iPhone Sales Drop 19% in China (cnbc.com) 67
Apple's iPhone sales dropped sharply in China in the first quarter of this year as the company saw strong competition from domestic brand Huawei, according to a new report from market research firm Counterpoint Research. CNBC: Apple saw sales of its iPhones fall 19.1% in the first three months of the year, Counterpoint's data showed, as Chinese telecommunications and consumer electronics giant Huawei saw a resurgence in its smartphone business. The Shenzhen, China-based firm saw sales of its smartphones surge a whopping 69.7% in the first quarter, Counterpoint said.
Uncle Poo Bear doesn't like Apple's USA creds (Score:3)
On the flipside I know it's pointless, but I wish the US government would stop all the tactics with import/export laws and restrictions on private companies as a political means to an end. I think our meddling will come back to bite us hard, just like our shenanigans with the SWIFT system have started to cause us big problems in finance.
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Ah, the naïve pro-CCP view. Sorry my man, but you're assuming the Chinese system works remotely like ours.
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I assume you are being negative about my pro-free-trade-even-with-clear-enemies stance? This is the first time I've been called pro-CCP, though. So, I'm interested, *grin*.
No opinion or judgement on my part.
I too am a free trade proponent, however you bring up shenanigans and I think both sides are welcome to counter-shenanigan as they see fit - to the benefit of their own country.
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I am, too, generally a free trade proponent, but that has absolutely nothing to do with the situation in China. They do use tariffs, but mostly they just destroy you using the media and unlawful means, including jailing your company officers who are stupid enough to enter the country when they want some new concession.
China is one of the worst places in the world to do business. That was ok back when China was growing like gangbusters and they needed foreign investors, but they're like Firangi on steroids
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No. I'm referring to your first, naive paragraph.
It seems like the kinda place where, once the politics around a certain company shifts to being too heavily associated with the US government, people flee because they think they are gonna get cultural-revolutionized (ie.. also known as "murdered"). Hard to blame folks.
This is bullshit. What happens was the CCP plan all along. It's not organic, it's constant, planted, fake stories about your foreign company, it's regulatory crackdowns to benefit your CCP owned competitors. It's the entire Chinese system working to attract foreign investments with the lure of future profits which soon disappear (and you dare not talk about publicly lest lose it all), then you have to watch as they slowly strangle your company.
As I said,
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You don't have any "IP" if it's all stolen. Watch the Chinese phone and car industries go down in flames once their competitors ramp up production.
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It seems like the kinda place where, once the politics around a certain company shifts to being too heavily associated with the US government
I do not think you liked China, or were intentionally trying to let them off, just that it is naïve to think the people of China were "fleeing" American brands due to anything but direct propaganda on the part of the CCP.
I should not have called that that the "pro-CCP" view. It was certainly no such thing, and I apologize. You are no CCP shill.
It's all by design (Score:2, Interesting)
This is exactly how China operates.
1. invite foreign companies with false promises of future profits that'll never come
2. copy everything, illegally
3. create dozens of fake news stories trashing foreign companies and products domestically, and pay dirtbags to trash them endlessly
4. let Chinese companies take over
For iPhone, we shifted into phase 3 a few years ago, well into 4.
This is why manufacturing is finally shifting out of China. Most people are finally onto the scam.
Re:It's all by design (Score:4, Informative)
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funny, step 1 and 2 are what apple does too
I thought Apple _bought_ the companies and then kept the secret magic sauce for themselves.
Re:It's all by design (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's what everyone does. Copying isn't a problem until you're successful, at which point it's not a problem.
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You're a moron if you think there's the slightest comparison between what China does and what 'everyone' does.
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Oh yeah, literally exactly the same thing. Eye roll.
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You posted this same comment multiple times but I doubt you understand the difference between government and private enterprise.
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Just wait till you're in prison with getting cornholed in the shower, then you'll notice the difference.
