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Apple Drops to Sixth Place in China's Smartphone Market
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Exactly this. There are so many ignorant people out there, they still think that an expensive iPhone must be the best of the best. Sorry all… in China the iPhone pro is just a midrange phone at ultra pro prices. Don’t believe Timmy if he says that there are currency headwinds or other special circumstances. Fact is, the iPhone lost it’s shine. Chinese people care more about specifications and technical possibilities. Even with the price drops in China… there are much more compelling phones who offer better overall.
No, lack of innovation of iPhone and premium prices.
Could someone tell this to Timmy? Maybe the iPhone 16 won’t look and feel the same as the iPhone 12,13,14,15 and he will offer some extra’s to make it a compelling device again.
With phone brand choice? I don’t think so. WeChat works perfectly fine on iPhone.
Nowhere in that article does it say anything about the Apple display looking pedestrian. I don’t recall it saying anything about colors either. The next time I go outside to watch a movie on my phone in the sun, maybe then I’ll feel how pedestrian it is.. otherwise, the iPhone screen outperforms. https://www.tomsguide.com/face-off/...s-iphone-15-pro-max-which-flagship-phone-wins
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If I had to choose someone to “believe” it would be Timmy all day 24x7 over a random MR poster.
No it hasn’t. For years globally iPhone has trailed other manufacturers that use a different operating system. Yet in an individual model basis it stacks up well.
Maybe.
As you see it with your own biases.
I doubt your conclusion, as a Chinese who lives domestically, I can tell most people still prefer iPhone’s pro models if possible, iOS still remains the key for people to choose iPhones. The politics part is more like a news that has popularity of discussion in daily life but rarely a decisively reason when choosing consumption products.
Truth is that Chinese are having less budget for smartphones, house market is shrinking, high unemployment, economy still good and is thriving in some fields but not for most people who still work in traditional fields, Chinese economy is in transition but number of high paid jobs is somehow decreasing. With declining income, one would choose models that’s more affordable, though iPhones are having the least price among the franchise they're still more expensive than VIVO/OPPO/Xiaomi’s ultra models. The price would be the first sector.
On the other hand Chinese brands, along with supply chain, are making impressive progress. Chinese supply chains now are having very good screens, camera sensors, these high value parts used to be supplied by Korean and Japanese manufacturers. And Chinese phones have favorable camera setting, Apple introduced computational photography but Chinese paved their way further, not to mention Huawei released their own chips under import sanctions. Smartphone market is about manufacturing, and China has most intention on it, Chinese have learn a lot from Apple and Tesla, they import them and improve supply chain then make their own brands and improve them.
There are many enthusiastic and strict tech reviewers in Chinese internet, they would test phone models with numerical data, temperature, gaming performance (mostly they use Genshi impact or Star Rails) watts, lifespan under certain usage patterns.
With improving supply chain and strict reviews from media and users, Chinese smartphone makers are having impressive improvement. While Apple (like Intel), make little changes, small random memory size for limited background apps, storage that has same price as gold, overheat issues when heavy-loaded gaming, poor signal and charging speed. It’s more like Apple is the one who’s under sanctions.
For Chinese users, Apple still has its moat, iOS, still feels best quality and reputation, but Chinese brands are offering much improved performance with much lower price, and we can criticize our own brands more casually. While Apple has best capability of industrial designing, they won’t make improvement that’s attractive enough to Chinese users.
Chinese internet apps have more advertisement, background processes, more additional attachments, so 16gigs of ram that’s equivalent to a desktop, 512gigs of storage for apps like WeChat that occupies a lot space, and extraordinarily cooling system for gaming like Genshi Impact, and 65W to 120W charging speed for those apps consume battery very fast, and good signal because Chinese need high speed connection to load those content. so yeah phones need better performance to run those apps LOL
It could also be this.... https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-bans-govt-officials-using-iphone-work-wsj-2023-09-06/
You would see a laundry list of features on the Chinese phones. With so many choices, it was easy for me to find a mid-range Chinese phone that checked all the features boxes I was looking for: 5g, microSD slot, unlockable bootloader for custom ROM/root, dual-SIM, 8g RAM, headphone jack. For under 3 C-notes.
