Apple is becoming more and more like Zijin Mining.
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Consumer electronics are currently in an uncomfortable state.
Demand for AI servers is booming, memory and storage prices are rising steadily, and the cost structure of terminal devices is rapidly increasing.
Many manufacturers’ first reaction is to raise prices, because their gross margins are already low, and the price increase of just a few chips can eat up their profits.
Apple, however, has done something that seems a bit counterintuitive.
The newly released iPhone 17e is priced at 4,499 yuan, almost unchanged from the previous generation; the MacBook Neo is directly priced at 4,599 yuan. With a 15% national subsidy, some regions can get it for less than 4,000 yuan.
The problem is, this is not an era of declining costs.
The price of LPDDR5X memory supplied by Samsung to Apple at one point doubled, and the entire industry is under pressure from rising component prices.
In other words, Apple’s price reduction is not going with the flow, but striking against the trend.
In the cyclical industry, this move has a very familiar name:
Counter-cyclical expansion.
Expanding when others shrink, lowering prices when others raise them—essentially it’s a strategy of using its own safety cushion to gain market share.
The resource industry is most experienced with this. When gold and copper prices are in a slump, many mining companies are forced to sell assets; the most pessimistic market sentiment is often when mines are cheapest.
Zijin Mining’s history of expansion was largely written during such times.
Chen Jinghe of Zijin Mining has a repeatedly quoted saying: “Mines are bought in a bear market.”
When metal prices are good, mines are expensive and competition is fierce; when prices are low, assets tend to flow out. The logic of the resource industry is very simple—whoever survives the cycle longer can acquire resources at the bottom.
Consumer electronics may seem far from mining, but the cyclical logic is actually the same.
Mining looks at cost curves, consumer electronics looks at gross margin buffers—in essence, it’s all about who has the thicker safety cushion.
When memory prices rise, the pressure on Android phone and PC manufacturers quickly transmits to terminal prices. Many manufacturers have single-digit gross margins, so any cost fluctuation means they must raise prices, or profits are directly wiped out.
Apple’s structure is completely different. With a long-term gross margin of around 40% plus huge cash reserves, it can withstand profit pressure in the short term.
When the industry is forced to raise prices due to cost increases, Apple can instead hold steady or even lower prices.
This creates a typical counter-cyclical competition.
If you don’t raise your price when others do, the price gap automatically narrows; if you expand when others shrink, market share will gradually shift.
For Apple, the real target of this price war isn’t hardware, but the operating system.
Once users switch from Android to iOS, or from Windows to macOS, their subsequent years of device upgrades, app purchases, and service revenue will remain within Apple's ecosystem.
In other words, Apple’s strategy is about users, not products. Resource companies buy mines during bear markets, Apple acquires users during times of industry pressure—essentially both are forms of long-term capital allocation.
This also explains why the MacBook Neo’s 4,599 yuan pricing puts the MacBook into a range it has rarely entered before.
With subsidies, this machine even lands in the price band of many mini PCs and second-hand office laptops.
In the AI community, this price carries special meaning.
With OpenClaw (lobster) becoming popular, many developers are used to deploying agents locally, letting computers run tasks to "raise shrimp" over the long term.
“Raising shrimp” doesn't require particularly powerful machines, but does need stability, low power consumption, and reasonable pricing. A computer kept on all year running an agent essentially turns into a small computing node.
Previously, many people used mini hosts or second-hand PCs. Mac mini, thanks to stability and efficiency, has gradually become a “shrimp machine.” Now, as MacBook Neo’s price drops to a little over 3,000 yuan, MacBook suddenly enters this device range.
Mac mini is the desktop shrimp machine, while MacBook may well give rise to something else: the portable shrimp.
With a laptop in the backpack and agent running in the background, while working in a café, the lobster in the background might be executing tasks, and can even instantly help solve debugging issues.
Of course, this wasn’t Apple’s original intent when designing products, but changes in price structure often create new use cases.
Many changes in technical ecosystems do not start with function, but with price.
From a longer cycle perspective, Apple’s move is actually not rare. Resource companies acquire mines in bear markets, internet companies expand users in downturns, tech companies expand their ecosystem under industry pressure.
Cycle is never a word exclusive to the resource industry. In the consumer electronics industry, it just takes another form:
When others have no profit left, it still does; when others fear to lower prices, it can still lower them.
In the longer cycle, the most important thing is never who’s bigger in scale, but who survives longer.
Because those who survive longer are often able to buy the future when others shrink.
Risk Warning and DisclaimerThe market carries risks, investment requires caution. This article does not constitute personal investment advice, nor does it take into account the individual investor’s specific investment objectives, financial situation or needs. Readers should consider whether any opinions, viewpoints or conclusions in this article are suitable for their own circumstances. Investing accordingly is at your own risk. ```