There is a story in this issue of MacDirectoy about macs in china. It has a sexy cover of Sarah Jessica Parker. The story itself is very informative yet sad because of the sorry state of the mac in china. Apple has to be less U.S centric and attack Asia. How I don't know. Nobody is making money in china, especially MS. From what I read, ms has sunk billions in china for 10 years and yet to see a profit. The onlly profiteers are the software pirates. Pcs are affordable for the urban elite. But pirated software is the norm for all of Asia, with the exception of maybe japan. Why pay full price when you can get it for a couple bucks from a street stand.
Apple is lucky sorta. Nobody pirates their software. Apple will face the same problems as ms. Further compounding the problem is the usual price factor, availability, lack of chinese software and customer and staff ignorance.
Buying a computer is the next major purchase for chinese fam.ily. They will need a lot of hand holding to make a sale. Pc or mac. Apple shouldn't abandon asia, but devise a strategy.
Do chinese macs come with word processors, email apps, writing tablets right out of the box? Gawd I hope they do!
There is a story in this issue of MacDirectoy about macs in china. It has a sexy cover of Sarah Jessica Parker. The story itself is very informative yet sad because of the sorry state of the mac in china. Apple has to be less U.S centric and attack Asia. How I don't know. Nobody is making money in china, especially MS. From what I read, ms has sunk billions in china for 10 years and yet to see a profit. The onlly profiteers are the software pirates. Pcs are affordable for the urban elite. But pirated software is the norm for all of Asia, with the exception of maybe japan. Why pay full price when you can get it for a couple bucks from a street stand.
Apple is lucky sorta. Nobody pirates their software. Apple will face the same problems as ms. Further compounding the problem is the usual price factor, availability, lack of chinese software and customer and staff ignorance.
Buying a computer is the next major purchase for chinese fam.ily. They will need a lot of hand holding to make a sale. Pc or mac. Apple shouldn't abandon asia, but devise a strategy.
Do chinese macs come with word processors, email apps, writing tablets right out of the box? Gawd I hope they do!
No, I don't like parker.
But sorry, you are mistaken in a few things. It's kinda late now and I'm pretty tired.
Writing Tablets out of the box?
I'm going to quote MacUsers:
"lol, writing tablets, i wish i could get one of those [with a new mac out of the box]"
China Strategy: Design a Mac that can be built in China using low cost components available there. Apple supplies the CPUs and any necessary custom ROMs or ASICs. Load this Mac with a ton of software that can be had at a cheap incremental price. (Many companies would be glad to have less revenue from this market than no revenue at all.) Such a Mac would be as low cost as possible in China, and with so much software it eliminates objections about available applications. This operation would be a little like the clone business. Apple would get revenue for each Mac to cover price of Apple supplied components, price of software package and the license of the OS and hardware design. The China factory would not be allowed to sell these Macs except in China. However, the factory might eventually supply Apple with these Macs for sale elsewhere.
Think of it as an expanded Mac clone operation in China, which doubles as an Apple supplier for the rest of the world.
China Strategy: Design a Mac that can be built in China using low cost components available there. Apple price of Apple supplied components, price of software package and the license of the OS and hardware design. The China factory would not be allowed to sell these Macs except in China. However, the factory might eventually supply Apple with these Macs for sale elsewhere.
Think of it as an expanded Mac clone operation in China, which doubles as an Apple supplier for the rest of the world.
If you read the previous posts, you¡¯d learn that price is not the problem. What you say could never happen, because your ¡®ton of software¡¯ has to be in Chinese. And having worked on software localization last year I can tell you this is never going to happen.
I also think that China is a very important market for Apple. It needs a standalone new Stratagy with much aggression.
It makes me sad when I see Apple ignoring some countries. I live in Austria and here i have never seen an Apple Ad or big Apple event.And this in a wealthy european country.Another thing is I am travelling around Europe alot and I have never seen an iPod except mine yet. Does iPod sell in Europe?
I speak turkish. There is not even an localised version of MacOsX. I ll buy a new computer for my niece. This will her first computer and i cant decide what i should buy. She wants to use it in Turkish just like her Pc friends but I simply cant buy a Windows Pc for her.
