earthcitizen

lkrupp said:

Competition in China is an oxymoron. The game is rigged from start to finish. The Chinese powers that be are only going to let Western companies like Apple get so far. Sure they like the idea of Apple manufacturing in China but not Apple products dominating sales in China.

And to those who might comment in this thread demanding Apple go plastic and cheap... blow it out your backdoor sphincter. 

Cell phone market in China I would say is quite fair. It's also extremely cut throat. No company can have more than 20% market share (or even 15%). Also no company can stay in the top 5 for more than two or three years. Apple actually stayed in the top 5 for very long in China which shows its competitiveness.

Apple has a huge crowd of customers in China that only buy Apple products. Most high-end Chinese consumers have very high brand loyalty and Apple users have some of the highest brand loyalty. Other very successful companies in China who have captured this loyalty includes Starbucks, BMW etc. They all only make premium products at a high price often even more expensive than the West.

The customers who buy Apple are completely different from the customer who buy Android anyway. Most of the people in China I know of are either always-iPhone users or always-Android users. They rarely migrate. The dip in percentage only means the low-end market is expanding but does not necessarily mean Apple's actual user base is shrinking. And that's why I don't think iPhone SE would be very popular in China. At least none of my Chinese friends are buying iPhone SE. The most popular model of iPhone in China is new iPhone 6s Plus. Yes, there might be a slight drop in sales but that's just because Apple does not have an attractive product to make people replace their old iPhones.

As for the lawsuits. These are way overblown by the media. Lawsuits against and between big companies are very common in the US as well. This is why all the big companies have huge legal teams. I worked for one of the top American game publishers for four years in Canada and there has been constant litigation from companies you have never heard of. I can assure you Apple gets sued way more often in America than in China. Companies just deal with it. Not every lawsuit have political agendas. Most of the time it's just a small company want to get a big settlement. Still remember the epic lawsuits between Apple and Samsung a few years ago?