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Apple Drops to Sixth Place in China's Smartphone Market
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I know people like to say that the reason the iPhone isn't doing as well in China is due to politics, but I think it's more that Chinese phone manufacturers are trying all sorts of new and interesting things and pushing the boundaries of mobile technology...
...and meanwhile, Apple is set to release the iPhone 12SSSS this year.
It‘s due to the ban on western technologies as Apple does fine outside of China where the bans don’t apply.
You can walk and chew gum at the same time.
Anything related to the higher tech is political by default as it relates to the position of your country in the world. China could have concentrated on manufacturing an underwear and a toilet paper but this is the exact moment when people usually get offended and become patriots in the blink of an eye...
Which "western" technology that's banned in China? Or is it that China is the fastest growing technical nation in the world other than India?
A lot of it just seems to boil down to larger numbers. As far as I can see, nobody is coming up with their own ecosystem, or having unique apps, or even doing anything to stand out amongst a sea of android clones. Is including more ram really considered innovative these days, even if you know it doesn't really do anything to make your phone any faster?I know people like to say that the reason the iPhone isn't doing as well in China is due to politics, but I think it's more that Chinese phone manufacturers are trying all sorts of new and interesting things and pushing the boundaries of mobile technology...
...and meanwhile, Apple is set to release the iPhone 12SSSS this year.
Many people here still can't grasp the fact that Huawei, Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi smartphones offer better technology and value compared Apple. So to them, it's gotta be "patriotism" because there's no other explanation.
LOL. Is that why Apple is made in China, Tesla built a huge factory in China, and Microsoft's largest R&D office outside U.S. is in China?
It's the U.S. that has banned Huawei products, DJI drones, Moore Threads chips, BYD batteries, and basically anything else they can't compete with.
iPhone was #1 in China for years before domestic competitors launched better products.
Ecosystem = HarmonyOS
SoC = Kirin 9010 with 5G modem
Unique features = Satellite SMS/voice calling, dual-stack OLED, 1" sensor with mechanical aperture, tri-fold smartphone
And…?
My understanding is that harmonyOS is simply an android fork. Kirin SOC trails in comparison to Qualcomm’s snapdragon processor (which in turn lags behind Apple’s A-series chips). Satellite calling was introduced along Apple’s own. And I don’t get why some people keep trying to make folding phones a larger deal than they really are.
Plus outside of China, their phones are crippled by not having access to the Google play store.
Like I said, good specs on paper, but how do they come together and what’s the experience like?
And the experience is comparable or better than iOS.
HarmonyOS connects with Huawei's watch, TV, tablets, EVs, and soon PCs. It's having one OS across all products. The next version of HarmonyOS will completely detach from Android. Outside of China, users can install GBox then install any Google app. This is why Huawei remains popular in SE Asia.
Kirin lags Qualcomm in performance but does much better in signal strength and 5G speed. There's side by side comparisons of comparing 5G speed of an iPhone vs. Mate 60. Apple doesn't have satellite calling.
Folding phones are a big deal because many people want larger displays. It's like asking what's deal with the 6.9-inch display on iPhone 16 Pro Max.
Why has iPhone dropped to #6 in the largest smartphone market in the world? This is the answer.
Number #4 is negated by cloud storage/servers (NAS and Plex included) which is far more recommended way to handle things involving mobile devices (not repeating file management across all your devices).
iOS’s downloaded files has tight integration with iCloud files (and services like Dropbox already AFAIK).
Better everything for half the price.
Gotta be honest: If I could get iOS on good a good Chinese manufactured device, why would I buy an iPhone and let myself get ripped off by Apple storage’s pricing and non-expandability?
Particularly at more affordable price points. I mean, if I have and wanted to blow $1500 on the best smartphone, I’d appreciate Apple’s materials and build quality. Like an expensive watch that shows the time with little difference to a cheap one.
But at the price point of an iPhone SE? Its specs (and looks!) are in many ways laughable in comparison.
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Better is subjective. “Android” phones Hines are “better” than iOS phones because they sell more.
Not even close. The cloud approach only works where it works in a narrow set of criteria. Enjoy that tight integration when you don’t have network access in one of the places you go. & where you do have access to your cloud, enjoy a 9hr ETA waiting for your working files to download. The cloud is crap when working with big files, traveling, or needing to accommodate in a pinch. But it sure sounded cool in all those advertisements right? Yeah all you can say for it is that it is blindly “recommended”. ...recommended by shortsighted people who are selling an ill-fitting solution regardless of use case. You have a device in your pocket that travels with you and has up to what now, a terabyte of nvme storage, but it’s so hamstrung by its OS that you can’t use it, and need to carry another dumber nvme device to do something as basic as transporting files. Because all at once Silicon Valley realized another way they could sell you a laptop with less hardware for the same money plus bill you every month for a subscription to your missing storage even if it is slower and less accessible. Oh and that’s not all, let’s get them to pay an additional subscription for each kind of file they use, that’s one subscription for music, plus one for movies, plus one for your data, plus one for your ability to buy toilet paper... yayyy we’re a “services” company now. Any alternative to this crap looks better.
It can be a bit of both though, puts less friction in the way of walking the walk so that when one does want to walk the walk they aren't faced with a torturous money wasting scenario. But I think more common is that someone who is already gonna just buy something primarily coz it's cheaper can add some blowhard rhetoric on top.
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WeChat renders phone choice less important though because no matter what phone you have you are mainly using it to run WeChat. Gives iPhone less chance to entice people with any of the iOS apps, messaging features, file sharing features, phone call features, payment features, etc., since it is all just done on WeChat. Even when iPhone does have better features, many people remain unaware of them because they just default to using the WeChat equivalent.
I did, however, find one great messaging feature of iPhone in China, which is that iMessage is one of the only not blocked messaging services which isn't Chinese (and thus friends abroad are vastly more likely to have). But this is more a quasi hidden secret (in that most people don't seem to consider that) only useful to people with friends and family in other countries.
Yes, these two points seem completely at odds with each other, unless the argument is that one applies to one segment of the population and the other applies to the other segment of the population.
I'm just speaking from my experience interacting with Chinese med students and mostly repeating what they said. Most are quite wealthy, and many are interested in politics.
🤷🏻♂️
China never really did have a clue about style, quality or glamor though
It is easy way to put down the Chinese mobile phone makers through Patriotism. But I strongly believe many of their products are pushing the boundaries of innovation unlike iPhones which are still looking boring for the past 5 years. I had Huawei Mate 20 Pro which was one of the best mobile I had and Honor mobiles. All are flagship and premium mobiles with competitive pricing (Huawei Mate is getting pricier now a days). Apple couldn’t compete the pace of innovation hence went for total ban and denial of technology. Where Chinese are lacking is OS and ecosystem that global consumers can adopt without fear of getting spied. Hope HarmoneyOS filling the Gap! We need at leat two ecosystem that compete with Apple and Google in the Mobile Space.
If you factor battery decay… every three years is the ideal cycle to upgrade your iPhone
I’m very little excited by upgrading to the iPhone 16… like another poster said. Upgrading phones is like buying new tires
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