Turkey is not rich like most european countries but its population is growing at now with 70 million is not a bad market for Apple. There were lot more Macs around In Turkey in 80s than now.Turkish language is not only spoken in Turkey but also in middle asian and some european countries reaching to nearly 200 million and we have no OsX in turkish.
yes Apple should invest more in China but also not forget the ones who can afford Apple but left alone.
these came to my mind after reading to this thread
Macs are ALREADY made in China with cheap parts locally available, the problem is they are exported to god knows where and then re-imported into China before they are sold in China. So they rack up a ton of taxes, not to mention Apples already obscenely high prices are compounded by the currency situation.
In the late 1980's Apple has NO trouble in Asia what-so-ever, however since Scully left they have been doing exactly DICK.
Yes, this is true, the import tax for the macs. I knew of many black marked doings for macs. They would ship them to 'mainland' but only in small numbers. These can only be sold illegally, and thus not normally through a store.
I'm sorry that Turkish isn't one of the supported languages.
Fortunately however Apple already has EXCELLENT chinese implementation. It shows that at least at the software and engineering level, they are doing something, but all this effort is wasted when they don't sell that well.
The most important software perhaps is M$ office yet V.X does not support Chinese. This sux, because when the consumer sees that he is forced to type chinese in appleworks and then needs to convert and stuff, it aint good.
That is what is so insane about it, has it not crossed the mind of someone at Apple that maybe, just maybe it would make more sense to setup a formal distribution channel in China?
Dear Lord Jesus Christ!
We can't do that, why that would make sense that help improve apples position in the market.
Apple should create an apple store in three of the most importants towns of China, Shangai, Pekin ...and see what happens.
would be good...but do people actually buy macs when they are that much more expensive? seems like apple isn't willing to lower their prices so they are not going to try to get into that market because they know they can't
people who attribute Apple's success in Asia from the late 80's to 90's to Sculley are missing the point
back in those days, Apple was one of the few companies that handled double-byte languages well
At one point, Nisus Writer was the only word processing program that could handle English and Chinese/Japanese in the same document (correctly laying out both right and left reading text, as well as vertical).
gradually, PCs added Big-5 character entry support, but Asian versions of Windoze were slow to appear
Piracy is still a major problem in China (and some other parts of Asia).
I've been sold pirated copies of my own commercial CD-ROMs in HK.
Corruption is still a major problem... pay the right general, avoid "enforcement" (such as it is).
and the idealized "if only we could sell one shoe to everybody in China" business myth is bogus.
many foreign firms have tried to overlay their western sales technique in hopes of striking it rich
few have managed, and those that seem to succeed soon see knock-off copies undercutting them
in some other cases, once a chinese 'clone' exists, the government suddenly adds import duties to cut out the original product, and both the 'cloner' and the government official who approved the policy shift are soon seen driving new mercedes.
with no clones of the Mac permitted (more aggressive legal dept),
one could argue there is little benefit to be recouped, hence little desire to fight the uphill battle
cynics might also add that the Chinese government's desire to snoop, censor and control internet traffic (Singapore and Vietnam too) has caused the authorities to discourage the purchase of "secure" machines. in much the same way cell phones are commodities in China now, but certain phones (with encryption chips) are forbidden. if the security services can't get in the back door, they don't want you to own locks they can't open.
It's called Beijing now. I think they do have an AppleCenter in a mall there.
I don't know about now but last year there were many stores about, only people couldn't sit down and play with them. You weren't allowed to touch them and they're all covered with cling film.
Yes, we should have (if not already there is) an apple store
i dont know...this thread accomplishes nothing, in the other threads they are at least get to see hotties or find new music u normally don't listen to
although this thread makes a good point...it does absolutly nothing to make apple work harder in chinesse markets
i still contest jobs doesn't like commi's
And no, I do not think it is useless. It is thought provoking and we can all learn from our opinions. That is not only an interesting thing, but a very positive thing.
And I've posted a few times in the music thread but I really doubt anyone took my suggestions.
price: not a major problem, hell, if IBM and Sony personal computers are selling so well. (and they cost more)
Andy Grove of Intel was on Charlie Rose a while ago and said something similar...
people have preconceived notions of the Chinese aiming for the cheapest, but Intel reports that most of their sales to China are actually at the top end of the price/performance curve, not the low end
price becomes a factor when, for all intents and purposes, piracy means PC software is "free". mac software isn't pirated or available in the same market, so running a mac means you might actually be paying more (though you're actually only paying the fair cost, the pirates are getting unreasonably low prices and skewing the scale)
Quote:
Piracy is your friend
Corruption, your comment was made out of ignorance
but yeah, this is what I thought too before my internship. Thanks for giving your opinion though.