Maybe. LOL
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Not really. If Apple legitimately copies or steals from you, you have strong recourse in the courts.
I once worked for Microsoft. The head of our group went to China to negotiate something. They immediately imprisoned him and would not release him until Microsoft signed an extremely bad agreement. He was in a living hell for months so some Communist Party asshole could get rich.
I know Apple and the likes can seem like a big baddie, but at least they're constrained by the rule of law.
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Their lobbyists would probably agree. They wrote most of the laws :P
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Really? When's the last time you were arrested for not using Apple products?
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Re:It's all by design (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple and Tesla are/were making mad profits in China, so not sure what you mean. Apple's been minting money in China for 15 years.
Why hasn't Apple sued them for illegally copying? What specifically did they illegally copy? If you want to say smartphones then Samsung and Motorola are guilty too.
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Did I make a false statement? I asked for your evidence and you called me a shill. How am I supposed to get paid if you guys don't even make it look difficult to shill?
Re: It's all by design (Score:2)
Clearly, you're joking. Western companies have made massive profits from China. China has played its hand well, for sure. As for {,m}any developing country, they trade market access for things that benefit them, including IP. They correctly recognised the eagerness of (eg) the USA for China to open up, and that the value is in their massive market, and rightly took advantage of it. Imo, they did so quite fairly, on the whole, while they developed their country, including wrt IP laws and enforcement. TRIPS f
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That's very poor reading comprehension.
They make money, at least some of them. Just not nearly what they are led to believe since they don't expect the CCP to turn their entire system against them almost immediately. Apple was one of the lucky ones, since the got in early and had lots of leverage for a long time. But not that's turned around, which is why you see them being trashed relentlessly in Chinese state media.
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I'm not sure that fits into your list, but the shareholders seem pretty happy about it.
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Perhaps read to the end before making your point. They lose profits because they are squeezed out in later years.
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You don't read the article? Or business news much, do you?
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Nah, this is a direct response to the US ban on TikTok on government devices. China mirrored it by banning iPhones for government use. Just like how many US citizens took the innuendo about TikTok and Chinese phones as a signal not to buy them, Chinese consumers switched to domestic brands too.
The US probably expected that, but was likely hoping that they had weakened Huawei and Chinese chip production enough to prevent Chinese brands making competitive phones. That failed quite dramatically.
Reap what you s
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More bullshit from our resident CCP shill. Almost no one in the U.S. owns a Chinese cell phone, and certainly no one takes their clues from a government advisory to stop buying them.
The foreign bashing in China is extreme, pervasive, ongoing to many years, and entirely top down. This is not tit for tat.
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Maybe you missed it but I was talking about TikTok, which despite ByteDance's protests I'm sure you will agree is just a branch of the CCP.
Your claim that "foreign bashing" is the cause doesn't make sense. If it was, why have sales falling 19% after years of growth? You said it's being going on for years, i.e. the time when sales were growing.
And by the way, Chinese phones are popular in Europe. Huawei, Xiaomi, Honor... Which should tell you something about this "foreign bashing" you are projecting. How man
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Sales have been falling because China has been running a propaganda campaign against iPhone the last year. Check laowhy's YT channel for details. They're dialed into all the CCP's latest shenanigans.
CCP shill.
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That claim contradicts your earlier one.
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No it doesn't.
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Ah, so you ARE a CCP shill.
Come on apple warriors (Score:2)
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get in here with the "Genius move by apple" or the walls of text explaining to us how this is great for apple
Your meds might need adjusting again. :-)
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Re: Come on apple warriors (Score:3)
Limited protection. The actions don't seem to be having a huge effect, at least in the medium and longer term. Certainly not in China, and time will tell how effective the protectionism will be outside once Huawei start to expand its focus worldwide.
The sanctions have helped China focus its development on certain things that it previously didn't need to due to them being readily available for a fair price. They had other more things to focus on, but the sanctions changed the priorities.
