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Apple’s China Problem

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Re: Apple’s China Problem

#111

Post by marcosdumay »

kharms wrote: post #20
noja wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do they use the second phone number for?

(1) It's often cheaper/free to call numbers on the same network. (2) Business phone/family phone. Edit: speaking from my experience in Eastern Europe. I assume it's similar in India.

In Brazil that would be 90% about (1) and 10% about (2).

If you run a small business, you'll also want to connect on all networks, so your clients will have one less reason not to talk to you. (But watsapp has made this point moot recently.)

Re: Apple’s China Problem

#112

Post by bobsam »

mikhailt wrote: post #49

This seems to confuse some people, the author is not saying Apple have a monopoly on smartphones. What the author is talking about is the locked-in ecosystem that Apple owns, iOS and macOS (watchOS/tvOS). > Moreover, the advantages go beyond margins: the best way to understand both Apple’s profits and many of its choices is to understand that the company has a monopoly on not just MacOS but even more importantly iOS.…

To be fair Google has even more of the same problem as their services are blocked in China.

Re: Apple’s China Problem

#113

Post by linkregister »

archvile wrote: post #94
gnrlist wrote: post #56

Chinese people want the Apple brand they don't care about iOS. If iOS was the status symbol it would get pirated and installed elsewhere. Apple has a strong brand because of it's history as a premium device company internationally, that's all. Their brand was their first mover advantage in China but now Chinese companies are closing that brand gap and since WeChat rules the software side Apple is going to have a hard…

How would iOS get pirated when the only way to install it is by using a certificate that only Apple holds? If it was easy enough to reverse engineer iOS and remove that install requirement, I'm sure it would have been done by now.

Seriously? There is a thriving jailbreak scene for iOS. It doesn't sound insurmountable at all. I think the only reason there's no iOS analogue to the Hackintosh is because nobody has bothered.

Re: Apple’s China Problem

#114

Post by bobsam »

valuearb wrote: post #75
skdotdan wrote: post #53

The problem with many tech analysts is that they are Apple fanboys without even knowing that they are. Stating that Microsoft Surface and Samsung S8 are not competitors of Apple just because their products don't run Mac OS/iOS is pure fanaticism at the very least. Nevertheless, I find that the main point of the article is right. But Apple's China problem is also a very important problem for Google (actually, it's wor…

He didn't say that MSFT and Samsung weren't competitors of Apple. He said MacOS and iOS are monopolies. Those are two different things. You can switch from a monopoly over a specific service/product to a similar but not identical one. MacOS has applications and features that Windows doesn't. It historically enabled features (sealed batteries) that Windows didn't, that provided better performance. And MacOS can run li…

> It historically enabled features (sealed batteries) that Windows didn't, that provided better performance.

You are saying this as it was an undisputed fact. Which is the exact issue OP pointed at.

Re: Apple’s China Problem

#115

Post by anjc »

valuearb wrote: post #110
anjc wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it'd be more like "if Windows was a good enough OS, people would go to efforts to install it on computers that aren't made for it" (Bootcamp?). But either way, neither OSX or Windows are "differentiators". Attributes might differentiate the products in a theoretical sense, for example branding, pricing, licensing, support, ease of use, but there's effectively only 3 widely used operating systems so it's senseless…

If you don't understand how massively differentiated operating systems are in terms of features, you simply don't understand the concept of differentiation. For example, the number of applications an OS can run is an incredibly important and valuable feature. How well it runs those applications is also an important and valuable feature. There is a reason why Excel users usually pick Windows, and Photoshop users often…

How exactly did Apple and Microsoft create a product which they knew ahead of time would attract specific software developers? Or are you suggesting that third party suppliers turned Microsoft/Apple's offerings into differentiated products over time?

And Redhat, one of the main software offerings of a 2 billion dollar public company, can't run the software that 98% of computers can, but they aren't an example of differentiation? It sounds like you don't understand differentiation and are using the term literally, as if it just means 'different'.