Piracy is bad if you're a creator.
The argument that greater visibility is a compensatory benefit, despite the fact theft of intellectual property has occurred, is a poor justification.
Distribution via the Doom/Quake model (seed some free levels as a test drive, then once people are hooked, pay for full version) is proof that there are economic methods that allow free, limited use. Time limited free trials in plenty of software tools permit market educational and try-before-you-buy needs to be met.
When I lived in HK in the early 90's, I recall the Autodesk rep acknowledging that 90% of the architects firms on the Mainland had one legal box of AutoCad and six or seven bootleg copies running. Granted the full retail cost per license was more than USD$6000, but these weren't starving students, they were building skyscrapers. Autodesk's stated goal wasn't to end piracy, but rather to get them to pay for 50% of the copies.
The Apple reps didn't have the same concerns, but during the clone era, there was nervousness about ROM piracy. Discussions at Apple Far East included mention of the fact that the China office would never succeed unless the local partner had tons of guanxi (face, leverage, influence), in order to smooth bureaucratic red tape with fat red packets.
The NeXT guys in Hong Kong only ever sold 6 (six) machines during the eight months they were in business. Killer hardware back in the day (even on a 68030), but no support, little software, and overpriced.
SGI never worried. Unique CPU ID keys to major software packages meant zero piracy. SoftImage didn't get bootlegged until it crossed to NT. Similarly though, SGI never sold many of their pricey boxes. (admittedly, there were some export restrictions on supercomputer class stuff back then)
By far the majority of computer shops at that time were basically DIY hobby parts shops with a few imported Toshiba/Acer/etc. Star Computer City was a two floor shopping mall of "computer stuff" and at least 60% of the shops were practically kit suppliers. Macs were sold (poorly) in a few reseller shops, yet dominated the publishing and media industries. Golden Shopping Arcade in ShamShuiPo was a two-floor basement shopping plaza with 98% pirated and bootleg software and VCD. 2 or 3 out of the 40 shops carried any Mac software bootlegs, usually texture and photo CDs. When police raids dumped a street full of CDs and steamrollered them, the shelves were refilled and piracy resumed within 20 minutes.
Each of the cases listed above, at their respective point in time, pertains to the thread topic. In some measure, they apply to China at large, though some specifics were then just HK/neighbouring SEZs.
Corruption and piracy may have dropped substantially since i left in 96, but to deny they exist is absurd.
Support problems may be solvable now via Internet forums or help desks, but the likelihood the neighbourhood computer geek can troubleshoot a mac (he's rarely seen) let alone sell it...
Marketing all white ads in a country where white is the primary colour of funerals and death might not be a smart move.
What you have said are very interesting and true, however I must say that there have been great changes.
Piracy: What I mean is that initially, you want piracy as it will promote both the mac market and the software itself. There won't be mac piracy as pc piracy is (mass production) but will occurr as in people exchanging programmes and downloading (which exists anyway), They would never mass produce pirated copies for a market this small (at the moment anyway). This is how M$ got big in china. Most copies are pirates but if you think the percentage that buy will still be a lot because of the huge market and thus the probability. Privates are not checked but firms, companies and stuff I know are checked on a regular basis for pirated software. When i was at the Chinese biotech institute in Shanghai, someone installed a pirated soft and the head of the division got really pissed as he said they check. I also know that at the Ministry of agriculture this is also done. Once Macs become more popular, rest assured that more and more people will buy original software.
in fact, we explained this to RealBasic that their sale would be almost nothing for the first or so year and they completely understood and saw our point about piracy being your friend. Another way to get software to the people is to bundle it.
There are mac groups in china and they are very big ones. I think this can be a good way to expand the market.
Korruption really isn't a problem. For black market dealings, they are checked very well, and today, few are willing to take the risk. (in fact, I know an apple reseller who got caught and vowed never to do it again) Moreover, these black market trades are only in very small quantity. AFAIK it's virtually impossible now for black market Guanxi (though in other things it is still needed)
Andy Grove of Intel was on Charlie Rose a while ago and said something similar...
people have preconceived notions of the Chinese aiming for the cheapest, but Intel reports that most of their sales to China are actually at the top end of the price/performance curve, not the low end
What is convieniently overlooked is that you can get a fully loaded monster PC for much less than the embarrassingly low end eMac.