The problem is that A
We're starting a cold war (Score:2)
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> China [...] because they're such a large country the raw amount is a lot higher than any other country
That is bullshit.
Apple's Only Advantage (Score:3)
Apple's only advantage is that they are seen as a status symbol by certain people. Apple has gone out of its way to make sure that you can tell if someone you are talking to is using an iPhone. If they aren't using an iPhone then the experience is degraded significantly. There are a million video chat programs, and they all work great, but the cool kids all want to Facetime. In group chats they care what colors bubbles they have.
That works great in places where there are a lot of Apple users, but it works against Apple in places where there is not. In China there are replacements for all of Apple's software that everyone uses, even if you have a fancy phone you aren't really in Apple's ecosystem. In essence you are buying an iPhone to become a second class citizen in all of the software you actually want to use. Everyone else is running Android.
Throw in major financial issues in China and all of a sudden Apple's phones look like a very poor choice, even without throwing politics in the mix.
Re: Apple's Only Advantage (Score:2)
Imo, a lot of those super apps you referred to also base their "miniapp" ecosystems on web technologies and a webview. /safari which doesn't work too well, or at least it works "different". So, since Apple is smaller than "everyone else" developers target "full functionality" at everyone else (where chromium works) and reduce the offering in terms of functionality/features for Apple.
As such, Apple only allows use of Webkit
I don't know for sure that this is the wht, but it is absolutely noticeable that offer
Boohoo (Score:2)
RIP Bozo.
it make sense (Score:2)
It make a lot of sense:
- price wise, in a not rich country, Apple phones are expensive
- feature wise, Apple hardware is not great compared with Chinese competition (battery, storage and such)
- software may be a differentiator, but Western, software is not available in China (partly to US export embargo, partly due to Chinese protectionism), so people there need Chinese software anyway (WeChat, Douyin and such).
So why would a Chinese person use an iPhone? It was pretty much only as a status symbol, but it se
A whataboutism (Score:1)
China is the start (Score:3)
The issue is with the strategy. Its to remain at the high end and charge a premium. Its worked very well so far, but the problem is that the size of that segment tends to reduce in most markets over time as the low end suppliers catch up on features at far lower prices. In effect your price premium gives them a safe area where they can raise their game.
This happened to Apple in the PC market, its happened in the tablet market, it happened in the music player market. They have been able to draw the process out in the phone market by trading on linking different products together, the ecosystem strategy. But it delays rather than stops the process.
The first indicator is slowing sales growth. To be followed by real falls in sales. At that point you either tackle the problem head on, become competitive at lower prices, which is where the market is now. You retreat to the niche and forget growth. Or you find a new market, like for instance VR headsets. But that seems not to be going all that well.
To everything there is a season, and this is a season to sell the shares.
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The issue is with the strategy. Its to remain at the high end and charge a premium. Its worked very well so far, but the problem is that the size of that segment tends to reduce in most markets over time as the low end suppliers catch up on features at far lower prices. In effect your price premium gives them a safe area where they can raise their game.
This happened to Apple in the PC market, its happened in the tablet market, it happened in the music player market. They have been able to draw the process out in the phone market by trading on linking different products together, the ecosystem strategy. But it delays rather than stops the process.
The first indicator is slowing sales growth. To be followed by real falls in sales. At that point you either tackle the problem head on, become competitive at lower prices, which is where the market is now. You retreat to the niche and forget growth. Or you find a new market, like for instance VR headsets. But that seems not to be going all that well.
To everything there is a season, and this is a season to sell the shares.
The fact is, in most places in the world Apple has become passe. Being popular is a fickle mistress. It seems to have happened first in Asian countries as Apples support of non-English language is second rate at best, even supporting En_UK properly is a bit beyond them and it gets worse the further away from English you get.
However it's at the point where no-one cares what phone you have so you may as well get a phone on criteria other than brand and primarily that comes down to price, specifically what