Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple's iPhone Shipments Plunge in China as Huawei Tightens Grip

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 171 posts

Re: Apple's iPhone Shipments Plunge in China as Huawei Tightens Grip

#21

Post by Synaesthesia »

ekianjo wrote: post #10
entity345 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's simplistic. People forget, or simply don't know, that Chinese are extremely patriotic and that they remember how "the foreign powers" treated them in the past. Considering what's happening between the US and China, and about Huawei, we can't discard the possibility that Chinese consumers reacted by supporting their country.

> that Chinese are extremely patriotic Like in most countries where education is tightly controlled by the government, patriotism is a result of state propaganda. > how "the foreign powers" treated them in the past. The worst thing that happened to Chinese was not the way foreign powers treated them, but what came after under their own ruling party.

I don't know if you know the colonial history of China.

Re: Apple's iPhone Shipments Plunge in China as Huawei Tightens Grip

#22

Post by kwizzt »

kumarvvr wrote: post #6
dis-sys wrote: post #2

According to a recent study, Chinese iPhone users are more likely to be low income/undereducated. https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/2174310/research-highlight...

I suspect a lot of money in the China flows illegally, out of the sight of the tax man (black money, money that is off the books), so having an iPhone could be one of the ways to spend such money, as it can't be deposited in banks or other track-able outlets. Perhaps it's a status symbol too, shows that you are well to do and financially stable.

I don't think the black money you proposed is very likely.

If I have several thousand dollars of black money, that's not much and no one cares.

OTOH, if you have a lot of black money, let's say in millions of dollars, buying a single iPhone doesn't really help at all. Yet buying a bunch of iPhone's seems to be very inconvenient unless you are selling them to someone else.

Status symbol was more likely 5 or 10 years back. Nowadays not a lot of people actually care about what phones you are using (at least the ones I know, potential selection bias there).

My guess is that people simply don't care about having an iPhone vs an Android anymore. Especially so when Android phones don't suck or can be better than iPhone now.

Re: Apple's iPhone Shipments Plunge in China as Huawei Tightens Grip

#23

Post by baybal2 »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #20
baybal2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the simple explanation for their sales tanking is simply because they got their market saturated. Plainly and simple. Huawei on other hand has rather different marketing plan - they make somewhat expensive products for ordinary people, even thought some of their phones can cost more than $1000 USD in maxed out configuration (leather and hand made editions) Apple on another hand has really little appeal to this de…

Within China, Apple doesn't compete on price. Yes Huawei has expensive phones, but for example you can buy a Mate 20 Pro for $650 there whereas an iPhone XS costs $1,270 for the entry level model. https://www.gizmochina.com/2018/10/26/huawei-mate-20-and-mat...

> iPhone XS costs $1,270 for the entry level model.

Indeed, but they also have the "3rd world iPhone" models - respins of previous generations and "C" model which were to supposedly cater to this market.

They greatly overestimated willingness of locals into buying "poor man's Rolce Royce editions"

Re: Apple's iPhone Shipments Plunge in China as Huawei Tightens Grip

#24

Post by [deleted] »

entity345 wrote: post #18
ancorevard wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Why are you picking on this and ignoring my original comment? Simpler to repeat the same thing again and again without thinking, isn't it? I thought mature discussions was what HN was about. I'm sorry to see that bigotry is rife.

[deleted]

Re: Apple's iPhone Shipments Plunge in China as Huawei Tightens Grip

#25

Post by junket_operator »

entity345 wrote: post #14
threeseed wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People also forget that they shouldn't speak for a billion odd people. It's a big country with a lot of diversity both culturally and socioeconomically. The facts we do know are that (a) price affects sales, (b) China has a lot of well made, value focused phones and (c) Apple has already acknowledged their iPhones are expensive.

China is extremely homogeneous on the points I raised. I did not claim that they were the cause of the drop but simply that these are factors that may also be at play.

North is much more patriotic and aligned with the nationalistic one China narrative than the South. If you have lived in the South, you can encounter more ambivalent view.

CPC puts huge effort to maintain the illusion of unity. The recent ramp up effort to suppress Cantonese is just one example. 80 million people (equal to the population of Germany) speaks Cantonese. Overall 400 million Chinese still can't speak Mandarin.

Re: Apple's iPhone Shipments Plunge in China as Huawei Tightens Grip

#26

Post by potatofarmer45 »

I think what a lot of commentators are missing is that even without a trade war, IPhone shipments would have fallen in China.

In the past, the android phones kept focussing on features (remember the s3 ads about how it had all these features missing in the 4/4s). Now, especially with Huawei, they've really mastered the art of branding and messaging on their products. When Huawei listed a phone with 3 cameras and cost more than an iphone, I knew that was a home run. The higher price reinforced the image of the premiumness of Huawei which benefitted all their products down the line as evidenced by their sales numbers. They've finally realized the Xiaomi (same quality at a lower price), actually doesn't work on an emotional level with consumers. Instead, Huawei have gone to the extreme (Leica partnership lenses + 3 cameras). They've been doing this for a while, and results just take time to show and now they have.

Re: Apple's iPhone Shipments Plunge in China as Huawei Tightens Grip

#27

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

potatofarmer45 wrote: post #26

I think what a lot of commentators are missing is that even without a trade war, IPhone shipments would have fallen in China. In the past, the android phones kept focussing on features (remember the s3 ads about how it had all these features missing in the 4/4s). Now, especially with Huawei, they've really mastered the art of branding and messaging on their products. When Huawei listed a phone with 3 cameras and cost…

What do the 3 cameras do?

Re: Apple's iPhone Shipments Plunge in China as Huawei Tightens Grip

#28

Post by andy_ppp »

Doesn't help that even I can't keep track of the differences between their phones and which lower end models they still sell and what the hell the iPhone XR is meant to be.

Feels like Apple have a really weird phone line up right now.

There used to be 3 models - iPhone classic (the previous gen maybe with a few tweaks), iPhone massive (better camera and battery) and iPhone awesome expensive high tech edition (new stuff). Now it seems to be 5 or more models in China, how can this make sense? Just stick to those three models and price them correctly and they'll get more sales.

Re: Apple's iPhone Shipments Plunge in China as Huawei Tightens Grip

#29

Post by addicted »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #27
potatofarmer45 wrote: post #26

I think what a lot of commentators are missing is that even without a trade war, IPhone shipments would have fallen in China. In the past, the android phones kept focussing on features (remember the s3 ads about how it had all these features missing in the 4/4s). Now, especially with Huawei, they've really mastered the art of branding and messaging on their products. When Huawei listed a phone with 3 cameras and cost…

What do the 3 cameras do?

Make it seem that literally the only feature regular phone users upgrade for is a lot better on the Huawei.

Re: Apple's iPhone Shipments Plunge in China as Huawei Tightens Grip

#30

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

entity345 wrote: post #18
ancorevard wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Why are you picking on this and ignoring my original comment? Simpler to repeat the same thing again and again without thinking, isn't it? I thought mature discussions was what HN was about. I'm sorry to see that bigotry is rife.

Bringing up a fact of 50-80 million lives lost is not “picking on” something.
Post reply on HN