Chinese buyers falling out of love with iPhones Google famously failed to make a big dent in China and now it looks like Apple may be about to hit the Great Wall too, after new analysis of local sentiment found the fruity company out of favour with local consumers. The source of that analysis is Taiwan’s TRENDforce which teamed with Chinese outfit AVANTI Research Partners …
> The average Chinese worker can't afford the iPhone without selling a kidney,
While that is no doubt true, there is a bigger reason highlighted in the article.
> the fact its handsets won’t work with dominant local carriers.
Might also be a deciding factor.
There is only so much posing you can do, like the people you used to often see talking on their phone on the Underground in London, back when mobiles were " for the rich elite" here, rather than things you buy to give to the kids to chuck into the bottom of their school bag in case they can't get on the bus.
There may be many millions who can't afford one, but there are also many millions who can easily afford them. There are a lot more rich Chinese than people think.
I've been seeing a lot of iPhones recently, but they seem to be non-5 models (bit hard to tell with these small Apple phones sometimes). I've also been seeing lots of Galaxy Notes, though not so many S3s. Of course, that could be because the Note's are easier to spot. There do seem to be a fair number of HTC Ones too.
Then again, most locals here seem to have generic looking brands I can't readily identify.
As far as pads go, most non-subway pads I see are big iPads (rather than the new one), but on the subway the smaller Chinese ones are most visible. Though with the crush underground that's possibly not surprising either.
Well, did you actually spell it Xioami? It's xiaomi so it looks like you swapped the 'ao' for 'oa'. Literally it's "little rice". One of their phones is actually quite impressive with a quad core Qualcomm Krait at 1.5 GHz, 4.3" 1280 x 720 display and Miui Android 4.1 going for around $320 or £200. Oh the standard battery is 2000 mAh with an available 3100 mAh battery. I'm actually thinking of ordering one if it's unlocked and will work in the US if Santa doesn't deliver.
Nokia's problem is that they pretty much dropped the ball and shuffled their feet for a year as Elop burned the bridges behind them and it will take a fair amount to get back in the game but I have a feeling they are pricing themselves out of the mass market in China. It's Nokia not Apple.
"The research says Apple is struggling in China due to a combination of price and the fact its handsets won’t work with dominant local carriers."
Sure, Apple has mostly shot themselves in the foot by not ponying up a few quid for whatever is needed to ship a compatible TD-SCDMA or some such radio in the Chinese market. As a result word is getting out that even after several revisions it's still only a half hearted attempt and I imagine sentiment is that Apple doesn't see China as a growth area, perhaps because the average punter isn't wealthy enough.
They could get a short term boost by making the 5S, 6 or whatever the next model is compatible in the same way as they got a boost by ending the exclusive agreement with @&T in the US but it would only be short term as competitors aren't standing still and delivering equal or currently better utility. End game, iPhone is rapidly approaching maximum saturation globally and they have to seriously up their game, change direction and force the market to pivot in response.
That said, they can certainly milk their current market for quite a while before they really need a big break so perhaps a mid-2014 iFantastic that breaks the mold is in the works. But, dozens of others already have geared up plenty of Apple peeler skunkwork projects as well.
I can't see where Steve Todd's remark is a Fanboi excuse... The 5 isn't out in China yet, and it may or may not have an effect on sales/market share. That's an observation and is not an excuse.
Personally I don't think the 5 would make much of a dent in anything, because seen from a technical and practical point of view it's just middlin' in the top end of offerings, and chinese manufacturers are catching up *fast* so it will be sliding down as an attractive proposition *as a phone* week by week.
Which leaves the Status Symbol aspect of iFruit gear, and that is where you hit the fact that in China there's a realisation that they *can* produce their own, and it's increasingly more common ( and politically sound) to be seen Supporting Your Own to show World + Dog that China has it's own Icons, and does not need Foreign Stuff.
