Tim Cook May Not Know Why, But Samsung Is Winning in China 327
An anonymous reader writes with this interesting snippet about the state of mobile tech in China: "Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook believes that 'over the arc of time' China is a huge opportunity for his pathbreaking company. But time looks to be on the side of rival Samsung Electronics, which has been around far longer and penetrated much deeper into the world's most populous country. Apple this week said its revenue in Greater China, which also includes Hong Kong and Taiwan, slumped 43 per cent to $4.65 billion from the previous quarter. That was also 14 per cent lower from the year-ago quarter. Sales were weighed down by a sharp drop in revenues from Hong Kong. "It's not totally clear why that occurred," Cook said on a conference call with analysts. Neither is it totally clear what Apple's strategy is to deal with Samsung – not to mention a host of smaller, nimbler Chinese challengers."
"It's not totally clear why that occurred" (Score:5, Interesting)
actually it is, Tim. The Chinese want cheaper phones, and they want phones you can put pirated warez on. Apple doesn't score well in either category.
Better Value Phones to Americans (Score:2)
actually it is, Tim. The Chinese want cheaper phones
Ironically so do Americans it is why Apple are increasingly selling more old products like the 4 and 4S. They also don't want cheaper phones..they may want better value phones. The iphone is a cheap phone its why Apple charge a large mark-up.
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Even if they offered a cheaper iPhone, they still wouldn't be able to install pirated software on it. It's beyond second nature there...it's almost a pathological need to install unlicensed software. We have an off-shore team in China and we realized that they were using pirated versions of Windows, Office and a whole host of other very reasonably-priced applications, most of which we had enterprise-wide licenses for. We asked them to go through our IT department to get legitimate versions and they agreed.
Apple Pirates (Score:2)
Even if they offered a cheaper iPhone, they still wouldn't be able to install pirated software on it.
Seriously http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/ios-apps-hijack-twitter-accounts-post-false-confessions-of-piracy/ [arstechnica.com] this is my favourite post of a Developer attacking its customer by hijacking Twitter accounts, and posting false “confessions” of piracy.
They simply do not want the iPhone, and piracy is not the reason. Although not being in control of your hardware will definitely have an effect in every market.
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it's almost a pathological need
No, it's not. It's normal maket behavior. There's nothing pathological about that.
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I tried to get a Windows license for a machine I custom built here in China, and boy, they kind of looked at me like I was speaking klingon or something. I did find a store eventually that sells legal copies but it was like finding a specialty craft store in a large mall.
The guys I got the computer from used a pen drive with Norton Ghost to clone a whole lot of stuff to the new machine, from QQ (think MSN Messenger) to Windows and Office.
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It's easier than you think you put warez on iOS devices. Just go to any shop and pay like 10 bucks, and the shop will login using their App Store account, and you can then download anything you want, and these shops advertise openly that they don't sell warez and everything is "genuine". The shops don't give out their passwords, so you just go back once in a while and let them update the apps, for free.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Nah man, maybe Xiaomi or Huawei, but ZTE is not well regarded among my Chinese friends, which are tech-saavy. But what the Chinese really crave right now, it's not even Samsung, it's actually the Sony Xperia Z. Lenovo is also doing pretty good, and after having an 820, I have to say they are pretty good phones. I have had ZTEs, Huaweis and Lenovos, and from all the Chinese brands I would buy today, I would choose either Xiaomi, Huawei or Lenovo.
Re:"It's not totally clear why that occurred" (Score:5, Informative)
You can't use Google Play on a Samsung either. This is China you know. When you buy a phone from China Unicom they get rid of all the Google stuff, from Gmail to Youtube and Maps. Mine had something called Amap as a Google Maps replacement, which I have to say, it is a kickass app. If you speak Chinese you don't really need Google Play here. Try to get a phone from a good Chinese manufacturer like Huawei or Lenovo, or even Xiaomi. The rest is crap.
Price (Score:2)
My question... (Score:2)
What somewhat surprises me is that Samsung's phones would be holding out against the torrent of slightly-to-substantially cheaper indigenous handsets in China. Sure, the quality can be somewhere between 'uneven' and 'totally fucking dire'; but Samsung's phones are also well known for being plasticky and horribly skinned, so they aren't competing that aggressively on quality.
