in showing off the latest iPhone is not about showing off wealth, but about reflecting a pursuit of top-notch new technology consumer products. \"It's very geeky.\" But the iPhone 14 made her feel that \"stealing such overly similar models is not geeky at all.\"</p><p>This is certainly not a good thing for Cook, who is widely recognized as being more conservative than ambitious.</p><p>Since \"Extraordinary\" was adopted as Apple's slogan in 1997, innovation has been regarded as the soul of Apple. During the Steve Jobs era, Apple launched more than one groundbreaking product, thus firmly establishing itself as the top tech company.</p><p>However, since Cook became CEO in 2011, Apple has rarely made any groundbreaking innovations, and has even gradually degenerated from a leader to a follower. The successful iPhone 6 marked Apple's first large-screen phone and is seen as following in the footsteps of brands like Samsung. The iPhone 14's Dynamic Island and other features have also been accused of plagiarizing Android manufacturers.</p><p>Economist Ren Zeping bluntly stated on social media that \"Apple is living off Steve Jobs' past achievements,\" and even believed that 2022 was a turning point in Apple's rise and fall.</p><p>Undeniably, in terms of sales volume and company market capitalization, Apple under Cook's leadership has achieved great success. Part of the reason is that Apple phones, which were once expensive, have begun to \"bow down\" in pricing.</p><p>Hu Yiwen noted that starting with the iPhone 11, Apple phones have become \"cheaper\".</p><p>On the one hand, the starting price of the iPhone 11 has dropped from 6,499 yuan for its predecessor, the iPhone XR, to 5,499 yuan. On the other hand, the prices of flagship Android phones continue to rise, with the OPPO Find X2 Pro starting at 5,999 yuan and the Xiaomi 10 Ultra starting at 5,299 yuan, on par with or even higher than the iPhone. Since then, Apple has continued its strategy of not raising prices for new phones.</p><p>Today, Jobs' legacy is still enough to feed Apple for a while. According to Counterpoint Research, in Q2 2022, Apple still held more than half of the high-end smartphone market, setting a new record for the iPhone since 2007 with a market share of 57%, and capturing more than 60% of global mobile phone profits.</p><p>Even Apple fans like Hu Yiwen won't easily abandon Apple. Despite the lack of innovation, the stable annual hardware (mainly chip) updates and stable software systems still hold great appeal for them.</p><p>In other words, the enormous momentum created during the Jobs era was enough to keep the Apple empire, which was somewhat mediocre in terms of innovation, moving forward by inertia. But as Apple's halo fades, the chilly cicada that knows autumn has already faintly smelled the chill and sensed the consequences of a lack of innovation.</p><p>For Lü Fan, a mobile phone distributor who relies on Apple for a living, Apple remains the main source of his revenue. \"Whether the scalpers fail or not does not affect all of this; the sun will rise as usual.\"</p><p>Scalpers who profit from scarcity and time differences have no time to grieve over this. Their immediate priority is to rush to the next battlefield and earn more profits.</p><p>Ye Jingyue has now focused all her efforts on the Huawei Mate 50. He told Snow Leopard Finance that the premium level of Huawei's new phones has always been relatively stable. Currently, even the lowest model costs an extra 1,000 yuan, and the rarest Porsche model has been resold for more than 25,000 yuan, nearly double the original price (12,999 yuan).