The horizontal line exists to let people know where to swipe for the homescreen. I know where to swipe so I dont need to see it and I would like the ability to hide it. There is also a line for Control Center, but inconsistently not for Notification Center, which is displayed only on the lockscreen.
Apple is suffering From the CCP’s three Rs stool. Rob, Replicate, and Replace. The cost of doing business in China.
…There’s no such thing as too fast charging nor anytime soon.
It also absolutely matters to prosumers and other high-end users of phones
That #4 is a killer. Phone never even got the basic disk mode of an iPod. I remember about 15 years ago when Jailbreaking was big, that was the #1 reason for doing it. I wonder what the options for disc access are today...
They are welcome to try. It wasn’t meaningful a decade ago, and it won’t be a meaningful comparison today either.
Because analysing specs in a vacuum don't really offer much insight into the end user experience. It's the same mistake pundits made early on in the iOS vs android wars. They love to point out how android phones tend to have larger spec numbers (eg: cameras with higher megapixel count, batteries with larger capacities, processors with more cores, screens with crazy resolutions), but then said devices tend to not work very well in real world usage, and the iPhone still goes on to sell very well and carve out a respectable (and profitable) segment of the market for itself.
I reiterate what I said earlier. First, I have my doubts regarding the accuracy of the numbers, not least because most analyst firms simply don't have full insight into Apple's distribution channels (and their sales numbers). Even if there is any softness in sales numbers, I am not convinced this is anything to be concerned about, especially as we get closer to the reveal of the next iPhone (this is the time when less people buy new iPhones because the next upgrade is so close).
Second, the iPhone has never competed on specs, and I would instead strongly encourage everyone here to take the effort to better understand what makes iPhones unique and successful, so they can better explain Apple's continued success (rather than keep trying to explain them away by citing meaningless specs).
And well, third, I imagine there are numerous people patting themselves on the back for thinking they are so smart in pointing out how the iPhone is supposedly lagging behind in one area or another (as if faster charging speeds or foldables are meaningful sales differentiators), and I wonder if these people actually believe their own words.
I am chinese and this is complete BS. It's because the chinese phone brands are way cheaper and better/equal to iphone nowadays both in build quality and functionalities, especially the camera / photo software which is the biggest checkbox for chinese.
Samsung is even worse because it is also running android and there is zero reason to buy them vs a chinese brand android phone. Apple still has some protection from its closed eco system so the older generation who started and locked in ios continues to buy iphone as they dont want the hassle to switch.
Noone is buying a phone to be patriotic, it's all about money, chinese people could careless about politics and all this freedom stuff west keeps talking about, all they care about is making money + better life for themselves and their family. Make a better product cheaper and it will have buyers. The only exception to this, is all government employees are mandated to buy chinese phones so they have no choice even if they want an iphone.
This is seen across the board in china, i was just there 2 weeks ago. The robot vacuum cleaners, tv, cloth washers, ACs, cars, on and on - all looks amazing high tech, just as reliable vs western/japanese brands that used to dominate, and cost 1/2 or less. If i live in china why the heck would I pay 2x more to buy a western/japanese brand? The landscape has completely changed vs 20 or even 10 years ago where US/Japanese brands are much higher quality and noone in china wanted to buy their own brands even if it's cheaper, now china has caught up and exceeded in pretty much all regular consumer products. Only in some one-off very high tech stuff they are still lagging like chip or commercial airplane manufacturing.
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But what is the competitor's "innovation" that is affordable, which are the two cornerstones you cite? Folding phones? Not cheap. Then what? What's Apple behind on? A 100 megapixel shooter?
It is the result of China is banning western technology.
So whatever list you came up with, it has 0% to do with it.