Vunderkind
Social Member
So, news comes in two days ago from Bloomberg that Apple Inc has lost its market share on the Chinese Smartphone market to the cheaper models. One of the top suppliers of low-end Smartphones in China is Xiaomi Corp.
Apple’s share of the China market dropped from 9 percent to 5 percent of the total in this second quarter, a considerable drop from what was experienced last year.
Handset Vendors in China are benefitting from the current partnership they have with carriers like China Unicom (in Hong Kong). This partnership is pushing the sales of their low-end smartphones such as the A66 of Lenovo Group and ZTE’s V790, which are both sold currently at 499 Yuan, or equivalently at $82.
Nicole Peng, the Chinese Research Director for Canalys said in an interview: “Apple is only focused on the high-end segment, and China’s Smartphone market growth right now is coming from the mid- to low-end. Apple doesn’t have any products in the mid- to low-end and that’s where Xiaomi has been building their brand awareness.”
Is there a problem with Apple’s business strategy? Apple is currently out of the running on the biggest partnership opportunity possible in China. They are yet to present a device which is running on China Mobile Ltd’s third-generation network, which is the largest carrier in the world – with a whopping 740 million subscribers.
The five biggest vendors in China, however, have a partnership agreement with China Mobile.