</p><p>For Apple, which still stands at the top of the global software and hardware integration pyramid, the iPhone 14 is unlikely to be the swan song. But the final chapter in the scalpers' dream of getting rich quick may be a prelude to the end of Apple's easy win.</p><p>(All characters in this article are pseudonyms)</p><p></body></html></p>","source":"lsy1634697401643","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Jobs' old capital has been eaten for 11 years: fattening Cook and thinning scalpers</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 12.5px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nJobs' old capital has been eaten for 11 years: fattening Cook and thinning scalpers\n</h2>\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n<p class=\"head\">\n<strong class=\"h-name small\">雪豹财经社</strong><span class=\"h-time small\">2022-09-26 15:18</span>\n</p>\n</h4>\n</header>\n<article>\n<p><html><head></head><body>By Yan Xuegong</p><p>One scalper earned six figures this year, only a third of what he would have in previous years, but he is already considered one of the best among scalpers. This year's market is destined to yield less profit and more losses; some scalpers have already lost 400,000 to 500,000 yuan. Scalpers who once made a fortune from Apple suffered a setback after the launch of the iPhone 14.</p><p>Apple, under Steve Jobs' leadership, ushered in a golden age of overnight wealth for scalpers. The turning point occurred when the iPhone 8 was launched, when some dealers first discovered that Apple's new opportunities were cold. The iPhone 13, released last year, became the last remnant of the scalper boom.</p><p>Apple firmly holds the title of the world's most valuable technology company, but Tim Cook, who has achieved huge commercial success at the helm of this supercarrier, still seems to have not dispelled external doubts. In the eyes of some Apple fans, Apple is losing its innovative soul and gradually becoming a mediocre wealth-creating company.</p><p>After 11 years of Steve Jobs' savings, Apple has once again faced an embarrassing moment where its reputation has failed.</p><p>The iPhone 14, criticized for \"lacking innovation and soul,\" was neglected by consumers and criticized by influential figures. It also caused scalpers who made a fortune during the Steve Jobs era to fall into a trap, with some suffering net losses of hundreds of thousands of yuan in a single day. What was once a golden apple has become a bitter fruit that many scalpers find hard to swallow.</p><p>Over the past 11 years, thanks to its dazzling brand aura and enormous business momentum, Apple has firmly held the title of the world's most valuable technology company, with revenue increasing nearly 2.5 times and market value increasing more than 6 times. However, Cook, who has taken charge of this supercarrier and achieved huge commercial success, still seems to have not dispelled external doubts.</p><p>The topic of \"Cook shedding Apple's innovation label\" sparks a wave of discussion after almost every new product release. Steve Jobs' daughter criticized the iPhone 14 as unoriginal, and economist Ren Zeping bluntly stated that \"the iPhone 14 may be a sign of Apple's rise and fall.\"</p><p>The iPhone 14's failure has awakened scalpers who were still immersed in the feast and revelry of the past. The fervor of the Jobs era still lingers, but the chill has arrived. Their immediate priority is to rush to the next battlefield and earn more profits.</p><p><b>A bet that is bound to be lost</b></p><p>\"I made thorough preparations, but I didn't expect to still lose 40,000 to 50,000 yuan.