“Apple had a dominant market share of 58.7% for 4G smartphones sold in the China market in January-February 2014, followed by Samsung Electronics with 26.4%, Coolpad 9.4%, K-Touch 2.5%, Sony 1.2% and Huawei 0.8%, according to Sino Market Research,” Amanda Liang and Adam Hwang report for DigiTimes.
“Coolpad, Huawei, ZTE and Lenovo are poised to launch sub CNY1,500 (US$242) models, a segment they believe will account for 60-70% of TD-LTE smartphones to be sold in China, the firm indicated,” Liang and Hwang report, “adding Apple’s and Samsung’s shares are expected to drop in the future.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
Apple must make a cheap iPhone to conquer China. Suuurre.
What percentage of Chinese cell phone sales are for 4G models? The first 4G licenses were issued there only last year, and only on China Mobile.
According to the article China Mobile has 1.34 million 4G customers, of which Apple grabbed a 58.7% majority share. Reuters reported in Dec 2013 that China has 1.23 BILLION cell phones. This gives Apple a 0.11% market share overall. Even considering Apple’s high profit margins, it’s not even close to taking home a winning profit share either.
China is the fastest growing mobile market and some analysts (yes, i can spell the word, unlike many here) predict that 4G-LTE phone handsets will grow to about half of the worldwide market share. That would be sales of about one billion handsets per year by 2017, about double what is sold today. (source: Mobile Phone Forecast from CCS Insight). But unfortunately, everyone knows that Apple’s market share will only decline. Focusing the initial surge statistics following the first few months after the iPhone release on China Mobile is to present highly skewed perspective. The overall trend remains. Android handsets are less expensive, most Chinese buyers can’t justify paying for Apple quality, and Apple is doing nothing to effectively stem the sales of low-cost knockoff phones, including upcoming 4G phones that will come at a fraction of either iPhone or Samsung prices. Chinese mobile customers are by far Android buyers — except, of course, in eastern coastal cities where westerners mingle with the upper crust who can afford genuine Apple hardware.
The best way for Apple to achieve a healthy long-term profit share in China might be for Cook to forgo his annual multi-million self-enriching bonus, and to stop buying back stock, but instead to reward the hardworking Apple product assemblers with their choice of Apple device as a Christmas bonus and ramp up some compelling marketing for a change.
Does anyone know the percentage of Hon Hai/Foxconn workers who own Apple products? That’s a decent indicator of what people are going to buy, because those people know the real differences in product quality.
You are making an incomplete analysis . You are comparing sales for an specific period to the total number of cellphones in use. In September 2013 China Mobile alone had 42 millions of iPhones in use. Besides those you have the other Chinese companies selling the iPhone . So your calculated percentage of iPhone use lacks a lot of units .
No, it looks like Paul is correct. CM is the only seller of iPhones in China, and the total number units sold so far appears accurate. Paul compared the TOTAL number of iPhones in China to the TOTAL number of all mobile phones in China. Seems like a reasonable way to show how much work Apple has ahead of it.
No, you want to compare the total number of iPhones in China with the total number of reasonably comparable smartphones in China. That’s the part of the world where no-name dumb-smartphones are most common. The buyers of those phones are not in the market for any name brand, and they are not worth even Samsung’s bother, but they pollute the numbers of actual smart-smartphones.
Someone with a brain and not just ass kissing Apple.
Even the chinese can figure out that you should not purchase from genetically odious opprobrious know-nothing subhumans.
Cheap phone but you pay lot of money for 4G, not going to happen in China.