Apple’s Business Model Getting Hit From All Sides Now


美国政府最近也对苹果公司的封闭生态系统发起挑战，该公司凭借这一系统已成为全球最赚钱的智能手机制造商。


去年，苹果公司首席执行官库克在加州库比蒂诺举行的发布会上展示新款 iPhone 15 Pro。

苹果公司(Apple Inc., AAPL)的麻烦已经够多的了，但最近还是有别的麻烦找上了这家科技行业标杆企业。 6park.com
Apple didn’t need any more trouble, but trouble has had a way of finding the iconic tech giant lately.  6park.com
   
美国司法部上周四起诉苹果公司，指控该公司经营iPhone业务的方式存在垄断行为。美国司法部长加兰德(Merrick Garland)在宣布这宗诉讼案时说：“我们指控苹果公司采用了一种依赖于排他性反竞争行为的策略，令消费者和开发者受到伤害。” 6park.com
The Justice Department sued Apple on Thursday, accusing the company of monopolistic behavior over the way it runs its iPhone business. “We allege that Apple has employed a strategy that relies on exclusionary, anticompetitive conduct that hurts both consumers and developers,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in announcing the case.  6park.com
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在美国提起诉讼的同时，欧洲有关机构对苹果公司App Store业务的关键环节发起打击，而且由于中国市场上的竞争日趋激烈以及有报道称中国政府不支持苹果公司了，该公司正在失去中国市场的份额。此外，苹果还面临着近期浮现的其他种种挑战，比如iPhone再度遭遇一个疲软的销售周期。在截至9月的当前财年里，苹果公司的硬件业务收入预计将下降1%，而上一财年为下降6%。 6park.com
The U.S. lawsuit comes as European authorities are cracking down on key aspects of Apple’s App Store business, and as Apple is losing share in the Chinese market due to growing competition and reports of government disfavor there. Apple is also facing near-term challenges such as another weak iPhone cycle. The company’s hardware revenue is projected to slip 1% in the current fiscal year ending in September after falling 6% in the prior year.   6park.com
 
这些麻烦事的累积令苹果公司的股票承压。在美国司法部宣布提起诉讼后，苹果公司股价在上周四下跌了4%，自今年年初以来累计下跌近12%。这使该公司在一众市值达到万亿美元的大型科技公司中显得格外突兀；相比之下，今年到目前为止，微软(Microsoft)、英伟达(Nvidia)、亚马逊(Amazon)以及谷歌(Google)和Facebook的母公司的股价平均涨幅高达36%。苹果公司12个月的股价涨幅不到8%，甚至大幅落后于同期的道琼斯指数和标普500指数。摩根大通(JP Morgan)分析师Samik Chatterjee在上周五的一份报告中写道：“这可谓是祸不单行。” 6park.com
The buildup has weighed on Apple’s stock. Its shares fell 4% on Thursday following the announcement of the Justice Department’s lawsuit and is now down nearly 12% since the start of the year. That makes it a notable standout among the other trillion-dollar big techs; Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon and the parent companies of Google and Facebook have averaged a whopping gain of 36% for the year to date. Apple’s 12-month gain of less than 8% even sharply lags behind the Dow and S&P 500 over that time. “When it rains, it pours,” wrote JP Morgan analyst Samik Chatterjee in a report Friday.  6park.com
   
美国联邦政府一直在不断试图遏制大型科技公司的主导地位，此间有过一些显眼的失败案例，鉴于此，针对苹果公司的最新诉讼案并不一定能打赢。在Epic Games提起的反垄断诉讼中，苹果公司也基本可以说取得了胜利，一名联邦法官在该案中裁定苹果公司在法律上未构成垄断地位。分析师上周五普遍认为，苹果公司很可能在这宗最新的诉讼案中再次胜诉。 6park.com
The latest lawsuit is hardly a surefire win for the federal government, which has had some notable strikeouts in its continuing attempt to curb big tech’s dominance. Apple also emerged largely victorious against antitrust accusations in a lawsuit by Epic Games—a federal judge in that case ruled that Apple didn’t qualify as a legal monopoly. Analysts on Friday largely agreed that Apple will likely prevail again in the latest lawsuit.  6park.com
 
