Evercore ISI analyst Amit Daryanani wrote in a research note Monday that Apple investors should not worry about Huawei phones impacting iPhone sales.
Angela Palumbo for Barron’s:
According to Counterpoint Research, Huawei achieved high sales growth during [China’s Singles Day annual shopping event], which is always held Nov. 11, while unit sales of Apple products declined from a year earlier.
“The report has added to investor concerns around Huawei risk, but we continue to think this risk is overstated,” Evercore ISI analyst Amit Daryanani wrote in a research note Monday. Daryanani rates Apple at Outperform with a target of $210 for the stock price.
Daryanani said that Huawei’s stronger performance during the Singles Day sales event was partially due to the fact that the Chinese phone maker offered more aggressive price cuts than Apple. Apple also continues to face constraints on the supply of its phones. Daryanani believes the decline in unit sales was “more a function of limited supply vs. any meaningful share loss.”
“Looking at unit numbers, Apple has only 15% share in China in the most recent quarter, but they earned ~37% of market revenue,” Daryanani added. And while Huawei offers lower-end smartphones, Apple concentrates on the higher end of the market. “These buyers tend to be less price sensitive and more loyal, so we continue to think Apple can maintain its share despite Huawei becoming more competitive,” the analyst said.
MacDailyNews Take: Huawei’s overhyped claim to fame is the Mate 60 with a “Kirin 9000s” chip that’s generations behind Apple. The Kirin 9000s is a 7nm chip that has a Single-Core Score of 1267 and a Multi-Core Score of 3533 in Geekbench 6 benchmarks. Apple’s A17 Pro is a 3nm chip that has a Single-Core Score of 2902 and a Multi-Core Score of 7221 in Geekbench 6 benchmarks.
It’s not even close. It’s a 2019 Toyota Yaris vs. a 2023 Bugatti Chiron Super Sport sort of affair. It’d be a joke if it weren’t so sad.
Huawei’s flagship phone, the Mate 60, is trounced by Apple’s entry-level iPhone SE (third generation) which offers the 5nm A15 Bionic launched in September 2021 (Single-Core Score: 2237, Multi-Core Score: 5173 in Geekbench 6 benchmarks).
Plus, Huawei’s slow outmoded crap is hobbled with HarmonyOS (which is very likely in perfect “harmony” with Chinese Communist Party surveillance).
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What is the cost of Mate 60? Sure, the iPhone slaughters it spec-wise, but if the Mate 60 is quite inexpensive, sometimes good enough is good enough.
Huawei Mate 60 Pro (6.82-inch display): ~$1000 for the 512GB model.
Huawei Mate 60 (6.69-inches): starts at ~$850
Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max (6.7-inch display): $1199 for the 256GB model.
Apple iPhone 15 Pro (6.1-inch display): starts at $999.
I’d rather have a much faster, much more secure iPhone than Huawei trash.
If you’re going to compare apples to apples (or, in this case, huawei), then give the price of the iPhone with equivalent storage. So, if your Huawei MSRP price of $1000 is accurate, then it is already 30% cheaper than the 512GB iPhone 15 Pro Max. And that’s before whatever discounting Huawei did on Singles Day – which, according to the article, was more aggressive than Apple’s. So it’s not out of the realm of possibility for the Huawei phone to be 50% cheaper.
Given that all phones pretty much have all the power its users need, performance specs are becoming rather irrelevant. Especially in China, where most people live their mobile lives inside of WeChat’s platform rather than in apps.
You get what you pay for. Wasting hundreds on a Huawei POS vs. spending a bit extra to get a real iPhone is a no-brainer. Only the stupid would get a Huawei phone.
I don’t agree with Evercore’s analysis that lower iPhone sales were solely due to less aggressive pricing and supply constraints. My in-laws live in China and clearly a growing number of Chinese are starting to buy ‘local’ brands as a form of solidarity against the US-led embargo of advanced technologies to China.
And I find MDN’s response of ‘… It’d be a joke if it weren’t so sad’ rather myopic and juvenile. The vast majority of smartphone consumers don’t care one bit about benchmark performance. They care about real-life performance in the tasks they do all the time. In the case of Chinese consumers, that primarily means WeChat must work well on whatever phone they get. Besides, these days all phones with sufficient memory/storage perform well on day-to-day tasks. The next most used function of a smartphone is the camera. I don’t know how the Huawei phone stacks up with the iPhone in that department – but I assume that the perceived performance in that area is pretty similar. Since the US didn’t hobble Apple’s Chinese competition when it comes to camera modules.
My in-laws live in China and clearly a growing number of Chinese are starting to buy ‘local’ brands as a form of solidarity against the US-led embargo of advanced technologies to China
Bring everything back to the USA.
When your thoughts and messaging are under 24/7 scrutiny for the slightest unfavorable attitudes towards the CCP then, of course, you’ll use at least one gov’t blessed device if you want to save your neck and display your “loyalty” and social groveling chops.