Long time no see, WWDC. Enter the headquarters of the apple spacecraft, pass through the huge glass curtain wall, and walk along the open aisle to the middle hall. There are rows of seats here. Today's WWDC keynote speech will be held in the open air The sunshine in California in June is wanton, and the sky is blue and transparent. Apple gave all the participants a bottle of sunscreen. If you don't want to turn into roasted shrimp, just put it on.
Sina Technology Zhengjun from Silicon Valley
[Apple] in yellow T-shirt and blue jacket( https://apple.pvxt.net/c/1251234/435400/7639?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.apple.com%2Fcn%2Fmusic%2F ) The staff stood in the two rows of the passage and greeted the developers and media reporters from all over the world with cheers, applause and gestures. With a smile on their faces, many people sang and danced with the live music. There is no reserve or shyness here. There is enthusiasm and chicken blood everywhere.
Previous years iphone This is a common scene on the first day of sale. However, after two years of COVID-19, seeing this scene again makes me feel particularly friendly. Sina Technology learned from on-site inquiry that some staff were transferred from New York and other regions to support the activities. A staff member from New York said excitedly, "WWDC is back."
This is the third WWDC since the outbreak of the epidemic. It is also the first time that Apple has resumed offline activities after the outbreak of the epidemic. It is also the first time that Apple has held activities directly in the open air at the headquarters of Apple spacecraft. Although WWDC is still online this year, apple invited developers and media to Apple headquarters to experience the keynote speech on site. According to the on-site visual inspection of sina science and technology, about 1000 viewers participated in this activity, including at least 200 media reporters.
Although the scale of this event is far from the grand occasion before the outbreak, it still makes developers, media and apple staff very excited. After all, this represents the first step towards returning to normal at the apple press conference. A developer from Argentina told Sina technology that he had been looking forward to coming to Silicon Valley to participate in WWDC in person in the past two years. "If you don't come here, you always feel that you don't really feel the charm of apple."
Although the United States has canceled the epidemic restriction measures, and the travel and business have recovered to the flow of people before the epidemic, the epidemic has not ended, and tens of thousands of people are still infected every day. This time, Apple also asked all participants to have a quick test of the new crown the night before. Only after verifying the negative certificate twice can they get the badge in the morning of the press conference. In addition, they are also required to wear masks during the event. Although almost no one wore masks at outdoor activities in California, since the organizer clearly put forward the requirements, most of the people at the scene still respected Apple's regulations and wore the pure white masks provided by apple.
After the outbreak of the epidemic in the United States in March, 2020, Apple will turn all its release activities online. Apple has roughly four press conferences every year, "three hard and one soft", including the tablet press conference in March, the mobile phone press conference in September, the notebook press conference in October and the WWDC global developer conference in June. In the past two years, these press conferences have all been changed to online broadcast of pre recorded videos. Although Apple's videos have always been well produced, without the cheers of the audience, people always feel that something is missing.
This year's WWDC said it was off-line, but cook and Craig fredrighi, the boss of the software department, just came out to make an opening speech. The whole event still played pre recorded videos. Following cook cos' classic modeling of mission impossible, today Craig is addicted to "superheroes" and crazy about adding special effects to himself. He also showed his mobile screen saver when he was showing IOS. He had two angel like baby daughters. After all, daughters are always dad's favorite.
Today's WWDC has a full two-hour schedule. The four operating systems of mobile phones, watches, desktops and tablets have been updated, and many more humanized and personalized functions have been released. The debut of M2 chip and two new notebook products have also become the biggest highlights today, especially the newly designed macbook Air is more eye-catching. The most marginal tvos in the apple ecosystem doesn't even have time to show. However, the ar/vr most expected by the outside world and the legendary Apple car are still not mentioned by apple.
In the product exhibition hall after the press conference, almost all the media reporters surrounded the newly released air, especially the coolest midnight black. This is the color Apple fans have been dreaming of for years. The last black notebook was powe The era of rBook. Being thinner, stronger and more durable has become the biggest selling point of this product.
Thanks to the M2 chip, the air has a battery life of up to 18 hours (measured by continuous video playback), and can charge 50% in half an hour. Liu Haiping's design is different from his personal taste. In fact, he seldom notices the gap in his daily use. After all, there was also a status bar.
As everyone gathered around the MacBook Air experience, cook quietly came to the experience hall from the underpass, had a few simple greetings with several YouTube digital bloggers, and then hurried away. It seems that he is very satisfied with today's activity. Seven or eight apple staff gathered around cook to block others from approaching the CEO of apple, but several media reporters still managed to squeeze in and take a group photo with cook. Of course, it's a group photo with a mask on.
