"What if your iPhone could make you a sammich?"
Posted on 01/07/2019 1:09:47 AM PST by Zhang Fei
When Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, warned investors on Wednesday that the company was facing slowing sales in China, the wider world seemingly greeted the news that Apple had lost its China mojo with shock. But for those who are smartphone users in China, the news just confirmed what we already knew: China’s domestic brands have made huge strides in the years since 2012, creating new features and products that take into account what Chinese users want, for a small fraction of the price. Apple, meanwhile, has mostly failed to localize or reinvent itself, on the assumption that global cachet would be enough.
The homegrown groundswell began with a little-known brand called Xiaomi, which burst onto the scene in the early 2010s as one of the first brands in China to have its own operating system, and offered high-speed processing on the cheap. At first it appeared to cater to a completely different market than Apple. Selling entirely online, Xiaomi offered both a low-end model — the Redmi for as low as 699 yuan (then under $150) — and a higher-end model that was still far cheaper than the cheapest iPhone (less than 2,000 yuan, then under $350).
But with time, the useful features on Xiaomi products, as well as those of its competitors like Huawei and OPPO, combined with the price, began to outweigh the increasingly limited glamour of the iPhone.
Huawei, China’s largest smartphone maker by market share, recently overtook Apple to move to second place globally. Its popularity among the wealthy and business class at home has shot up in recent years; its prices have been steadily rising as it shifts focus toward higher-end products. Many upper-middle-class Chinese who once owned iPhones have since switched to Huawei — including my dad.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
the more they keep dismissing apple the more stock I want to buy.
Not walking around with a phone that is from a company out of favor with the ruling party is also a good way to stay out of a reeducation camp.
Better the devil you know that is gathering your data than a phone from a company that claims your data is secret, but isn’t
I have an iPhone, two Huawei’s and a Xiaomi.
I personally prefer the Huawei.
The Xiaomi, while the screen is awesome and the performance is darn excellent, has a brittle acrylic case. It kept on breaking so, I just keep it as backup storage. The Huawei can run rings around the iPhone and is about 40% cheaper.
Iphones are still popular in China, but it is nothing like it used to be. The fact is the iphone no longer has the edge that it used to have. It has been surpassed in quality, abilities and price.
The ONLY way that iphone can still stay relivent is to ban any competition from Huawei.
Hey! Isn’t that what just happened?????
Are they iPhones or (higher end) Samsungs?
No, not at all. The latest versions of the iPhone and the Samsung Note and Galaxy S are still better, but the delta is getting smaller and smaller. Especially for the flagship Huawei P20 Pro, which is not available in the US but in foreign markets is considered a proper peer to the iPhone/Samsung.
Then, once you add their cheaper pricing then the gap really becomes small ....
It’s a brave new world out there, and Apple will need to come up with something significant to justify the big price difference between their latest iPhones and upcoming competition (it seems Samsung is focusing more of software and less on phones going forward). Especially as key markets for iPhones in the developed world become saturated, China continues to slow down, and large markets like India focus on cheaper smart phones (like Oppo and Vivo). With competitive/cheaper designs coming online, the next iPhones need to do more than have a slightly better camera (when current cameras are good enough), faster chips (when current chips are fast enough), and better screens (when current ...you get it).
Disclaimer: I am a proud iPhone user, with the latest XS Max being my platform for this post. Proud because in my experience iPhones have not let me down ever, which is important to me. I am sure other phones are probably the same, but I am ‘faithful’ and until forced otherwise will continue to use Apple’s products. However, if I was a newer consumer, or if my pocket was lighter, some of these Chinese phones like the Huawei P20 Pro and Mate are really geared towards giving Apple a run for its money. Not in the US, but in the fast rising emerging markets that Tim Cooke has been targeting.
I thought one couldn’t get the Huawei and Xiaomi in the US? I know about them because most of my time is outside the US, but I thought one couldn’t get them here? I agree though that the higher end versions of the Huawei and Oppo are really scary (if I was Tim Cooke). The P20 Pro (and rumored upcoming P30) are viable iPhone peers.
The Chinese let US companies into China markets, steal their technology, tweak it for the local market then undercut the US price and squeeze them out.
F*** China.
The Huawei phones use Leica lenses in their in phone cameras and they do great photos, scans, and videos. SONY though has superior photo tech,SONY sensors, optical stabilization and uses SONY G glass in their phones...their sound is superior to most phones as well. They are more expensive than the Huawei’s but very much on par speed and performance. My wife uses the SONY...I use a MOTO G5t+ which is very fast appwise(octocore proc with 4 gigs of DDR4 SDRAM and 64 gigs of storage) but boy am I envious of my wife’s SONY EXPERIA phone because of the gorgeous, image stabilized pictures that phone produces including very low noise jpegs( Is rumored that they can also do raw files for export processing as well but we haven’t tried that yet) even at low light high iso’s.
I thought OPPO was going out of business but it might just be they are simply stopping production of their highly regarded universal blue ray/sacd/cd players.(Very expensive but very reliable players but perhaps they weren’t selling enough in volume since only rich audiophile/videophiles seemed to be the only ones buying them.)
So the iPhone manufacturer has suicide nets around it's headquarters? That's a walk in the park for Chinese government backed manufacturers.
Also many in the USA are finding diminishing returns in possessing the latest that Apple has to offer. It's just not as edgy and Steve Jobs isn't leading with his vision any more. It shows.
Apple has dug it's own grave.
"What if your iPhone could make you a sammich?"
Sony Experia phones have the superior cameras...SONY G glass, sony sensors, optical stabilization, superior low noise at high ISO performamce. Huawei uses Leica glass but doesn’t have the internal tech the Sony has. SONY has better sound and dolby digital on board. SONY Mirrorless cameras have started taking on the traditional NIK/CANNON complex in a big way and that tech is showing up in its phones. Pricing might be the only thing that stymies SONY in this space but SONY DSLR and Mirrorless cam users could seriously use the Experias as a great “emergency” second camera and a “quick on your mark” good street photography camera.
That, in spades.
That fellow’s gone. Apple better dump Cook post-haste.
The Chinese could invent smartphone technology, but they sure could steal it!
Why not? They’re made in the same factory, just when the lights are out.
The materials are lost Apple shipments, and that saves money, too.
The Chinese, and most Asians I see here in America, are economic nationalists. I’d love to know the internal sales numbers of Ford & GM in regards to units sold to Asians/Chinese here in the states. I bet it’s a minuscule number. In this light the rise of Huawei makes complete sense and frankly anything that screws global corporations like Apple I’m okay with.
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