And the major PC vendors have real distribution channels in China, Apple does not, so even macs made in China are re-imported and taxed to death.
Comments
Apple is lucky sorta. Nobody pirates their software. Apple will face the same problems as ms. Further compounding the problem is the usual price factor, availability, lack of chinese software and customer and staff ignorance.
Buying a computer is the next major purchase for chinese fam.ily. They will need a lot of hand holding to make a sale. Pc or mac. Apple shouldn't abandon asia, but devise a strategy.
Do chinese macs come with word processors, email apps, writing tablets right out of the box? Gawd I hope they do!
Originally posted by Kung Fu Guy
There is a story in this issue of MacDirectoy about macs in china. It has a sexy cover of Sarah Jessica Parker. The story itself is very informative yet sad because of the sorry state of the mac in china. Apple has to be less U.S centric and attack Asia. How I don't know. Nobody is making money in china, especially MS. From what I read, ms has sunk billions in china for 10 years and yet to see a profit. The onlly profiteers are the software pirates. Pcs are affordable for the urban elite. But pirated software is the norm for all of Asia, with the exception of maybe japan. Why pay full price when you can get it for a couple bucks from a street stand.
Apple is lucky sorta. Nobody pirates their software. Apple will face the same problems as ms. Further compounding the problem is the usual price factor, availability, lack of chinese software and customer and staff ignorance.
Buying a computer is the next major purchase for chinese fam.ily. They will need a lot of hand holding to make a sale. Pc or mac. Apple shouldn't abandon asia, but devise a strategy.
Do chinese macs come with word processors, email apps, writing tablets right out of the box? Gawd I hope they do!
No, I don't like parker.
But sorry, you are mistaken in a few things. It's kinda late now and I'm pretty tired.
Writing Tablets out of the box?
I'm going to quote MacUsers:
"lol, writing tablets, i wish i could get one of those [with a new mac out of the box]"
Think of it as an expanded Mac clone operation in China, which doubles as an Apple supplier for the rest of the world.
Originally posted by snoopy
China Strategy: Design a Mac that can be built in China using low cost components available there. Apple price of Apple supplied components, price of software package and the license of the OS and hardware design. The China factory would not be allowed to sell these Macs except in China. However, the factory might eventually supply Apple with these Macs for sale elsewhere.
Think of it as an expanded Mac clone operation in China, which doubles as an Apple supplier for the rest of the world.
If you read the previous posts, you¡¯d learn that price is not the problem. What you say could never happen, because your ¡®ton of software¡¯ has to be in Chinese. And having worked on software localization last year I can tell you this is never going to happen.
It makes me sad when I see Apple ignoring some countries. I live in Austria and here i have never seen an Apple Ad or big Apple event.And this in a wealthy european country.Another thing is I am travelling around Europe alot and I have never seen an iPod except mine yet. Does iPod sell in Europe?
I speak turkish. There is not even an localised version of MacOsX. I ll buy a new computer for my niece. This will her first computer and i cant decide what i should buy. She wants to use it in Turkish just like her Pc friends but I simply cant buy a Windows Pc for her.
Turkey is not rich like most european countries but its population is growing at now with 70 million is not a bad market for Apple. There were lot more Macs around In Turkey in 80s than now.Turkish language is not only spoken in Turkey but also in middle asian and some european countries reaching to nearly 200 million and we have no OsX in turkish.
yes Apple should invest more in China but also not forget the ones who can afford Apple but left alone.
these came to my mind after reading to this thread
In the late 1980's Apple has NO trouble in Asia what-so-ever, however since Scully left they have been doing exactly DICK.
I'm sorry that Turkish isn't one of the supported languages.
Fortunately however Apple already has EXCELLENT chinese implementation. It shows that at least at the software and engineering level, they are doing something, but all this effort is wasted when they don't sell that well.
The most important software perhaps is M$ office yet V.X does not support Chinese. This sux, because when the consumer sees that he is forced to type chinese in appleworks and then needs to convert and stuff, it aint good.
Damn M$!!!!!!!!!!