WWDC is of special significance to both apple and developers. WWDC held in June every year has a history of more than 30 years. After the rise of the iPhone, this event has also become the largest developer event of the global mobile Internet. Although the ticket price is as high as $1599, it can not stop the enthusiasm of developers. Nearly 6000 tickets are always sold out at the beginning of sale.
Since 2014, Apple has adopted the lottery system to sell tickets, and reserved some tickets to invite women, students, children and other groups to encourage these groups to invest in mobile application development. In 2016, a 9-year-old girl from Australia became the youngest WWDC participant. She obtained WWDC invitation tickets through Apple's "scholarship program".
Why are global developers so enthusiastic about WWDC? The reason is very simple. IOS ecological platform is the most important mobile platform for global mobile developers. According to the statistics of business of apps, a mobile ecological market research company, IOS contributed 63% of global application revenue to developers, although its global market share was only 16% last year. If the game category is not included, the revenue contribution value of IOS is as high as 76%; If the subscription revenue is calculated, the revenue contribution of IOS is 79%.
Over the past decade, the global mobile ecological market has maintained a rapid growth. The revenue of applications and games has continued to grow from $43.5 billion in 2016 to $133 billion in 2021. Even if the revenue growth in 2021 declines, from 24.7% to 19.8%, this is mainly due to the high comparison base in 2020. The home life after the outbreak of the epidemic has stimulated the strong demand for global consumer electronic products in 2020, and also led to the vigorous business opportunities of mobile ecological revenue.
The application revenue of IOS also increased from $28.6 billion in 2016 to $85.1 billion in 2021, maintaining a growth rate of 23.8% and 17.7% in the past two years. On the other hand, the prosperity of the IOS ecosystem has also brought Apple huge revenue. Apple has made a lot of money by sharing 30% of the apps. In 2019, Ned Barnes, an industry research expert, predicted that the operating profit margin of Apple's app store was even as high as 78%.
In previous years, WWDC was not only a grand event for apple and developers, but also a harvest season for local businesses in Silicon Valley. They are also eagerly looking forward to the return of WWDC. Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president, revealed that before the outbreak, Apple had to invest $50million a year in WWDC. In addition, nearly 10000 participants and their families from all over the world rushed to the San Francisco Bay area, which also brought rich revenues related to hotels, restaurants, shopping, travel, etc.
In 2017, apple transferred WWDC from San Francisco to San Jose, partly to repay the businesses where its headquarters are located and bring taxes to the local government. In March, 2020, due to the outbreak of the epidemic, Apple announced that WWDC was switched to online activities for the first time that year. It was not only apple and developers, but also local businesses in the South Bay of Silicon Valley that were disappointed. As compensation, Apple announced that it would donate 1million US dollars to the local chamber of Commerce, which was a token of goodwill.
It has been more than two years since the outbreak of the epidemic, and apple is trying to get its business back to normal. Over the past year, Apple has repeatedly put forward a timetable for returning to work, hoping to promote employees to return to work at least three days a week. However, each time, many employees strongly resisted or even resigned to protest. Finally, they had to postpone the comprehensive rework plan again and again. Apple is not Google Or Internet companies like meta, which can fully popularize telecommuting. The synergy of software and hardware integrated R & D and the highly confidential company discipline make cook and other Apple executives want to push employees back to the office as much as possible.
The epidemic has brought trouble to apple and inconvenient access to China and the United States. Before the outbreak, apple booked 50 business class tickets from San Francisco to Shanghai of United Airlines every day (yes, every day) to meet the travel needs of its employees at any time. Apple is the largest customer of United Airlines, and the annual airfare alone is as high as $35million.
The reason for booking so many flights is that China is Apple's most important supply chain base. Due to the epidemic, Apple was unable to send engineers to China as frequently as in previous years. Telecommuting temporarily failed to ensure the previous work efficiency, which directly slowed down the development and mass production of Apple's new products. The 2020 iPhone 12 has been delayed for a whole month.
Also due to the epidemic situation, the offline activities of WWDC did not include the original large forces - Chinese developers and media. It is no exaggeration to say that without Chinese elements, there would be no apple supply chain and ecosystem, and WWDC without Chinese participants is also incomplete. Apple is also eager to see more Chinese faces in WWDC next year.
Let's look forward to it.