\" Ye Jingyue, who has been a scalper for three years, sighed and summarized her situation in the three days since the iPhone 14 was released.</p><p>To win the annual battle for Apple's new products, the experienced Ye Jingyue drafted a detailed plan.</p><p>At 7:00 a.m. on September 16, he and his team staked out three Apple stores in Beijing's Chaoyang Joy City, Sanlitun, and Hopson One. “Our team only has 3 people. Including the temporarily hired foreign players on the queue, there are 15 of them.”</p><p>They hired people to queue up to sell the goods for 100 yuan each. These people, who might be students or housewives, would be paid regardless of whether they got the goods or not. Ye Jingyue's team of three stood guard to the side. If the hired person snatched the phone, they would show up to pay, and then take the new phone and sell it to the users in line at a higher price.</p><p>Having done her homework, Ye Jingyue had a very clear goal. The night before Apple's launch date, he gave his foreign aides a task: \"This year, we will only grab the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max, with purple being the top priority.\"</p><p>On the first day, he snagged two 14 Pros at the original price and resold them at a premium of 1,000 yuan, making a profit of 2,000 yuan. However, after acquiring more than 20 units from users at a premium of 1,500 yuan, he began to lose money. “I was very happy when I first received the phone, thinking that I would resell it at a markup of about 3,000 yuan per unit, with a profit of 1,500 yuan per unit,” he told Snow Leopard Finance. “But after I got the phone, I found that I couldn’t sell it at all.”</p><p>The price premium of Apple's new phones has plummeted faster than Ye Jingyue had imagined. By noon that day, he realized something was wrong and only offered the \"original price\" at a premium of 1,500 yuan, but no one paid any attention. On the first day, Ye Jingyue sold most of her phones at a premium of about 600 yuan, losing 20,000 yuan. In the following two days, losses gradually widened as the premium price of Apple's new iPhones plummeted in the scalper market.</p><p>Ye Jingyue is not the only scalper who has stumbled upon Apple's new products.</p><p>“The scalpers lost their bet, and there are no winners this year.” Lü Fan, who has been a mobile phone distributor since the iPhone 4 era, told Snow Leopard Finance. “The price was inflated too high before the release this year. After I got the phone before the release, my competitors set the premium for the purple version of the 14 Pro Max at around 3,000 yuan. The extremely high profits aroused the scalpers’ gambling spirit.”</p><p>The vast majority of the first batch of 14 Pros that Lü Fan received were \"snapped up\" by scalpers who marked them up by more than 1,500 yuan. \"There was nothing I could do, they gave me too much.\"</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c574cba0d5ceaa884d5e2767fe3b96b7\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"227\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8a3bed490702142b38c2567108d3af6f\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"255\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/>Price comparison between the first day and 3 days after release. (Image source: provided by Lü Fan)</p><p>Lü Fan dealt with scalpers for a long time, and he divided the scalpers into three levels: high, medium, and low.</p><p>At the lowest level are newcomers who follow the trend, and these people have lost the most this year. Intermediate users have their own team and can snag phones at the original price. High-end scalpers can get ahead of the curve, ordering goods from distributors before they are released. Given this year's market trends, only high-level scalpers have the opportunity to make a small fortune.