Dear Lord Jesus Christ!
We can't do that, why that would make sense that help improve apples position in the market.
Originally posted by stevegongrui
This is an important issue. More important than threads about Hottest Pic ever or Whatcha listening to.
Don't you think?
i dont know...this thread accomplishes nothing, in the other threads they are at least get to see hotties or find new music u normally don't listen to
although this thread makes a good point...it does absolutly nothing to make apple work harder in chinesse markets
i still contest jobs doesn't like commi's
Originally posted by Powerdoc
Apple should create an apple store in three of the most importants towns of China, Shangai, Pekin ...and see what happens.
would be good...but do people actually buy macs when they are that much more expensive? seems like apple isn't willing to lower their prices so they are not going to try to get into that market because they know they can't
back in those days, Apple was one of the few companies that handled double-byte languages well
At one point, Nisus Writer was the only word processing program that could handle English and Chinese/Japanese in the same document (correctly laying out both right and left reading text, as well as vertical).
gradually, PCs added Big-5 character entry support, but Asian versions of Windoze were slow to appear
Piracy is still a major problem in China (and some other parts of Asia).
I've been sold pirated copies of my own commercial CD-ROMs in HK.
Corruption is still a major problem... pay the right general, avoid "enforcement" (such as it is).
and the idealized "if only we could sell one shoe to everybody in China" business myth is bogus.
many foreign firms have tried to overlay their western sales technique in hopes of striking it rich
few have managed, and those that seem to succeed soon see knock-off copies undercutting them
in some other cases, once a chinese 'clone' exists, the government suddenly adds import duties to cut out the original product, and both the 'cloner' and the government official who approved the policy shift are soon seen driving new mercedes.
with no clones of the Mac permitted (more aggressive legal dept),
one could argue there is little benefit to be recouped, hence little desire to fight the uphill battle
cynics might also add that the Chinese government's desire to snoop, censor and control internet traffic (Singapore and Vietnam too) has caused the authorities to discourage the purchase of "secure" machines. in much the same way cell phones are commodities in China now, but certain phones (with encryption chips) are forbidden. if the security services can't get in the back door, they don't want you to own locks they can't open.
Originally posted by Powerdoc
Apple should create an apple store in three of the most importants towns of China, Shangai, Pekin ...and see what happens.
It's called Beijing now. I think they do have an AppleCenter in a mall there.
Please read the thread before posting. What you have said I have talked about before.
I'll tell you again
price: not a major problem, hell, if IBM and Sony personal computers are selling so well. (and they cost more)
Piracy is your friend
Corruption, your comment was made out of ignorance
but yeah, this is what I thought too before my internship. Thanks for giving your opinion though.
Originally posted by frawgz
It's called Beijing now. I think they do have an AppleCenter in a mall there.
I don't know about now but last year there were many stores about, only people couldn't sit down and play with them. You weren't allowed to touch them and they're all covered with cling film.
Yes, we should have (if not already there is) an apple store
Originally posted by ast3r3x
i dont know...this thread accomplishes nothing, in the other threads they are at least get to see hotties or find new music u normally don't listen to
although this thread makes a good point...it does absolutly nothing to make apple work harder in chinesse markets
i still contest jobs doesn't like commi's
And no, I do not think it is useless. It is thought provoking and we can all learn from our opinions. That is not only an interesting thing, but a very positive thing.
And I've posted a few times in the music thread but I really doubt anyone took my suggestions.
Originally posted by stevegongrui
price: not a major problem, hell, if IBM and Sony personal computers are selling so well. (and they cost more)
Andy Grove of Intel was on Charlie Rose a while ago and said something similar...
people have preconceived notions of the Chinese aiming for the cheapest, but Intel reports that most of their sales to China are actually at the top end of the price/performance curve, not the low end
price becomes a factor when, for all intents and purposes, piracy means PC software is "free". mac software isn't pirated or available in the same market, so running a mac means you might actually be paying more (though you're actually only paying the fair cost, the pirates are getting unreasonably low prices and skewing the scale)
Piracy is your friend
Corruption, your comment was made out of ignorance
but yeah, this is what I thought too before my internship. Thanks for giving your opinion though.
Piracy is bad if you're a creator.
The argument that greater visibility is a compensatory benefit, despite the fact theft of intellectual property has occurred, is a poor justification.