Re: Apple’s China Problem

#116

Post by bobsam »

otos wrote: post #107
nullnilvoid wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other than the brand factor, iPhone is actually a better phone. Before the current iPhone I have, I had always been an Android user. I used entry-level Android phones, high-end Android phones such as Samsung Galaxy, iPhone is clearly a better phone. iOS feels more smooth, reliable, battery-efficient in many ways than Android phones. Honestly, I have not looked back since the switch.

iMessage is the only distinguishing benefit iPhone has. If WeChat or other apps are more popular in a market, I see Apple having a serious challenge. The UI on the iPhone is incredibly challenging for me, especially web browsing. I have a long list of criticisms on Android but both platforms seem incredibly flawed. The companies appear busy concoting marketing features and not with improving the functionality and exp…

> The companies appear busy concoting marketing features and not with improving the functionality and experience.

Really?? I feel Google and partners are introducing great new things and polishing existing stuff on a daily basis.

Windows phone on the other hand is doing the exact opposite :(

Re: Apple’s China Problem

#117

Post by siproprio »

If the situation in China is similar to the situation in Brazil, then it is not a surprise Apple products aren't successful there. Apple services here are very poorly supported and localized, and Apple products are too expensive compared to the relative benefit we would receive.

Why would you purchase a significantly more expensive device, with worse features, that sometimes don't work at all?

We still haven't gotten turn by turn directions in Apple Maps, for example.

Re: Apple’s China Problem

#118

Post by zeusk »

archvile wrote: post #94
gnrlist wrote: post #56

Chinese people want the Apple brand they don't care about iOS. If iOS was the status symbol it would get pirated and installed elsewhere. Apple has a strong brand because of it's history as a premium device company internationally, that's all. Their brand was their first mover advantage in China but now Chinese companies are closing that brand gap and since WeChat rules the software side Apple is going to have a hard…

How would iOS get pirated when the only way to install it is by using a certificate that only Apple holds? If it was easy enough to reverse engineer iOS and remove that install requirement, I'm sure it would have been done by now.

not really, and it's been done (not entirely successfully though).

https://twitter.com/CotullaCode/status/352176812194922496

I worked with Cotulla in the HD2 community during the htc-linux days and we had iOS 5.x booting on the device up till springboard, there were definitely issues but not "impossible".

Re: Apple’s China Problem

#119

Post by petra »

valuearb wrote: post #104
petra wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The problem with many tech analysts is that they are Apple fanboys without even knowing that they are. That's true for most of the discussion on the internet: so much talk about how Apple's chips/apps/ui/build-quality/founders/etc are so much better. But almost no talk at all about how modern brands get built, and what such brands give to users: for example, the ability to tell stories(implicitly or explicitly) to…

If you think brand is the reason Apple succeeds, you simply are way over-discounting or don't understand unique platform features/benefits. Brands become powerful only when they are true. All the marketing in the world can't successfully position your products as valuable and unique, if they aren't. You can't fool people for long. The gods of the advertising industry want you to believe they can sell ice to eskimos,…

Branding isn't the sole reason for Apple's success. But it is probably an important one.

As for the general power of branding: many commodity like products make lots of money through branding, be in the fields of luxury or fashion.

Re: Apple’s China Problem

#120

Post by AsyncAwait »

matwood wrote: post #61
skdotdan wrote: post #53

The problem with many tech analysts is that they are Apple fanboys without even knowing that they are. Stating that Microsoft Surface and Samsung S8 are not competitors of Apple just because their products don't run Mac OS/iOS is pure fanaticism at the very least. Nevertheless, I find that the main point of the article is right. But Apple's China problem is also a very important problem for Google (actually, it's wor…

> Stating that Microsoft Surface and Samsung S8 are not competitors of Apple just because their products don't run Mac OS/iOS is pure fanaticism at the very least. For me they are not. I've used Android on quite a few phones ranging from HTCs to various Nexus devices. It always had weird issues, the most annoying of which was some google process randomly spinning out of control and killing the battery in ~10 minutes.…

> Stating that Microsoft Surface and Samsung S8 are not competitors of Apple just because their products don't run Mac OS/iOS is pure fanaticism at the very least.

For me they are not. I've used Android on quite a few phones ranging from HTCs to various Nexus devices. It always had weird issues

I ran into so many limitations of iOS, that I now run pure Android and have never been happier.

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