</p><p>Li Nan, who ordered a batch of new phones directly from the dealer, was one of the lucky ones who made a small fortune. But in his view, \"for a product like Apple, a small profit is a loss.\"</p><p>Li Nan told Snow Leopard Finance that before each order, he receives pre-orders from customer groups and personal friends to determine the quantity to be purchased. However, the number of customers booking this year has decreased significantly, \"at least by more than half.\"</p><p>Loyal customers who once paid extra to buy new Apple phones have calmed down a lot this year, and their reasons for losing enthusiasm mostly point to criticisms of the iPhone 14's lack of innovation. One customer told Li Nan, \"I don't think there's any value in showing off by being the first to receive a phone that is extremely similar to the iPhone 13 I have.\"</p><p>Apple fans should remain calm; scalpers' wallets will inevitably shrink.</p><p>Li Nan earned six figures this year, only one-third of what she earned in previous years, but she is already considered one of the best among scalpers. He told Snow Leopard Finance that this year's market is destined to yield less profit and more losses, with some competitors already losing 400,000 to 500,000 yuan.</p><p><b>Retail investors betray scalpers</b></p><p>\"Thank you, scalper.\" Liu Wei posted this on his WeChat Moments on the evening of the first day Apple's new iPhone went on sale.</p><p>That day, after buying two iPhone 14 Pros, he was stopped by scalpers at the door. They added 1,800 yuan to each phone and sold it to the other party, making a profit of 3,600 yuan.</p><p>Sensing a business opportunity, Liu Wei gathered several classmates that evening to rush to buy the iPhone 14 Pro. In his view, this was a sure-fire business. It's best to sell it to scalpers; if it doesn't sell, you can get a 14-day unconditional refund. He joked, \"There will always be scalpers taking over.\"</p><p>Individual retail investors like Liu Wei, who harvest scalpers in reverse, are known online as \"scalper hunters\". Among the foreign players in the scalper team, some have figured out the tricks and begun to \"betray\" the scalpers.</p><p>Among the foreign aides hired by Ye Jingyue who were queuing up, two of them snapped up the new phones and immediately \"betrayed\" them. They refused to let Ye Jingyue's team pay on their behalf, but instead bought the phones themselves and resold them to another wave of scalpers at a high price as soon as they left. In Ye Jingyue's view, \"I'm practically working for them.\"</p><p>In Lü Fan's eyes, the more sophisticated scalper was an Apple distributor.</p><p>In an effort to hype up the market, major distributors released information after receiving the phones, jointly driving up the prices of new products and targeting the purple iPhone 14 Pro Max as this year's \"premium king\". Not many of the first batch of premium-priced phones reached ordinary users; instead, most were sold to scalpers at high prices.</p><p>In the past, the Apple scalper market was like a funnel. The upstream distributors have a stable portion of profits and a certain premium right. Midstream scalpers profit from the price difference by reselling, while downstream users are eager to get their hands on new phones, and they are the ones who ultimately pay for the high premium.</p><p>However, the iPhone 14's poor reputation turned this hidden trading market into a game where more losers than winners. Distributors' profits remained relatively stable, but the enthusiasm of Apple fans suddenly cooled down, and the pressure was transmitted to scalpers.