iPhone marketshare in China predicted to double in 2014

Posted:
in iPhone edited January 2014
A new report issued Wednesday by research agency IDC predicts that Apple's share of the Chinese smartphone market will double in 2014 thanks to the introduction of the lower-cost iPhone 5c and an anticipated new carrier agreement with China Mobile, the world's largest wireless provider.

IDC


IDC's analysis anticipates that Apple's introduction of the lower-cost iPhone 5c combined with the consummation of the company's long-rumored deal with China Mobile, the world's largest wireless carrier, will help Apple capture a significantly larger share of the 450 million smartphones IDC expects to be sold in China in 2014.

Apple's marketshare has "declined dramatically" in the last year thanks to slow sales of the iPhone 5, but is "expected to remarkably improve with the launch of the new iPhone,? according to IDC China's James Yan.

These predictions come despite indications that the iPhone 5c, which is rumored to launch first on China Mobile's 3G network as the carrier and its 740 million customers await issuance of 4G operating licenses, is being outsold by its Touch ID-enabled sibling by a large margin. The data suggests that the iPhone 5s was more than three times as popular as the iPhone 5c during their record-breaking opening weekend.

The report paints a bleak picture for the future of Google's rival Android operating system, predicting that the now-dominant OS will begin to decline in 2013 and slowly be overtaken by iOS and smaller, "more open" competitors.

"It is difficult to displace Android?s dominant position in the Chinese market within a short period of time," says Yan, "but IDC predicts that its share in China?s mobile phone operating system market will reach the peak in 2013, and that the mobile phone vendors and telecom operators will adopt new operating systems with a more open attitude."
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 26

    Impossible! The iPhone 5c is going to be a complete and utter failure in China because it's too expensive!

     

    /s

     

    Gotta love predictions like this one being utterly wrong. Though his backtracking and cheerleading after seeing the real sales numbers is quite amusing. You'd almost think he hadn't spent days on end spreading FUD and doom and gloom about how the launch would be a failure.

  • Reply 2 of 26

    Who are the smaller "more open" competitors?

  • Reply 3 of 26
    Too bad currently the "lower cost" 5C is doing terrible in China. iPhone sales are gonna double, buts it's going to be because of the 5S (particularly the gold model) not the 5C.
  • Reply 4 of 26
    mikejones wrote: »
    Impossible! The iPhone 5c is going to be a complete and utter failure in China because it's too expensive!

    Nonsense. Don't you understand the price has actually nothing to do with the popularity of Apple products? You can read up on it in various articles, right here on this site.
  • Reply 5 of 26
    blackbook wrote: »
    Too bad currently the "lower cost" 5C is doing terrible in China. iPhone sales are gonna double, buts it's going to be because of the 5S (particularly the gold model) not the 5C.

    Do you have any evidence for this? Please share.

    If not, please do the decent thing and shut up.
  • Reply 6 of 26
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by blackbook View Post



    Too bad currently the "lower cost" 5C is doing terrible in China. iPhone sales are gonna double, buts it's going to be because of the 5S (particularly the gold model) not the 5C.

     

    And your evidence is what, exactly? Do you have the hard sales numbers or are you just listening to the analyst speculation?

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by PhilBoogie View Post





    Nonsense. Don't you understand the price has actually nothing to do with the popularity of Apple products? You can read up on it in various articles, right here on this site.

     

    Yes, it is nonsense. Hence why I was mocking the people who were claiming that before last Friday's launch and the sales figures came out.

  • Reply 7 of 26
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by PhilBoogie View Post





    Nonsense. Don't you understand the price has actually nothing to do with the popularity of Apple products? You can read up on it in various articles, right here on this site.

     

    Excellent point. China has been averaging 10% growth in GDP per year for the last 30 years. (This year perhaps 7%) and half of it's 1.35 billion (2012) people are is still living in poverty. The growth is going to be amazing for Apple.

     


    In this country, 70% of US economy is driven by consumers. But, 50% of the US economy is driven by the top wealthiest10% of the consumers. It's not about the price. Apple knows what it's doing.  :)
  • Reply 8 of 26
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,718member
    I'd like to see the same graph with estimated profits for each group.
  • Reply 9 of 26
    IDC seems to always predict the ultimate success of Microsoft. Does anyone buy Window Phone going from 2% to 10%? I, for one, do not.
  • Reply 10 of 26
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Connie View Post

     

    Who are the smaller "more open" competitors?


    They just made that up as Android is the most open of the major players.  You can tell the analyst is wrong just by looking at the Windows phone share.  If they think Windows phone is going to do that well they know nothing of the phone industry. 

  • Reply 11 of 26
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by digitalclips View Post



    I'd like to see the same graph with estimated profits for each group.

