Photo: VCG

Apple unveiled its new iPhone 11 on Tuesday in California featuring an A13 Bionic chipset comparable to Huawei's Kirin 980 in performance, and analysts said the comparison reflects the US tech giant's awareness of a growing existential crisis. 

The iPhone 11 has six colors,  an extra camera,  and a 12-MP front camera with a wider sensor for better selfies, according to media reports. The new smartphone has the A13 Bionic chip, which Apple claimed is the fastest CPU and GPU ever in a smartphone, surpassing Samsung's Galaxy S10+, which uses  Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855, and Huawei's P30 Pro, which uses  the Kirin 980.

"It's unusual to see Apple directly compare its chipset to Huawei's, showing that the US tech giant cares much about the Chinese market," James Yan, Beijing-based research director at Counterpoint, told the Global Times.

As Chinese smartphone users pay more attention to the performance of chipset, Apple highlighted that its core CPU and GPU are stronger than that of Chinese tech giant's, as Apple has been facing tremendous pressure in the Chinese market lately, Yan noted. 

Apple shipped 36 million iPhones in second quarter of 2019, representing a 13 percent of fall on year-on-year basis, according to research firm Canalys.

It was Apple's third consecutive quarter of shipment decline, and the Chinese mainland ranked as the second largest market for the US tech giant's sales in terms of iPhone shipments in the first half of 2019, with a market share of 16 percent, the reports said. 

"Before, it was Huawei comparing its core technologies with Apple's, now it's the other way around," Fang Jing, an industry analyst at China Merchants Securities, told the Global Times. 

Apple has felt pressure from Huawei not only in the Chinese market but also in Europe. If not for the trade spat launched by the US, the Chinese tech firm would have won over a bigger stake in smartphone market overseas, the analyst said. 

Apple has also not come up with a new 5G smartphone product at this year's Apple events, which will affect its sale numbers in coming months till September 2020, Fang forecasted. 

Besides the iPhone 11, Apple also unveiled a new Apple TV service, Apple Watch, iPad products, among other items. The new iPhone is priced at $699, according to media reports. 


Newspaper headline: Apple unveils iPhone 11