Am I being too harsh on Samsung? Are the local offerings Just That Dreadful?
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Re:My question... (Score:5, Insightful)
Made at the same factories by the same workers (Score:2)
> What somewhat surprises me is that Samsung's phones would be holding out
> against the torrent of slightly-to-substantially cheaper indigenous handsets in China.
> Sure, the quality can be somewhere between 'uneven' and 'totally fucking dire';
Thanks to short-sighted MBAs who've off-shored manufacturing to Asia, "quality American products" are manufactured at the same factories, by the same workers, that manufacture "cheap foreign junk". Check out Foxconn http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn [wikipedia.org] on Goog
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They might look kind of the same, but the Chinese are wary of locally manufactured products since they rather trust a foreign brand with the good quality controls than a local one that who knows what will happen. This is all over the spectrum here in China, from baby formula to beef and whatnot.
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A Chinese friend has showed me one of the knockoffs and they are not that bad.
I would love to meet the people who engineer these knockoffs. :) What are their design processes, manufacturing deals, etc. Sadly this information probably avoids daylight as Apple would sue their ass.
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You can go to Shenzhen and they will actually build a custom phone for you with whatever components you want. You see, in China you have places like a local fruit market but only that they have electronics, and you will see people running around, trying to tell you to buy their stuff. Everything is overpriced and you can always negotiate a 50% or even 75% discount on most stuff, but if you cannot find what you are looking for in a store, they will fetch it for you. These places have almost all electronics k
Live in HK (Score:2, Interesting)
I live in HK and can pretty much afford any phone. I use Android base phone. More freedom, more options and customisation features and plenty of Android devices to chose from. Most HK people are smart enough to use Android. Hence, Android phones win over here.
Also... (Score:3)
There's a shift in China. Some foreign goods/brands remain as status symbols, but some are losing their luster.
The U.S. has been acting like a bigger dick than usual lately. Chinese consumers would rather not buy American (or Japanese) brands when there's a choice. It doesn't matter that the dick's product are made in China.
That's not my opinion, so don't get mad at me. That's what I was told when I was there last month.
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I agree with you with the Japanese part, but even if the Chinese hate the Japanese, they still buy a whole lot of their stuff, especially all kinds of food products and restaurants. As for them boycotting American products, I haven't seen that even once, maybe Apple at some point when they realized they were not getting the same treatment as other nations, but that is as far as it goes. And while this is my opinion, I have been living here for quite a while now and have a lot of tech-saavy Chinese friends.
Apple doesn't have a strategy for winning here (Score:2)
Their "strategy" has been to position themselves as a high-end boutique brand. China (and most of the world) wants a solid affordably-priced workhorse. And in Asia Samsung almost certainly has a higher brand recognition than Apple just because they're relatively local (Korean vs. North American) and have been around a lot longer. To win, Apple would need to stop being Apple.
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Apple prides itself on its engineering, and "deceptive simplicity". The "it just works" strategy is behind most all of their products. And in many ways, that is a really great thing. And if you have a Mac at home and an iPhone or iPad, everything "just works together", too.
But sadly, they've seen fit to combine the "just works" philosophy with a good bit of corporate lock-in, which does nobody any good but Apple, and probably not even Apple in the long term. It is ea
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"... how good the stuff is comes a very distant second..."
See, that statement needs a qualifier. Apple products are indeed well-engineered, but your typical everyday user may not appreciate that as much as, say a "developer". (Developer in quotes because these days it's a "politically correct" euphemism for programmer. I know, because I am one.)
For a developer, an Apple machine is close to the best of all worlds. You get a very nice hardware platform, and the freedom to run everybody else's OS in a VM too. No other OS has as much flexibility in that particular
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What iOS developers normally do here is getting used hardware (particularly Mac minis) for development while keeping PCs as their main machines. I have seen people who could afford (in my opinion)
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Apple prides itself on its engineering, and "deceptive simplicity". The "it just works" strategy is behind most all of their products. And in many ways, that is a really great thing. And if you have a Mac at home and an iPhone or iPad, everything "just works together", too.
