Apple Priced Itself Out of Shrinking Chinese Smartphone Market • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple Priced Itself Out of Shrinking Chinese Smartphone Market

#31

Post by gwright » Thu, Jan 03, 2019, 11:11 PM UTC

gist wrote: post #2

The tone of articles like this is always the same. As if it's a stupid mistake made on the fly. As if Tim Cook was heading out to dinner and someone yelled 'before you leave how much should we charge Tim???' and he shot back with the answer. Apple made a mistake and priced incorrectly but that was not after consideration, thought and strategy. A writer for Bloomberg or an analyst for Loup Ventures is in a different l…

This doesn't sound right to me. At the time the X phones were introduced the chatter was all about them being positioned as more exclusive/higher-end phones and priced accordingly. The higher prices allowed new tech to be introduced while keeping profit margins and also matching supply chain constraints on new technology (like the face-id sensor).

Re: Apple Priced Itself Out of Shrinking Chinese Smartphone Market

#32

Post by wmf » Thu, Jan 03, 2019, 11:13 PM UTC

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…

It's possible that many people in China can't even afford that. Back when the newest iPhone model was $650 I assume the N-2 model was priced even lower than $550.

Re: Apple Priced Itself Out of Shrinking Chinese Smartphone Market

#33

Post by hendersoon » Thu, Jan 03, 2019, 11:13 PM UTC

nicoburns wrote: post #17

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…

Are many people really locked into the apple ecosystem. Most apps that people here in the UK use are cross-platform too...

The key differentiator is that in China your smartphone can in many ways be abstracted down to the platform that runs WeChat. So Apple's key lock-ins like iMessage and FaceTime don't matter and it has to compete on price.

Apple greatly increased prices in the US/EU also and many of these regions are facing a recession too, but according to Tim Cook's letter those consumers didn't abandon the iPhone. What's unique to the Chinese market? WeChat.

Re: Apple Priced Itself Out of Shrinking Chinese Smartphone Market

#34

Post by mayankkaizen » Thu, Jan 03, 2019, 11:13 PM UTC

inscionent wrote: post #14

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.

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.

Re: Apple Priced Itself Out of Shrinking Chinese Smartphone Market

#35

Post by plg » Thu, Jan 03, 2019, 11:14 PM UTC

and that's OK

Apple is not aiming for mass market. In the same way that Chanel or Coach is not aiming for mass market.

Re: Apple Priced Itself Out of Shrinking Chinese Smartphone Market

#36

Post by hartator » Thu, Jan 03, 2019, 11:15 PM UTC

ancorevard wrote: post #4

You can't blame it on the price of the iPhone for what's happening in China right now. Also from Bloomberg: Chinese consumer tax receipts down 70% in November. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-12-31/china-...

Didn't knew it was actually absolute numbers. Crazy.

Re: Apple Priced Itself Out of Shrinking Chinese Smartphone Market

#37

Post by baroffoos » Thu, Jan 03, 2019, 11:15 PM UTC

gowld wrote: post #24

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.

In China, or elsewhere? What in the US is as good as iPhone (including the screen size and storage size at that price point) for under $800? A lot of phone have roughly comparable specs, but the camera and overall software behavior is not comparable on lower-tier phones.

I don't question that the super expensive phones are better than the cheap ones but they are better in ways that are so insignificant to the average person. I got a nexus 5x a few years ago for about $250 and it does everything modern phones do. Yes I have slightly less pixels in my selfie and my screen is still rectangle shaped but is that really worth the extra $800? I suspect its simply a fashion/trend thing pushed mostly by successful marketing telling people that what was amazing 2 years ago is now useless junk and you need to buy a new phone.

Re: Apple Priced Itself Out of Shrinking Chinese Smartphone Market

#38

Post by bearcobra » Thu, Jan 03, 2019, 11:15 PM UTC

There's been quite a bit of discussion on how WeChat is basically the OS of Chinese smartphone users, so as long as a phone runs that the switching costs are pretty low. I wonder if there's the possibility of something similar happening in the US/West. I've been tempted to try Android but Facetime & iMessage are pretty good at keeping me on iOS.

Re: Apple Priced Itself Out of Shrinking Chinese Smartphone Market

#39

Post by disishhsha » Thu, Jan 03, 2019, 11:17 PM UTC

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.

I use my phone a lot, and gladly spend a few $ a day for a marginal improvement in my quality of life.

Another question - why do people spend $30k on a car when a $10k car is nearly as good? Seems like a much bigger waste of money than the phone.

Re: Apple Priced Itself Out of Shrinking Chinese Smartphone Market

#40

Post by gwright » Thu, Jan 03, 2019, 11:17 PM UTC

HenryBemis wrote: post #26

nkozyra wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could apply the same question to pretty much every consumer product on Earth. The answer is a critical function of marketing.

I've been buying/using iPhones since 2009. The last iPhone I bought was a 7+. Right after that I had sensed that Apple is messing around with us on the CPU thing, and it finally came out that they did. I now have a Honor X8, I am super content about this, it cost me 229 pounds, takes 2 SIM cards and a 128GB SD card. I can also have a firewall NoRoot Firewall), more granular privacy controls, I can root and and replac…

> Apple is messing around with us on the CPU thing

Are you referring to modulating the power usage to avoid random shutdowns? If so, I don't understand why people have viewed that as a nefarious scheme. Seems completely reasonable to me. The newer user-visible stats on battery health and power usage are also a good idea, but don't change the physics involved, you still need to modulate power usage to match what is available or shut down.