但分析师也承认打赢官司需要花一段时间。Bernstein的Toni Sacconaghi在上周五写道：“以往的先例表明，包括上诉在内，诉讼案裁决出结果通常需要三到五年的时间。”苹果公司采取“封闭生态系统”对旗下移动设备进行开发和维护的方式已招致全球越来越多的反对，这也增加了苹果公司被迫改变业务模式的可能性。 6park.com
But they also concede it will take a while. “Precedents suggest that resolution of the complaint will take three to five years, including appeals,” wrote Toni Sacconaghi of Bernstein on Friday. And the growing global opposition to the way Apple has developed and maintained the “closed ecosystem” around its mobile devices still raises the odds of forced changes to that business.  6park.com
 
封闭生态系统是个大问题： 根据Visible Alpha的平均估算，在2023年，仅仅是苹果公司的App Store就能创造258亿美元的收入，几乎是谷歌Play应用商店同期收入的两倍。App Store是苹果公司服务业务的重要组成部分，在苹果公司收入中所占比重已越来越大，并帮助平缓了硬件业务周期更趋波动的影响。 6park.com
It is a big one: Apple’s App Store alone generated $25.8 billion in revenue in 2023—almost twice as much as Google’s Play store made in the same time, according to consensus estimates by Visible Alpha. The App Store is a major component of the Services segment that accounts for a growing portion of Apple’s revenue and smooths out the more volatile cycles of the hardware business.  6park.com
  
这也是苹果公司利润强劲的一个关键因素：在该公司最近一个财年中，服务业务毛利率为71%，相比之下，硬件部门毛利率为37%。据FactSet估计，分析师预计今年服务业务毛利率会提高一个百分点，将明显抵消硬件业务收入下降的影响。Deepwater Asset Management的Gene Munster上周四写道，服务业务一直是苹果公司的“金矿”。 6park.com
It is also a key factor in Apple’s strong bottom line: Services produced a gross margin of 71% in Apple’s latest fiscal year compared with 37% for the hardware segment. Analysts expect service gross margins to improve by a percentage point this year, which will be an important offset to declining hardware revenue, according to FactSet estimates. “Services have been a gold mine for Apple,” wrote Gene Munster of Deepwater Asset Management on Thursday.  6park.com
   
上述最新案件并不是要拆分App Store本身，但确实在寻求改变，比如“阻止苹果公司利用其对应用分发的控制，来削弱超级应用程序和云流媒体应用等跨平台技术”，这可能会使苹果公司的业务运营方式产生重大改变。如果支持像中国的WeChat这样的超级应用，这本身就是一个重大转变，因为这些应用通常充当智能手机和用户之间的整个界面。Bernstein的Sacconaghi在去年12月的一份报告中指出，超级应用“可能会侵蚀苹果公司的生态系统，并使智能手机商品化”。 6park.com
The latest case doesn’t seek to break up the App Store per se. But it does seek changes, such as “preventing Apple from using its control of app distribution to undermine cross-platform technologies such as super apps and cloud streaming apps” that could meaningfully alter how the business operates. Allowing so-called “super apps” such as China’s WeChat would be a major shift on its own, as those typically act as the entire interface between a smartphone and a user. In a December report, Bernstein’s Sacconaghi noted that super apps “could erode Apple’s ecosystem and commoditize the smartphone.”  6park.com
  
因此，苹果公司将继续努力保护自己的商业行为。该公司受益于这样一个事实：许多用户看重的是其“围墙花园”商业模式所带来的安全和简便。但苹果公司的投资者也很重视清晰度，而该公司极度缺乏清晰度的情况会因与美国政府的新一轮较量而进一步恶化。 6park.com
Apple will therefore continue fighting hard to protect its business practices. The company is helped by the fact that many of its users value the security and simplicity that come with its walled-garden approach. But Apple’s investors also value clarity, and a new battle with its own government adds to an environment where that is sorely lacking.