     

    Best post! :)

  • Reply 12 of 26
    Actually Gene Munster released a very astute analysis today explaining how doubling its Chinese market share will actually mean disaster for Apple. Munster's supply chain analytics confirm that continuing to sell so many iPhones at high prices will produce high profits which are bad for Apple. Gene breaks down the numbers to give this rather startling and brilliant revelation and then he recommends how Apple should completely reinvent its core business. I highly recommend that you check out Gene's latest and greatest. Google "How growing market share while making record profits with the industry's highest margins will actually RUIN Apple." APPL is down today 23 points following Gene's analysis.
  • Reply 13 of 26

    AI - friendly suggestion:  Please quit posting analyst or research organization predictions.  It just demeans the other fine material on your site.

     

    If you really feel a strong urge to post something, I suggest you use the standard "Lorem Ipsum" text instead.  It contains far more intelligence than the analyst babble:

     

    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

  • Reply 14 of 26
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by anantksundaram View Post





    Do you have any evidence for this? Please share.



    If not, please do the decent thing and shut up.

     

    Hard evidence? Of course not. Nor will we ever have anything that people on here would call hard evidence. Apple doesn't split the numbers.

     


    The only thing we have is, of course, the Localytics data that indicates a 9 to 1 buy rate of the 5s over the 5c. Backing those numbers would be the Sina Tech survey where 86.5% of 260,000 votes said they thought the 5c was way too expensive.


     


    Maybe the Chinese think that plastic, any type of plastic, makes them look cheap. Maybe the colors combined with the plastic make the Chinese people think of cheap. Cheap might be a perception that the burgeoning Chinese middle class is trying to avoid. That's the only thing I've got.


     


    (If true then it would remind me of the 60s when you could buy finely crafted solid oak and walnut turn of the century furniture for a song because the new middle class in America wanted to look new and modern and they were dumping that old "crap" that represented their poor parents. Buying melamine covered plywood in the shape of kidney beans and gaudy gilded veneer bedroom sets.)
  • Reply 15 of 26
    Read an article in Forbes (so take it for what it's worth) that by 2020 600 million people in China will have "middle class" incomes. Who knows what phones will look like by then or if it will still be relevant, but the consumer buying power in China is clearly getting stronger every year so maybe this is just great timing as more and more people at least have the option to buy the more expensive iPhone.
  • Reply 16 of 26
    Define: "bleak", 70%. Oh, I see.
  • Reply 17 of 26

    Marketshare doubles means no growth story left after 2x - That means AAPL  is doomed!

  • Reply 18 of 26
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by tkell31 View Post



    Read an article in Forbes (so take it for what it's worth) that by 2020 600 million people in China will have "middle class" incomes. Who knows what phones will look like by then or if it will still be relevant, but the consumer buying power in China is clearly getting stronger every year so maybe this is just great timing as more and more people at least have the option to buy the more expensive iPhone.

     

    this.   Remember this is china, where 1000 year plans are the norm… 7 years is barely a tick of the economic clock.

     

    Note in 2020, that's 4 turns of the apple design crank (2014, 2016, 2018, 2020).  And with the 'c' series, maybe more.

    Also, this matches phone lives most phones don't live past the age of 2 with their original owners.  You'll buy 3 more phones before 2020.


     


    If China is like the US in terms of consumer 'switching'  70% of Android Users from 2 years ago will be wanting an Apple phone, were as 20% of Apple users will be switching back  (all things being equal, primarily network availability and costs of plans/service).  If that is the case,  Apple will grow to be 30-40% of the market in about 5 years: 30% of 600M = 200M phones at that time, so in 6 years, Apple will be selling 100Million phones a year in China.  Alone.


     


    In a growth market, you don't price your stuff at the low end… you price it at the high end, and make people feel like once they attain the income levels, they have 'earned' buying a quality device.  They will eventually get there, you just have to wait.
  • Reply 19 of 26
    lkrupplkrupp Posts: 10,557member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by MikeJones View Post

     

     

    And your evidence is what, exactly? Do you have the hard sales numbers or are you just listening to the analyst speculation?

     

    Yes, it is nonsense. Hence why I was mocking the people who were claiming that before last Friday's launch and the sales figures came out.


     

    Neither. He pulled it right out of his ass, just like the analysts.

  • Reply 20 of 26
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by island hermit View Post

     
    The only thing we have is, of course, the Localytics data that indicates a 9 to 1 buy rate of the 5s over the 5c. Backing those numbers would be the Sina Tech survey where 86.5% of 260,000 votes said they thought the 5c was way too expensive.


    Who's Localytics? Are they a well-known firm? Considering that even well-known ones -- like Canalsys, IDC, Gartner -- put out pap (methodologically and otherwise), do you know if this Localytics is an equally, if not more, credible outfit?

     

    As to Sina Tech, what do you mean by 'votes'? Where? Some website? Is that supposed to be scientific?

     

    The simple truth is, there is no basis for someone to say, as the original poster did, that "5C sales are TERRIBLE". That is pure, unadulterated nonsense. With a side of FUD.

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