</p><p>Scalpers, still reluctant to wake up from the Apple feast dream of \"huge profits on a single device,\" have suddenly become targets for hunters to harvest.</p><p><b>Farewell to the Golden Age</b></p><p>Scalpers who dare to spend money to gamble on huge profits have witnessed the enormous wealth dream created by Apple iPhones.</p><p>Twelve years ago, Steve Jobs, dressed in a black sweater and jeans, appeared holding an iPhone 4, becoming a milestone in the history of smartphones and ushering in the golden age of scalpers.</p><p>\"The iPhone 4 is a groundbreaking product, and the market is incredibly enthusiastic. A phone that costs 5,000 yuan can be resold for 15,000 yuan no matter what channel you get it from.\" Lü Fan, a graduate of a 985 university, sensed a business opportunity and started a business reselling Apple phones. At that time, in order to rush to buy Apple phones, scalpers set up tents and waited 48 hours in advance in Sanlitun and Joy City in Beijing.</p><p>As Apple's flagship device, the first batch of iPhone 4 sold 1.7 million units within three days of its launch, and demand exceeded supply. At that time, the first sale in the domestic market was about four months late, and scalpers made a fortune by taking advantage of this time difference.</p><p>Lü Fan told Snow Leopard Finance that he discovered that Apple stores in Hong Kong were limited to five units per person, so he organized a group of people to fly to Hong Kong to queue up. The largest order earned him hundreds of thousands of yuan. \"Back then, even a slightly more diligent scalper team could earn a million yuan in three months, which was considered a small amount.\" Even when the iPhone 4S was launched a year later, you still had to pay an extra 1,000 yuan to buy an iPhone 4 from scalpers.</p><p>The turning point occurred when the iPhone 8 was launched, which was the first time Lü Fan discovered that Apple's new opportunities were cold.</p><p>Lü Fan, who was already an Apple distributor at the time, recalled that the iPhone 8 did not sell very well, queues at Apple stores and in Zhongguancun decreased significantly, and many scalpers who hoarded goods at high prices lost money.</p><p>It was at this time that criticism of Apple's lack of innovation began to rise. From the iPhone 5 to the iPhone 8, several generations of Apple products have been criticized for being too similar in appearance, like \"four generations under one roof,\" without any substantial innovation in functionality.</p><p>The highly anticipated iPhone X delivered a slap in the face to scalpers with a more lukewarm market response. Users are not buying into this so-called \"unprecedented smartphone,\" and the iPhone X's two most proud innovations—full-screen display and facial recognition—are considered to be no longer originals.</p><p>Scalpers lost money, and Apple suffered even worse losses. Following poor sales of the iPhone X, Apple repeatedly cut production, causing its stock price to plummet by more than 7% at one point, wiping out over $60 billion in market value.</p><p>The iPhone X has been met with a lukewarm reception, and Apple's innovation capabilities have been brought down from their pedestal, leaving scalpers with increasingly smaller opportunities to profit from price differences. A new phone usually costs a few hundred yuan more, which is a far cry from the difficulty in obtaining one before the iPhone 6S, which often doubled in price.</p><p>The iPhone 13, released last year, became the last remnant of the scalper boom.