Not quite. Apple's strategy is to create the myth of "deceptive simplicity" and "it just works". As any honest iPhone user will tell you, neither of those things are true.
(Just an example: Putting music on an iPhone can only be described as frustrating; particularly if you're using a computer that is not your own. On an Android or BlackBerry phone, you simply copy it over like it's a flash drive. No hassle, no "syncing", and no clunky software required. It just works.)
It's a bit like the old myth "Macs
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"Just an example: Putting music on an iPhone can only be described as frustrating; particularly if you're using a computer that is not your own. On an Android or BlackBerry phone, you simply copy it over like it's a flash drive. No hassle, no "syncing", and no clunky software required. It just works."
Myth yourself. Yes, when it comes to iTunes, I agree with you. But that falls under the "corporate lock-in" category I already described; it isn't true of the products in general. (FYI, I very seldom use iTunes myself. Apple tried to stuff way too much into one program and as a result fucked up most of it. I use iTunes to play music, PERIOD. And it's not even my default program for doing most of that.) But my point is: that's a software issue, not hardware, and it's one of those Apple glitches, not the rule
Re:Apple doesn't have a strategy for winning here (Score:4, Informative)
Well if you are in China, you just fire up QQ Music and have all the music you want. If you are in the US you can use Spotify, or you can buy stuff from the iTunes store which I don't see as truly hard. Now if you want to pirate music and upload it to your device, you just copy that in iTunes and then sync, or where are you getting that flash drive music if it isn't from torrents or a physical CD?
So really, drop the crap. Apple is overpriced and they like to lock you in, but saying that it is not simple to use is a flat out lie.
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You can make some things simpler at the expence of others. Like sandboxing on OS X, it makes some security issues simpler for the user, but it is also harder for other things to work, such as key macro apps.
The design decisions about how to get the balance right are not easy, also because you are setting a precedent which may work out ok down the line. So if apps no longer can rely on the user being able to do stuff via the filesystem, then app developers can focus on creating other, hopefully better ways o
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But think about it? Only a techie would want to do such thing. A regular folk would just save a bookmark and be done with it. But as for the Chinese, there is no need to do that since you get all the music for free here even if you are using 3G connections. It's called QQ Music.
Apple's strategy is the same everywhere (Score:2)
Make as good a product as they can, and let profit follow.
Marketshare is not a concern to Apple.
Also, unless you have shut yourself off from the internet, you cannot help but see ENDLESS waves of rumors about some kind of cheaper Apple phone on the way, which would pretty obviously be another strategy to get more customers in China.
It's funny how everyone frames it as a battle against Samsung, when over time Samsung is but one of many players in China that influence how Apple sells products.
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"It's funny how everyone frames it as a battle against Samsung, when over time Samsung is but one of many players in China that influence how Apple sells products."
Not entirely, because Apple and Samsung have had an on-again, off-again, love-hate relationship.
The reason is that Apple has often contracted with Samsung for critical components of Apple products. However, they often compete with one another on finished products. That makes for strange bedfellows.
Apple making poor product (Score:2)
Make as good a product as they can, and let profit follow.
Ironically Samsung now make more profits while Apples continue to shrink. The bottom line is the product is not that good. the iPhone5 has a 1.3 GHz dual core, 1GB of Memory, an 8MP and 1.2MP Camera, 640 × 1,136 pixels at 326 ppi. That compares badly to even mid-range phones let alone manufacturers flagship product. They need a new strategy, not marketing lingo.
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Make as good a product as they can, and let profit follow.
Marketshare is not a concern to Apple.
Apple tried this before, and it nearly destroyed them. When market share is not a concern, it soon plummets to 0%.
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Apple's profits have continued to grow each quarter, so your post is totally wrong...
Perhaps you meant profit margins? But then that would also mean your post was wrong.
So either way, you are in for a big surprise over the next few years.