Distribution via the Doom/Quake model (seed some free levels as a test drive, then once people are hooked, pay for full version) is proof that there are economic methods that allow free, limited use. Time limited free trials in plenty of software tools permit market educational and try-before-you-buy needs to be met.
When I lived in HK in the early 90's, I recall the Autodesk rep acknowledging that 90% of the architects firms on the Mainland had one legal box of AutoCad and six or seven bootleg copies running. Granted the full retail cost per license was more than USD$6000, but these weren't starving students, they were building skyscrapers. Autodesk's stated goal wasn't to end piracy, but rather to get them to pay for 50% of the copies.
The Apple reps didn't have the same concerns, but during the clone era, there was nervousness about ROM piracy. Discussions at Apple Far East included mention of the fact that the China office would never succeed unless the local partner had tons of guanxi (face, leverage, influence), in order to smooth bureaucratic red tape with fat red packets.
The NeXT guys in Hong Kong only ever sold 6 (six) machines during the eight months they were in business. Killer hardware back in the day (even on a 68030), but no support, little software, and overpriced.
SGI never worried. Unique CPU ID keys to major software packages meant zero piracy. SoftImage didn't get bootlegged until it crossed to NT. Similarly though, SGI never sold many of their pricey boxes. (admittedly, there were some export restrictions on supercomputer class stuff back then)
By far the majority of computer shops at that time were basically DIY hobby parts shops with a few imported Toshiba/Acer/etc. Star Computer City was a two floor shopping mall of "computer stuff" and at least 60% of the shops were practically kit suppliers. Macs were sold (poorly) in a few reseller shops, yet dominated the publishing and media industries. Golden Shopping Arcade in ShamShuiPo was a two-floor basement shopping plaza with 98% pirated and bootleg software and VCD. 2 or 3 out of the 40 shops carried any Mac software bootlegs, usually texture and photo CDs. When police raids dumped a street full of CDs and steamrollered them, the shelves were refilled and piracy resumed within 20 minutes.
Each of the cases listed above, at their respective point in time, pertains to the thread topic. In some measure, they apply to China at large, though some specifics were then just HK/neighbouring SEZs.
Corruption and piracy may have dropped substantially since i left in 96, but to deny they exist is absurd.
Support problems may be solvable now via Internet forums or help desks, but the likelihood the neighbourhood computer geek can troubleshoot a mac (he's rarely seen) let alone sell it...
Marketing all white ads in a country where white is the primary colour of funerals and death might not be a smart move.
hope things improve
What you have said are very interesting and true, however I must say that there have been great changes.
Piracy: What I mean is that initially, you want piracy as it will promote both the mac market and the software itself. There won't be mac piracy as pc piracy is (mass production) but will occurr as in people exchanging programmes and downloading (which exists anyway), They would never mass produce pirated copies for a market this small (at the moment anyway). This is how M$ got big in china. Most copies are pirates but if you think the percentage that buy will still be a lot because of the huge market and thus the probability. Privates are not checked but firms, companies and stuff I know are checked on a regular basis for pirated software. When i was at the Chinese biotech institute in Shanghai, someone installed a pirated soft and the head of the division got really pissed as he said they check. I also know that at the Ministry of agriculture this is also done. Once Macs become more popular, rest assured that more and more people will buy original software.
in fact, we explained this to RealBasic that their sale would be almost nothing for the first or so year and they completely understood and saw our point about piracy being your friend. Another way to get software to the people is to bundle it.
There are mac groups in china and they are very big ones. I think this can be a good way to expand the market.
Korruption really isn't a problem. For black market dealings, they are checked very well, and today, few are willing to take the risk. (in fact, I know an apple reseller who got caught and vowed never to do it again) Moreover, these black market trades are only in very small quantity. AFAIK it's virtually impossible now for black market Guanxi (though in other things it is still needed)
Originally posted by curiousuburb
Andy Grove of Intel was on Charlie Rose a while ago and said something similar...
people have preconceived notions of the Chinese aiming for the cheapest, but Intel reports that most of their sales to China are actually at the top end of the price/performance curve, not the low end
What is convieniently overlooked is that you can get a fully loaded monster PC for much less than the embarrassingly low end eMac.
And the major PC vendors have real distribution channels in China, Apple does not, so even macs made in China are re-imported and taxed to death.