</p><p>At that time, there was a global chip shortage, and Apple was facing a supply chain crisis. The supply and demand relationship during this special period has given scalpers an opportunity to take advantage of it. Ye Jingyue later summarized, \"It wasn't that the iPhone 13 was particularly popular, but rather that Apple didn't have enough stock in the first place, which made that time a good opportunity to make money.\"</p><p>But the iPhone 14 wasn't so lucky. On the one hand, the new phone has been criticized for being almost indistinguishable from its predecessor, with \"slow Dynamic Island,\" multiple bugs exposed, and new features repeatedly failing. On the other hand, Cook learned from his lesson and paid more attention to the supply chain management of the iPhone 14, resulting in a very ample supply of the new model. Some netizens said that the new Pro version will arrive in about half a month.</p><p>This means that the fertile ground for scalpers to make money is becoming increasingly barren.</p><p><b>A turning point of rise and fall?</b></p><p>After staying up all night watching this year's new product launches, Apple enthusiast Hu Yiwen made up his mind not to spend extra money on scalpers to buy new phones this year.</p><p>She has bought all iPhone models except the iPhone 14, and has paid more than once for the first new model. In her view, taking the lead in showing off the latest iPhone is not about showing off wealth, but about reflecting a pursuit of top-notch new technology consumer products. \"It's very geeky.\" But the iPhone 14 made her feel that \"stealing such overly similar models is not geeky at all.\"</p><p>This is certainly not a good thing for Cook, who is widely recognized as being more conservative than ambitious.</p><p>Since \"Extraordinary\" was adopted as Apple's slogan in 1997, innovation has been regarded as the soul of Apple. During the Steve Jobs era, Apple launched more than one groundbreaking product, thus firmly establishing itself as the top tech company.</p><p>However, since Cook became CEO in 2011, Apple has rarely made any groundbreaking innovations, and has even gradually degenerated from a leader to a follower. The successful iPhone 6 marked Apple's first large-screen phone and is seen as following in the footsteps of brands like Samsung. The iPhone 14's Dynamic Island and other features have also been accused of plagiarizing Android manufacturers.</p><p>Economist Ren Zeping bluntly stated on social media that \"Apple is living off Steve Jobs' past achievements,\" and even believed that 2022 was a turning point in Apple's rise and fall.</p><p>Undeniably, in terms of sales volume and company market capitalization, Apple under Cook's leadership has achieved great success. Part of the reason is that Apple phones, which were once expensive, have begun to \"bow down\" in pricing.</p><p>Hu Yiwen noted that starting with the iPhone 11, Apple phones have become \"cheaper\".</p><p>On the one hand, the starting price of the iPhone 11 has dropped from 6,499 yuan for its predecessor, the iPhone XR, to 5,499 yuan. On the other hand, the prices of flagship Android phones continue to rise, with the OPPO Find X2 Pro starting at 5,999 yuan and the Xiaomi 10 Ultra starting at 5,299 yuan, on par with or even higher than the iPhone. Since then, Apple has continued its strategy of not raising prices for new phones.</p><p>Today, Jobs' legacy is still enough to feed Apple for a while. According to Counterpoint Research, in Q2 2022, Apple still held more than half of the high-end smartphone market, setting a new record for the iPhone since 2007 with a market share of 57%, and capturing more than 60% of global mobile phone profits.