Stagnation (Score:2)
Samsung has products ranging from:
low cost glossy colour clamshell phones with the basic functionality a user needs at the local price point.
mid range tablet like products
larger size tablets
Buying Samsung feels good at any price and has a new feel about it.
Now you als
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"Buying Samsung feels good at any price and has a new feel about it."
Definitely a matter of opinion. As another /.er has pointed out, to many people Samsung products have a "plasticky, cheap" feel to them.
Case in point: I recently bought a used Samsung air conditioner. (I didn't buy it because it was Samsung; I bought it because somebody was selling a used air conditioner.) The basic mechanical (i.e., compressor, heat exchangers, etc.) are fine. But the fit and finish sucks. The whole faceplate with the air vanes etc. was cheaply made, and the internal plastic parts it mo
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"You have to understand though, when it comes to these massive conglomerates under the same name, the different divisions are similar in name only. It may as well be a completely different company when comparing fridges to phones etc."
That's a pretty good point. The factory that makes cheap shit GE kitchen stoves and light switches is not the same factory that makes GE jet engines.
Give the people what they want... and cheaply. (Score:3, Insightful)
There are two reasons why people I know (myself included) have not bought Apple products.
1. Give us a bigger screen. My wife loves her iPhone and is looking at upgrading to whatever comes next, but after using my Galaxy S3 she would rather lose her familiarity with iOS (and all the apps she has paid for) to get a screen she can actually read.
2. Don't charge the $200 Apple premium. After being dicked around by Telcos, more and more people are buying their phones outright. It's not until you do this, that you suddenly see that an Apple iPhone is over $200 more expensive for a product (like the Galaxy S4, or the HTC One) which is better specced, but far cheaper.
People buying outright is also the same reason people aren't upgrading as much any more. You used to get a new phone every 2 years for free on some contracts, but with the premium commonly being charged people are happy to hold on for three/four years - or until their phone goes bang.
Not putting iOS 7 onto 3GS models is a smart move - it stops all those laggards from upgrading their OS, and forces them to start upgrading their hardware.
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1. But that's how it works. We love our old models, but...they just lose out to competition. That's how it works;
2. Charging 200$ is all they got, hell, they cost much more in fact in US. That's their *business* model;
3. Exactly - as soon as you get out of upgrading cycle via contracts, iPhone just doesn't cut it anymore.
Not really - most of current 3GS users are people who don't care about newest iOS.
Spelling out (Score:2)
Emmmm....let me try....I can only guess, but...because your business model has no absolutely chance of winning in China? :)
Ohhh, you afraid to said that loud. Ok, I will try again...BECAUSE YOUR BUSINESS MODEL HAS NO NO WAY TO WIN IN CHINA. How about that? :)
Selling badly everywhere (Score:3)
...ok not America :)...but that is the point. Apples market share is the lowest in years sitting at 13% http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24239313 [idc.com] To focus on a market(admittedly a massive market) they always did bad is ridiculous. Russia's three major mobile phone operators have halted iPhone sales recently.
Too much of a good thing. (Score:5, Interesting)
The irony is, Samsung phones aren't marketed as "special" as iPhones, and that's why the Samsung phones are winning.
To elaborate:
Any relatively affluent Chinese national who's had the privilege of making a trip to the states and is returning to the motherland will most likely have a top-of-the-line Samsonite suitcase full of Coach purses and brand new unlocked apple iPhone 5's (and maybe a couple of iPads), but how many Samsung products will they be bringing? Likely none.
The reason for this is that when quality is an issue, the Chinese have this adamant belief that anything created in China that is exported to be sold to Americans is, without question, of higher quality than the same item were it sold to Chinese consumers. This includes the same iPhone, made in the same factory, by the same people, the "better" one being shipped overseas.
That's why in the mainland, the spoiled middle-class children (starting at around middle school) with re-imported U.S. iPhones will actually look down on those who are using a "domestic" iPhone.
The fact that Samsung has been a major player in Chinese appliances still helps to set it apart from domestic (to China) brands such as Huawei in terms of overall quality, but because Samsung phones are marketed as largely being a different alternative to Apple phones (in terms of features, screen size, etc.), there's less of a need to re-import that je ne sais quoi from the U.S.
