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Apple Priced Itself Out of Shrinking Chinese Smartphone Market

bloomberg.com

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Re: Apple Priced Itself Out of Shrinking Chinese Smartphone Market

#101

Post by gwright »

walrus01 wrote: post #75
gwright wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has never tried to compete on price and as such continues to capture most of the profit in the industry. Seems like a good business plan to me. https://gadgetmatch.com/apple-samsung-huawei-global-smartpho...

Never tried to compete on price? Then what were the basic "c" and "se" plastic bodied iPhone models?

I think it is well established that the price range for iPhones has always been skewed towards the high end of the market. But iPhones at the low end of that range have always still been considered premium phones relative to the entire market.

Re: Apple Priced Itself Out of Shrinking Chinese Smartphone Market

#102

Post by izacus »

jdminhbg wrote: post #44
hendersoon wrote: post #13

Neither pricing nor the economy fully explains why Apple's suddenly doing so poorly in China and not in the US or EU. They're triggers certainly, but not the root cause. There's one keystone here-- WeChat. In the US and EU, Apple has people locked into their ecosystem. That doesn't apply to China. WeChat is their alpha and their omega. They use it not only for chatting, as you might expect from its name-- WeChat is i…

And WeChat has been all of those things for years, so what's different about 1Q19?

General availability of significantly cheaper, but still quality, phones from Huawei, Xiaomi and other competitors.

Re: Apple Priced Itself Out of Shrinking Chinese Smartphone Market

#103

Post by sho »

mayankkaizen wrote: post #34
inscionent wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't understand why anyone is paying $300+ for a t-shirt when you can get really amazing t-shirts for $10.

Can't speak for other countries but in India, people buy iphones only as a status symbol. They don't really care about privacy or excellent hardware or Apple ecosystem.

Oh, you've gone and personally asked every single one of them, have you?

What a ludicrous generalization. Not only do I personally know Indians who own iPhones and Macbooks for exactly the same reason I do - we like them better - but you could make the same specious argument about anything, anywhere.

And really, does merely owning some sort of iPhone really confer status anywhere anymore, if it ever did? I haven't noticed anyone besides high-schoolers caring at all about whatever brand of phone someone happens to prefer for a decade. Time for that old trope to lay down and die.

Re: Apple Priced Itself Out of Shrinking Chinese Smartphone Market

#104

Post by sjansen »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #81

I read all the comments, and nobody has mentioned consumer nationalism? The US president's behavior and the concept of face? Apple is being dragged down the trade war's reputational halo effect. Keep an eye on major international consumer US brands (Disney, McDonalds, Starbucks, and others). Obviously there's an rapid economic deceleration, too, but things happen for more than one reason most of the time.

It probably didn't become a large enough issue until the tail end of last quarter. I expect this will be the quarter that we start to see antagonism between Trump and China have a real effect.

Re: Apple Priced Itself Out of Shrinking Chinese Smartphone Market

#105

Post by izacus »

hinkley wrote: post #50
snazz wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What this might be telling us is that there is, in fact, a cap for the amount of money someone will spend on a phone. I thought $650 was a lot, but then it started looking reasonable as soon as we got to $1000 phones. I have been continually surprised for the last few years that people are not only willing to spend more money but Apple’s unit sales have increased as well.

$650 to $1000 is a big jump, but it's important to factor inflation into any financial logic unless you want bad conclusions. Random inflation calculator is telling me that 2019 prices should be 6% more than 2015 prices. So right there you're talking about $690 for the same phone this year. The 55% apparent increase in phone price over that period is more like 50%. Which is still huge, but not quite as huge.

Consumers don't think like that though - noone goes and calculates a percentage inflation from the previous product. What they see is the previous price tag and the new price tag... and the amount of money on their bank account.

Re: Apple Priced Itself Out of Shrinking Chinese Smartphone Market

#106

Post by izacus »

zapzupnz wrote: post #96
threeseed wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sony makes the camera sensor. The lens comes from another supplier. And as the Pixel 3 has shown the software makes far more of a difference to the quality of the photo then the hardware.

And in the case of iPhone, the software takes advantage of custom-made, powerful, performant, and yet efficient chips that would make snapping photos take forever on older or non-specialised chips. Software and hardware dance together on iOS.

Now you just need to persuade people that paying 500$+ more to get a tiny little less delay after capturing a photo is worth it to people.

Since Apple seems to be failing at that.

Re: Apple Priced Itself Out of Shrinking Chinese Smartphone Market

#107

Post by izacus »

gwright wrote: post #20

Why is the comparison always done to the newest, high end Apple phones? The iPhone 7 is still sold for $550 unlocked and $23/month on installment in the US. I assume it is also more reasonably priced in China as compared to the high end XS phones. You don't have to purchase the most expensive iPhone to get a high quality phone from Apple. Attributing the decreased demand in China to the price of the most exclusive ph…

Because they can buy a brand new Xiaomi Mi8 for 400$ and have a high-end phone not something 4 generations old. And they do - Xiaomi has incredible growth.

Re: Apple Priced Itself Out of Shrinking Chinese Smartphone Market

#108

Post by singingboyo »

disishhsha wrote: post #94
strict9 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use public transit unless leaving the city, almost never use uber/lyft, and yet have a new iPhone. Why? I hate driving and would rather be reading or goofing off on twitter than being angry behind the wheel as I get somewhere. Not for everyone but I'll never go back to driving.

I’ve considered buying an expensive car with advanced stop-and-go traffic self-driving mode, but it’s more effective to live next to the train station.

Eh. Having the car self-stop is overrated in my experience. It's really hard to trust it, and not particularly difficult to drive stop-and-go yourself, so long as you accept that you can't rush it.

Adaptive cruise control for fast but varying speeds is great, however - it makes the spacing much better, which makes things more relaxing. It also reduces the active brain load to 'what lane do I need, what's coming up in the next mile, and do I need to be preparing to stop/exit', rather than needing to worry about the car in front of you so much. For me at least, it also makes things like lane changes more deliberate, so instead of "need to change and keep speed" it's something more like "I'll get there when it's safe, and change lanes if it's really clear", which is a much better mindset.

Re: Apple Priced Itself Out of Shrinking Chinese Smartphone Market

#109

Post by sjwright »

baroffoos wrote: post #51
tlholaday wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why anyone is paying $1000+ for a camera which doesn't make telephone calls.

If you spent $1000+ on a new camera every year and you weren't a professional photographer then I would be questioning your decision making skills.

...yes, because it’s far better to spend $3000+ on a new camera every three years.

Re: Apple Priced Itself Out of Shrinking Chinese Smartphone Market

#110

Post by spiritcat »

FridgeSeal wrote: post #87
baroffoos wrote: post #7

I really don't understand why anyone is paying $1000+ for a phone when you can get really amazing phones for $300.

Component quality, build quality, data security and privacy and length of support/updates. No matter how much money I pay for an Android phone, I have to fight with it to stop my data being harvested by everything from the very OS up. Sure, I can get decent quality cameras and build quality on Android phones but I’m either paying a stack of money for the likes of a Samsung or I’m paying for something from some sketch…

Yup, Android is sketch and Apple apparently just doesn't want my business.

Ah well.

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