</p><p>Even Apple fans like Hu Yiwen won't easily abandon Apple. Despite the lack of innovation, the stable annual hardware (mainly chip) updates and stable software systems still hold great appeal for them.</p><p>In other words, the enormous momentum created during the Jobs era was enough to keep the Apple empire, which was somewhat mediocre in terms of innovation, moving forward by inertia. But as Apple's halo fades, the chilly cicada that knows autumn has already faintly smelled the chill and sensed the consequences of a lack of innovation.</p><p>For Lü Fan, a mobile phone distributor who relies on Apple for a living, Apple remains the main source of his revenue. \"Whether the scalpers fail or not does not affect all of this; the sun will rise as usual.\"</p><p>Scalpers who profit from scarcity and time differences have no time to grieve over this. Their immediate priority is to rush to the next battlefield and earn more profits.</p><p>Ye Jingyue has now focused all her efforts on the Huawei Mate 50. He told Snow Leopard Finance that the premium level of Huawei's new phones has always been relatively stable. Currently, even the lowest model costs an extra 1,000 yuan, and the rarest Porsche model has been resold for more than 25,000 yuan, nearly double the original price (12,999 yuan).</p><p>For Apple, which still stands at the top of the global software and hardware integration pyramid, the iPhone 14 is unlikely to be the swan song. But the final chapter in the scalpers' dream of getting rich quick may be a prelude to the end of Apple's easy win.</p><p>(All characters in this article are pseudonyms)</p><p></body></html></p>\n<div class=\"bt-text\">\n\n\n<p> source：<a href=\"http://finance.sina.com.cn/tech/csj/2022-09-26/doc-imqqsmrp0494572.shtml\">雪豹财经社</a></p>\n\n\n</div>\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e5f2cbfd4e34e8ec82c7adfe60fe60a9","relate_stocks":{"AAPL":"苹果"},"source_url":"http://finance.sina.com.cn/tech/csj/2022-09-26/doc-imqqsmrp0494572.shtml","is_english":false,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1140617695","content_text":"文/闫学功一位黄牛今年赚了六位数，只有往年的三分之一，但在黄牛党中已算佼佼者。今年的市场注定赚少赔多，有黄牛已亏了四五十万元。曾靠苹果赚得盆满钵满的黄牛们在iPhone 14推出后栽了跟头。乔布斯掌舵下的苹果，曾为黄牛构筑了一夜暴富的黄金时代。转折点发生在iPhone 8推出时，有经销商头一次发现苹果新机遇冷。而去年发布的iPhone 13，成了黄牛生意热潮最后的余温。苹果稳坐全球市值最高科技公司宝座，但执掌这艘超级航母取得巨大商业成功的库克，却似乎仍未打消外界的质疑。在一些果粉眼中，苹果正在失去创新的灵魂，逐渐沦为一家平庸的造富公司。乔布斯的老本吃了11年，苹果又一次迎来了口碑翻车的尴尬时刻。被诟病“毫无创新，失去灵魂”的iPhone 14，被消费者冷落，被大V吐槽，也让在乔布斯时代赚得盆满钵满的“黄牛们”踩到了坑里，有人一天净亏几十万元。曾经的金苹果，成为不少黄牛眼中难以下咽的苦果。11年来，凭借耀眼的品牌光环和巨大的商业势能，苹果稳坐全球市值最高科技公司宝座，营收增长了近2.5倍，市值涨了6倍多。但执掌这艘超级航母并取得巨大商业成功的库克，却似乎仍未打消外界的质疑。关于“库克揭下苹果创新标签”的话题，在几乎每一次新品发布后都会掀起一波讨论的热潮。乔布斯女儿吐槽iPhone 14毫无新意，经济学家任泽平直言“iPhone 14可能是苹果盛极而衰的标志”。iPhone 14的翻车，惊醒了还沉浸在昔日盛宴狂欢中的黄牛们。乔布斯时代的狂热余温尚存，但寒意已至。马不停蹄地奔赴下一个战场，赚取更多利润，才是他们的当务之急。一场必输的赌局“做了万全的准备，没想到还是亏了四五万。”做了3年黄牛的叶静跃叹了口气，总结iPhone 14发售3天以来自己的战况。为了打好一年一度的苹果新品之战，经验丰富的叶静跃拟定了一份翔实的方案。9月16日早上7点，他和他的团队便分别在北京朝阳大悦城、三里屯和合生汇的3家苹果门店蹲守。“我们团队只有3人，算上临时雇的排队外援，有15个。”他们以每人100元的价格雇人排队抢售，这些人可能是学生、家庭主妇，不管抢没抢到都会付报酬。叶静跃团队3人则在一旁蹲守，如果雇来的人抢到手机，他们就会现身付款，随后便拿着新机向排队的用户加价售卖。做足功课的叶静跃目标十分清晰。苹果发售日前一天晚上，他便给外援们下了任务：“今年只抢iPhone 14 Pro和Pro Max，紫色是最优先款式。”第一天，他以原价抢到了两台14 Pro，转手加价1000元卖出，赚了2000元。但随后以1500元的溢价从用户手中收购了20多台后，他便开始亏损。“刚拿到手机时觉得很开心，想着一台加价3000元左右倒卖，每台还有1500元的利润。”他告诉雪豹财经社，“但手机到手后，发现根本卖不出去。”苹果新机溢价的跳水，比叶静跃想象中来得快。他到当天中午已经觉察不对，只以1500元溢价的“原价”吆喝，但已无人问津。第一天，叶静跃大部分手机加价600元左右卖出，亏了两万元。此后两天，随着苹果新机溢价在黄牛市场的跳水，亏损逐渐扩大。在苹果新品上栽了跟头的黄牛，远不止叶静跃一人。“黄牛们赌输了，今年没有赢家。”从iPhone 4时代开始做手机经销商的吕樊告诉雪豹财经社，“今年发售前价格被炒得太高，我在发售前拿到机子后，同行们都将14 Pro Max紫色款的溢价定在3000元左右，超高利润唤起了黄牛们的赌性。”吕樊拿到的第一批14 Pro，绝大部分被加价1500元以上的黄牛们“抢”走了，“没办法，他们给的太多了”。