But Apple? Those phones are claiming to be the epitome of fit-and-finish, and that's just shooting themselves in the foot in this case.
Samsung understands the Asian market (Score:2)
Its not just the price - Samsung understands the Asian market and makes the product that the market wants, Apple simply doesn't.
Chinese phones and tablets (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a Chinese (LAVA-branded) Android tablet - it was a freebie from a vendor because I order so much from him (several years we were their largest account). He asked me for feedback on it after I had it for a few weeks. I felt bad but had not much good to say about it. It came with the Netflix preloaded (in their official firmware) and the Netflix app would not load movies. No update was available from Netflix at the time so I contacted lavatech. Their response was that they do not support it, that I should delete the app. WTF? Also, the manual clearly stated that the tablet charges via the mini-USB port. It doesn't. It only charges via the DC adapter port, and it uses a near impossible-to-find-size barrel connector.Lava Tech is uninterested in supporting their core products. Their response if something doesn't work according to their documentation, is to simply not use that feature, or they insist I'm doing it wrong (how can you plug in a mini-USB cable incorrectly?!).
I have a GS1000 dashcam (orange menu, a genuine GS1000 not a clone) - another cheap Chinese product. It has all the features I wanted but I ran into a bug. They quickly turned around and gave me a firmware update that fixed the problem I reported but introduced another problem. I emailed them again and they sent me another update (which I still have yet to test because I have been in the middle of moving to New Hampshire). Excellent customer service for a cheap product.
Support from Chinese companies ranges from completely sucktastic to fantastic. Unfortunately the former is far more common. I think the way Samsung and Apple actually stand behind their products, both will take the Chinese market by storm. I wouldn't buy a smartphone from a Chinese company because there is too much risk that the most basic features won't work (like, not being able to make phone calls) and the company will just say "don't use that feature then."
I was in China last month, and asked... (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost everyone I asked said that the iPhone screen was too small.
They also said⦠"Why is the iPhone so expensive when it has such a small screen?"
You can buy an Android phone with a gorgeous 5.7" display for half the cost of the iPhone in China. That was the biggest screen I found and it looked more vibrant than the screen on my iPhone 5.
If Apple wants to keep selling phones in China, they need bigger screens. Therefore, you can expect there will be a big screen iPhone. The Chinese market is too big for them to ignore. There's lots of competition now and Chinese consumers have zero brand loyalty.
Re:I was in China last month, and asked... (Score:5, Interesting)
I have to agree with this... When my girlfriend broke her iPhone 4, she tried to decide which phone to get. Basically, it came down to the iPhone 5 (with it's tiny screen) or the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 (with it's ginormous screen). She ended up with the Note and was happy, especially after all her friends were jealous. After all, creating envy in friends is one of the prime purposes of a premium phone!
Re:I was in China last month, and asked... (Score:4, Funny)
You must have a small dick as she was craving the larger phone.
No, you've got it all wrong. See, she likes to carry a life-sized photo of my cock on her phone, and the tiny iPhone screen couldn't display even its width. With the Note 2, she only has to scroll in the vertical direction to moon over my manhood, rather than in both directions.
Or maybe just more than one choice (Score:2)
Some people like smaller phones, some like larger ones. I understand that too much choice can get confusing to people, but most people want SOME choice. Apple has had a "You will do this our way," idea for a long time. Now that works when what you have is what people want, but not so much if people decide they want something else.
Also in terms of China, Apple is at a disadvantage compared to America because it doesn't have the status symbol thing going on there. In the US it is very fashionable to have and
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The inevitable
The bigger the screen, the smaller the dick of the owner.
Frankly some of the screens that you see people holding up to their ears these days are stupidly large. The Phablet is a clear case here.
not everyone wants phones with HUGE screens. Some people like to used their phone... as a phone. I know that is quaint these days there there it is.
look man, if the phone is the only way for you to browser the web and view pron then you want a big ass screen that can fit big asses.
many of those people do not have pc's and the phone is their (crappy) computer.