Even without being "patriotic", companies tend to do better in their own markets - e.g., the US is Apple's best market, and S Korea is Samsung's best market. Nokia's Symbian was the number one worldwide platform until 2011, but virtually unheard of in the US (which perhaps partly contributes to the ridiculous "Apple invented 'smart' phones in 2007 [even though the 1st iphone wasn't a smartphone]" from the US media, though there's no excuse for the UK media).
There are factors such as language of the documentation; distribution - whether you can buy it at all, and whether it's available on networks with contracts, which is how most people buy phones; brand awareness (people tend to be more wary of brands that they don't know); and simply being aware of the product in the first place.
E.g., one of my friends was asking about whether Symbian phones still exist to buy - they still today sell around 4 million a quarter (i.e., still better than Apple managed back in 2007!), but it'd be hard if not impossible to get one in the UK on a contract.
Or I'd love to have one of the Android tablets from Chinese company Ainol, which have excellent specs at low prices, but the only way seems to be to mail order from a company that ships from China, and hope I don't get a load of Chinese instructions or power supply. And most people won't even be aware these devices exist, with the media only covering the tablets from Google, Amazon and Apple Apple Apple (even Samsung get little coverage).
Though this is one of the many strengths of Android - it will do well worldwide, as even though different companies are successful in different countries, they will all use the common platform of Android. With IOS, you're stuck with Apple, who will struggle to have a worldwide presence.
What you say is of couse true, but it is easy to prefer Apple in the US or Sammy in SK because they make really good products. There's a lot to like.
What I'm wondering about is if the Chinese are preferring an 'inferior' (I can't seem to be able to come up with a better word for now) product. 'It may not be an iPhone or a Galaxy, but WE made it and OUR families make their living from it'. That kind of thing.
If you're an English speaker you will get a phone make by a company that speaks English. It means the phone will be designed for you and will be optimised for you.
Same goes for the Chinese.
German, French and Spanish are all fairly similar in alphabet, with a few extra symbols, but Mandarin etc are quite different. So the GUI has to take this into account.
"The average Chinese worker can't afford the iPhone without selling a kidney, instead it is the phone of choice for the rich elite, there are not that many of them, hence local and cheaper phones sell more."
There are 1.3 billion people in China, just 5% of them is the population of UK alone..
What numbers of them who are considered middle class by our standards probably exeeds what we have here.. who easily can afford Iphones..
Have you noticed all the chinese students and chinese tourists in UK ?? have you seen the tourists in designers shops buying the whole set of outfits, whilst most of us buy single pieces here and there.. How much do you think it costs for foreign students to study in UK ?.
But you are right that if you average them over the whole population, the average pay is not enough to easiy afford an IPhone.
As a side note, there are around 300million unemployed farm labourers in China, that number is the population of USA..
In regards to whether they are patriotic about their phone purchases, i donlt thin so, even the figures suggest otherwise. Apart from certain compability issues, I just think they don't tlike the closed control apple has etc..
1) smartphone market is growing fast, but now mostly via replacing cheap feature phones with cheap smartphones. Most of the people with the money to afford an expensive phone like an iPhone or Samsung GS3 have already bought one. Once again this is an effect of people being dumb and talking about "smartphone market share" instead of "mobile market share". In that, Apple will see continued growth, as would high end Android phones. It's just that that growth will be dwarfed by the growth of super cheap Android phones costing well under $100.
2) iPhone isn't available on China's largest carrier, meaning about 70% of the population can't buy it from their carrier. They can work on the network, but at 2G speeds only.
3) iPhone 5 isn't even (officially) sold in China yet. Other than people buying off the black market, people who want an iPhone are probably waiting until next month when the 5 goes on sale (and the 4 & 4S see an accompanying price drop) This is just like the big drop in iPhone market share in the US prior to its release, and then the big jump after iPhone 5 intro that saw Apple beating all Android phones combined in the US by a couple percent in the Aug/Sep/Oct quarter.
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