首日与发售3日后价格对比 图源：吕樊提供吕樊长年跟黄牛打交道，他将黄牛党分为高中低三个层级。最低层级的是跟风的新手，这些人今年赔得最惨。中级的自己有团队，能以原价抢购到手机。高级黄牛则能够先人一步，在发售前便已从销商手中订到货。按照今年的行情，只有高级黄牛才有机会小赚一笔。从经销商手中直接预订了一批新机的李楠，是小赚一笔的幸运儿之一。但在他看来，“对于苹果这种产品来说，小赚就是亏。”李楠告诉雪豹财经社，他每次订货前，都会在客户群和个人好友那里收到预订单，以此来确定进货数量。但今年预订的客户明显减少，“起码少了一大半”。曾不惜加价购买苹果新机的忠实客户今年冷静了许多，他们不再热忱的理由大多指向对iPhone 14缺乏创新的诟病。有客户告诉李楠，“我不觉得率先拿到一款与我手中iPhone 13极其相似的手机，有什么炫耀的价值。”果粉冷静，黄牛的钱包必然缩水。李楠今年赚了六位数，只有往年的1/3，但在黄牛党中已经算是佼佼者。他告诉雪豹财经社，今年的市场注定赚少赔多，有的同行已经亏了四五十万元。散户背刺黄牛“谢谢你，黄牛君。”苹果新机开售首日晚上，刘威发表了这样一条朋友圈。当天，他买到两台iPhone 14 Pro后，便被门口的黄牛拦下，每台加价1800元把手机卖给对方，赚了3600元差价。嗅到商机的刘威当晚便召集了几个同学，一起去抢购iPhone 14 Pro。在他看来，这是一桩稳赚不赔的生意。能卖给黄牛最好，卖不出去还可以14天无条件退款。他笑称，“总会有黄牛们接盘。”像刘威这样反向收割黄牛的个人散户，在网上被称为“黄牛猎手”。黄牛团队的外援中，也有人摸清了门道，开始“背刺”黄牛。叶静跃雇来排队的外援中，有两个人抢购到新机后当场“反水”，拒绝叶静跃团队代为付钱，而是自己买下手机，出门就高价转手卖给了另一波黄牛。在叶静跃看来，“我简直是在给他们打工。”吕樊眼中更高级的黄牛猎手，是苹果经销商。为了炒热市场，大经销商们在拿到手机后就对外放出消息，联合将新品价格炒到很高，并瞄定紫色iPhone 14 Pro Max为今年的“溢价王”。第一批溢价手机没有多少流到普通用户手中，而是大部分高价卖给了黄牛。以往的苹果黄牛市场就像一个漏斗。最上游的经销商拥有一部分稳定的利润和一定的溢价权。中游的黄牛通过倒买倒卖赚取差价，最下游的是急于抢先拿到新机的用户，他们是最终为高溢价买单的人。但iPhone 14的口碑翻车，让这个水面下的隐秘交易市场，变成了一个输多赢少的牌局。经销商的利润仍然相对稳定，但果粉的热情骤然降温，压力便被传导到了黄牛们身上。依旧沉浸在“一机暴利”的苹果盛宴梦中不愿醒来的黄牛，突然成了被猎手们反向收割的对象。告别黄金时代敢砸钱赌暴利的黄牛们，曾见证过苹果手机造就的巨大财富梦幻。12年前，身穿黑色毛衣、牛仔裤的乔布斯手拿iPhone 4亮相，成为智能手机历史上的里程碑，也开启了黄牛的黄金时代。“iPhone 4算是划时代的产品，市场热情的不得了，一台5000元的手机，不管任何渠道拿到，转手就是15000元卖出去。”985高校毕业的吕樊嗅到商机，做起了倒卖苹果手机的生意。当时，为了抢购苹果手机，黄牛们带着帐篷，在北京三里屯和大悦城提前48小时蹲守。作为苹果的一代神机，首批iPhone 4上市3天就售出了170万部，而且供不应求。当时，国内市场的首售时间晚了4个月左右，利用这段时间差，黄牛们赚得盆满钵满。吕樊告诉雪豹财经社，他当时发现香港的苹果店每人限购5台，于是组织了一行人坐飞机去香港排队，最大的一单赚了几十万元。“那时候稍微勤快点的黄牛团队，3个月下来赚百万都算少的。”甚至一年后iPhone 4S推出时，找黄牛买iPhone 4仍需要加价1000元。转折点发生在iPhone 8推出时，那是吕樊头一次发现苹果新机遇冷。当时已经是苹果经销商的吕樊回忆道，iPhone 8卖得不是很好，苹果门店和中关村排队的现象大幅减少，不少高价囤货的黄牛党亏了钱。也正是在这个时候，外界对苹果缺乏创新的批判甚嚣尘上。从iPhone 5到iPhone 8，苹果几代产品被吐槽外形过于相似，好比“四世同堂”，功能也没有实质性革新。被寄予厚望的iPhone X，以更冷淡的市场反应给了黄牛们一记耳光。用户对这款号称“从未有过的智能手机”并不买账，iPhone X 最得意的两个创新——全面屏和人脸识别，被认为早已不是首创。黄牛们亏钱，苹果损失更惨。iPhone X销量不佳后苹果屡次减产，股价一度暴跌7%以上，超600亿美元市值蒸发。iPhone X遇冷，苹果的创新能力被拉下神坛，黄牛们赚差价的空间日渐缩小。一台新机通常加价小几百元，与iPhone 6S之前的一机难求、动辄价格翻倍相差甚远。去年发布的iPhone 13，成了黄牛生意热潮最后的余温。彼时正值全球缺芯，苹果遭遇供应链危机。特殊时期的供需关系，让黄牛们找到了可乘之机。叶静跃事后总结道，“并不是iPhone 13多受欢迎，而是苹果在第一时间没有那么多备货，那个时间点就成了赚钱的好机会。”但iPhone 14没有这样的幸运。一方面，新机被吐槽与上一代产品几乎毫无区别，“灵动岛不灵动”，多项bug曝光，新功能屡屡翻车。另一方面，库克吸取教训，更注重iPhone 14的供应链管理，新机供货十分充足。有网友表示，Pro版本新机等半个月左右便可到货。这意味着，黄牛赚钱的土壤越来越贫瘠。盛极而衰的拐点？熬夜看完今年的新品发布会后，苹果发烧友胡艺文下定决心，今年不再找黄牛加钱抢购新机。她买过iPhone 14以外的所有iPhone机型，而且不止一次加价购买首发新机。在她看来，抢先一步晒出最新款iPhone并非炫富，而是体现一种对顶级新科技消费产品的追求，“这很极客”。但iPhone 14让她觉得，“抢这种过度相似的机型一点也不极客”。对被公认守成有余、进取不足的库克而言，这当然不是件好事。从1997年将“不同凡响”定为slogan开始，创新便被视为苹果的灵魂。在乔布斯时代，苹果曾推出不止一款开创性的产品，并凭此坐稳了科技公司的头把交椅。但自2011年库克担任CEO以来，苹果便鲜有令人眼前一亮的创新，甚至从引领者的角色逐渐沦为追随者。在销量上取得成功的iPhone 6，是苹果首次推出大屏手机，被认为步了三星等品牌的后尘。iPhone 14的灵动岛等功能，也被质疑抄袭安卓厂商。经济学家任泽平在社交平台上直言，“苹果是在吃乔布斯的老本”，甚至认为2022年是苹果盛极而衰的转折点。不可否认，从销量和公司市值来看，库克掌舵下的苹果取得了巨大的成功。部分原因在于，昔日价格高高在上的苹果手机，在定价上开始“低头”。胡艺文注意到，从iPhone 11开始，苹果手机变得“便宜起来”。一方面，iPhone 11的起售价从上一代产品iPhone XR的6499元降至5499元。另一方面，安卓阵营的旗舰机价格持续上涨，OPPO Find X2 Pro版本5999元起，小米10至尊版也要5299元起，与iPhone持平甚至更高。此后，苹果一直延续新机不涨价的策略。如今，乔布斯留下的老本仍然够苹果吃上一阵子。据Counterpoint Research数据，2022年Q2，苹果在高端智能手机市场仍占据着过半江山，以57%的市场份额创下iPhone自2007年以来的历史纪录，并将全球手机六成多的利润收入囊中。胡艺文这样的果粉也不会轻易抛弃苹果。虽然创新不足，但一年一度的硬件（主要是芯片）稳定更新、软件系统稳定，仍对他们有巨大的吸引力。换句话说，乔布斯时代创造的巨大势能，足以让在创新方面略显平庸的苹果帝国靠惯性继续向前滑行。但随着苹果光环褪色，知秋的寒蝉已经隐隐嗅到寒意，感知到创新乏力的后果。对于靠苹果吃饭的手机经销商吕樊而言，苹果仍然是他营收的大头，“黄牛的失败与否，不影响这一切，太阳照常升起”。靠稀缺性和时间差赚钱的黄牛们则无暇为此悲春伤秋。马不停蹄地奔赴下一个战场，赚取更多利润，才是他们的当务之急。叶静跃已全力转战华为Mate 50。他告诉雪豹财经社，华为新机溢价水平一直比较稳定，目前最低配都要加价1000元，最稀有的保时捷款已被炒到了2.5万元以上，较原价（12999元）翻了近一倍。对于仍站在金字塔尖的全球顶级软硬件一体的苹果公司而言，iPhone 14不可能成为绝唱。但黄牛们暴富梦的终章，或许将为苹果躺赢的终结，奏响一段前奏。（本文人物均为化名）","news_type":1,"symbols_score_info":{"AAPL":0.9}},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":4862,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0}],"lives":[]}