Has to do with ecosystems. (Score:2)
iOS does not support Cantonese! (Score:2, Informative)
Here's a big hint for Tim: on iOS, you can't write a custom keyboard. On Android you can. This is a really big deal in Hong Kong, because iOS has no support for Cantonese-based Chinese input. The best you can do is a kludgy app where you have to copy and paste the result (see https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/canton-guang-dong-pin-yin/id385519764?mt=8 [apple.com]).
Therefore, the Cantonese user is hamstrung by Apple's lack of support for the Cantonese-speaking market, together with their locked-down approach which prevent
Re:iOS does not support Cantonese! (Score:5, Informative)
Not only does iOS have voice control and dictation in Cantonese [apple.com], but Siri even speaks Cantonese [apple.com]. There's also the fact that iOS supports the traditional Chinese character set, which is used by Cantonese, as well as the extra characters that are specific to Cantonese. Did it ever occur to you to ask why that app you linked hasn't been updated for three years now? If you look back, you'll find that that Apple expanded its iOS efforts to include China around that time, along with adding input support for various forms of Chinese in iOS 4.
But hey, dinging them using information that hasn't been true for about three years is a favorite pastime of many a nerd, so please, continue.
It's because they didn't care (Score:2)
No it is clear. (Score:2)
In my experience iphones sold extremely well where they had the iPod bonus (that is, a non-negligible fraction of the population being on itunes).
In china Apple never managed tyo catch the same stronghold.
May also have to do with Apple fucking up on simple things in non-trivial (i.e. chinese) 2.5g network situations (when i traveled to China with my wife, her iphone3gs choked up on the chinese variant of GSM extension in a way that calls were impossible (neither my Nokia phones nor my galazy tab had that pr
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China Unicom had phones with zero issues for a long time now. China Mobile might be the issue but that's more a problem of not knowing the local market more than the phone manufacturer itself. iPhones sold well here but nowadays people don't see the value of the iPhone 5 since they consider the 4/4S good enough still. But hop into any metro and count how many Apple devices you see. Nowadays you get to see more Android phones, but like a year ago it was crazy, I even saw people with two iPhones.
Re:It's because... (Score:4, Insightful)
Chinese people buy these things, too. I've been there and seen it done.
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The demand for conspicuous consumption among newly wealthy Chinese is even changing some of the retail market in Europe. Chinese tourists in Europe buy much more stuff than European and American tourists do, especially of the expensive stuff. So London high-street stores and French luxury-goods stores are retargeting their sales to aim more at Chinese. There are even luxury-shopping tours where you fly from China to Paris and get taken around to Louis Vuitton and the like, as a package deal (I guess you pro
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The people selling expensive (4 and 5-figure expensive) watches and jewelery to Chinese tourists here are making an absolute fortune these days.
Re:Here's the reason... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's an asian company. While they might hate Koreans, they hate US people even more.
I don't know where you get this. In my experiences, the Chinese like US people, and Korean dramas are popular in China.
Also, I'm not sure how a pressure sensitive stylus makes any difference for writing Asian languages........I haven't found any difficulty writing Chinese on an iPhone.....
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I don't know where you get this. In my experiences, the Chinese like US people, and Korean dramas are popular in China.
He formed his opinion based on the U.S. media deception about China.
The Chinese people, just like everywhere else, want a better life. When they voluntarily use their money to buy Samsung devices instead of competing devices, its because that device is at least perceived to deliver better than the alternatives.
The idea that the Chinese people dont like Americans is rooted in the belief that they are stupid (as if they would have to be stupid not to want an Apple device) and bigoted (as if they don't wa
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Next time try to use both systems. Both the S4 and the iPhone are very good phones. If you like one over the other that's fine, but all the stuff you said, you kind of have been able to do with the iPhone already, like using Handbrake to convert all sorts of movies, sync wirelessly and that is if you want to sync, with icloud and over the air updates you really don't need to use iTunes anymore. As for programs, I find that I like most games in the Apple app store since Android's selection is rather limited,
Re:Here's the reason... (Score:5, Funny)
After tens of wars US has waged against Asian countries, Asian like American? As an Asian I almost puked.
Do you understand that 'Asian' is not the same as 'Chinese?' Apparently not.
Re:Here's the reason... (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe those in some countries don't like us, but from what I've seen, having been across much of eastern Asia, the US is generally well regarded. The only exception is Indonesia, and that's religious/political. What country are you from, the country of "MakeShitUp?"
Re:Here's the reason... (Score:5, Informative)
This is odd but just today I took my kids to "Chinese Reconciliation Park [metroparkstacoma.org]" - a spot to recognize and apologize for the fact that in the 1800's thousands of Chinese people [tacomachinesepark.org] were driven out of our town in a spat of racial hatred. Most fled on threat of violence but the last 200 were rounded up forcibly, driven to the edge of town to wait a day unsheltered in the pouring, bitterly cold November rain and then loaded onto cattle cars for a trip to Portland, Oregon. At the end of that day there was not one Chinese person left in town. We had had an ethnic purge.
I'm not sure our kids got the whole horror of it, but it hit me pretty hard.
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That is a sad part of US history, but that does not mean that Chinese today hold a grudge against American people for it. Hell compare that to what happened in Nanjing in WW2, and to top it all, Japan still say that it was an unfortunate part of the war, never apologizing and in fact, some people even denying the whole thing happened. That is a huge difference with what happened in the US.
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but that does not mean that Chinese today hold a grudge against American people for it.
This may be true of the Chinese, but the GP's claim that "from what I've seen, having been across much of eastern Asia, the US is generally well regarded" completely disregards history from well within my lifetime.
This might not be generally known within the US, but what we refer to as the Vietnam War is known in Vietnam as the "American War". It's just too convenient to forget who was the aggressor.
Re:Here's the reason... (Score:4, Interesting)
The US supplied funds and aid and instruction during WWII to what would become the National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) when the war ended. That conflict started against the british when soldiers where sent in to accept the surrender of the Japanese troops and police the region until france could handle it them selves. This started the First Indochina War.
There are lots of reasons for this. The primary being that not all allies had quite the same goals in the second world war. America was working towards undermining the european colonial powers (post war). Other of the allies wanted to resume their empires. This partially determined which insurgents where sponsored by various allied powers during the war.
History is never simple.
Re:Here's the reason... (Score:4, Interesting)
What war did the US wage against China?
Estimates of Chinese casualties in the Korean war range up to 900,000. Accepted level seems to be around 700,000 with 180,000 fatalities.
I appreciate that the action was UN-flagged but the majority of forces were US.
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They saved their asses? China was overrun pretty much like France, and at least the Chinese had the excuse of having a civil war going on while the invasion happened. So after a whole lot of killing, when the ALLIES finally won, countries like China were free to get back to normal. The US forced Japan to surrender, but it was either going to be the US or the Soviet Union that would force their hand to get back to the status quo.
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Just a bit of background, Mao left Chiang to fight the Japanese pretty much by himself figuring that Japan would lose against the U.S, and Russia. He figured his group of weenies would be the ones left standing, and he was correct.
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Actually Mao and Chiang set their differences aside to fight the Japanese, then resumed to the business of killing each other. At least that is the way the history is taught in China, but the interesting part is that if you go to places like Nanjing, you still see they value some of the anti-communist generals which to me it was an interesting development.
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China was overrun pretty much like France, and at least the Chinese had the excuse of having a civil war going on while the invasion happened.
France had similar divisions between right and left. Those rivalries didn't reach the point of a shooting war, but that internal conflict help crippled their military preparedness and encouraged a number of factions (what became the Vichy French) to collaborate with the German invaders.
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The Vietnam and Korean wars were partly to contain Communist Chinese political expansion in Asia. Both led to rampant human rights violations abuses and civilian casualties on both sides, sponsored by US and Chinese governments and their allies, and left terrible memories of racial and jingoistic hatred in the minds of people who are now senior business and political leaders.
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Actually, the Korean War was a legacy of the Japanese who controlled Korea. They split the pop. between those who worked with the Japanese and those who were opposed. The Communist ideology was implanted by Russia. There were some Koreans who fought against the Japanese in China, but not enough to matter.
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There are numerous reasons for Chinese distaste of America but a few prominent ones related to your post are firstly that "but the US has generally fought against their enemies or only indirectly in proxy wars" is ignorant of the truth just a little bit. The fact is that the US was the main opposing force to North Korea in the Korean War but on Korea's side were the Chinese. Over 1 million of them in fact.
The North Koreans were smaller in number than China (they had about 1/6th the numbers), South Korea and
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Lol drop the crap dude, if anything the people that the Chinese truly hate are the Japanese. You are just making stuff up, but what can you expect from an AC...
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Chinese hate US people? You clearly haven't lived in China. Price and good quality is the only reason why Samsung beats Apple here. Hell, I've have people from the business sector tell me that they wanted an iPhone since Android is too confusing but Samsung offered discounts to get phones company-wide, something Apple flat-out refused to do. So in a way, Apple will have to understand sooner rather than later that in China, consumers are extremely saavy and will refuse to buy overpriced stuff unless it is to
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I believe the iPhone size is pretty good. In fact, a cell phone with a screen bigger than 4,3 feels oversized in my opinion.
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Not sure why this was modded insightful. It's pure opinion, and the proliferation of 5" smartphones suggests yours is not universally shared. Opinion is not insight. Interesting, perhaps.
For what it's worth I find 5" to be ideal - I can reach all areas with one hand and type comfortably, with a nice large display to show detail on maps and a less cramped keyboard. 4.3" seems cramped.
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And they fit so snugly within the over sized pockets of my new iPants!
Re:Here's the reason... (Score:4, Interesting)
Yep, better product, better price and you can install Cyanogen/AOSP to clear any backdoors. With Apple products you're stuck with your OS spying on you.
why do you think cyan/aosp isn't spying on you? And what about all the malicious apps? if i lived in china, home of the filthy filthy app store, I'd want some protection.
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Yeah who cares about China? They have no exports and not many people live there anyway.
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Uh, weird spastic response there guy.
Regardless of any outside comparisons a 43% revenue drop in a region as populous as greater china is an eyebrow raiser. Investors aren't lure by how much you make, it's by how much you GROW and the growing chinese middle class is a tasty market to gain traction in. Being shown to be slipping in that market is not the end of the world, but it is definitely significant when it is a market where you previously had more significant presence.
Granted this isn't a sudden panic
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The problem is growth on growth.
Investors do not just expect to get a return on their investment, they expect that this return continuously increases. The reverse is true of the shadow of growth - the news in my country barely ever report how much debt the government is taking again, the number everyone focusses on is not only new debt, but whether or not that increases or decreases ("yeay! the government has reduced the additional debt this year!" - translation: We are not paying back our debt. We are incr
Re: scale (Score:2)
Those talking about revenue are condemned to misunderstand profits.
Also China isn't just any market for reasons that should be obvious.
Finally this is part of a clear downward spiral for Apple. It may be elitist talk about expensive gadgets, but that is the topic of the thread, isn't it?
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The story is clearly about the competition between Apple and Samsung, and fact is that Samsung now makes more profit ($5B last in most recent quarter - that's earnings, not revenue) from smart phones than Apple does.
Apple has mostly saturated the US market and to save the stcok price from collapsing needs to find other markets for growth... China was one big hope, but it appears it's not happening. That's certainly news.
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Keep an eye on Lenovo, they are entering the mobile market in China with some very good products that can easily displace Samsung. I have tried one of them and it is the same as a Galaxy with a cheaper price, and none of the lower quality issues of other Chinese manufacturers.
Re: Innovation (Score:2)
He said they are like Acer, that is not saying Acer us USian if you read carefully.
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The average citizen ins't a market. Chinese with incomes above a certain level are the market, and that market is still growing.
Yeah right (Score:3)
People deride copying as a dirty word.
Copying is how we humans learn, what you just said is what people used to say of Japanese industry in the 60s.
China has risen from a rural backwards society in the 70s to a society that can manufacture pretty much any high tech stuff you care to mention.
But if sprouting that quasi racist nonsense gives you some comfort all the power to you.
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