Apple’s iPhone sales in China dropped by 30% in the first week of 2024, Jefferies analysts said in a note to clients Monday.
Yelin Mo and Brenda Goh for Reuters:
The decline in Apple’s sales was the primary catalyst for an overall double-digit drop in China smartphone shipments for the first week, according to a note the brokerage published on Sunday. Other Android brands and Huawei achieved relatively flat growth year-over-year during this period, the note said.
This decrease in Apple’s sales took place despite aggressive discounting of multiple iPhone models through major Chinese online marketplaces, according to the research note. For example, the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max received a 16% price reduction on the e-commerce platform Pinduoduo in the first week of 2024.
The 30% drop represents an acceleration from the 3% year-over-year decline the U.S. company saw for all of 2023 in its third-largest market, Jefferies said, adding that the brokerage derived this from its own market tracking. Specifically, the 3% decline in 2023 equated to a 0.4% decrease in Apple’s market share.
Jefferies analysts said Apple’s decline is largely attributed to competitive pressures from Chinese rivals, especially Huawei, which launched its Mate 60 series of phones in August last year.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple was placed under the thumb of the Chinese Communist Party by Tim Cook. Apple cannot now alleviate its crippling dependence on China, engineered by “operations genius” Tim Cook, without angering the CCP and losing sales in China. It’s a catch-22 wrought by Tim Cook that will get worse long before it gets better. Apple needs and deserves a new, energetic, visionary, and inspiring CEO.
That said:
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). – MacDailyNews, November 28, 2023
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Once China invades Taiwan and captures the chip making factories there all bets are off on Apple’s future.
Crapdaily still bitter about China dumping iPhone for their own champion Huawei and HarmonyOS which are both eclipsing Apple that this crappy declined site want to downplay with unprofessionalism here. Also, what will also hurt is future HiSilicon chips neck on neck on Apple’s Silicon chips alongside their own HarmonyOS NEXT core operating system. Delicious tears here!
I think MDN and others overestimate the importance of “performance” to the average Jo in China. And MDN’s analogy of Toyota Yaris (the Huawei phone) and the Bugatti (iPhone) is particularly nonsensical since the Bugatti is actually inferior to the Yaris in day-to-day life for most people (I’d like to see MDN squeeze 4-5 people into a Chiron or carry a family’s worth of groceries).
The average Chinese spends their mobile life almost entirely within a single app: WeChat. As long as the phone has good performance while using that app, a phone maker has it made. Oh, and the phone has to take good photos/videos. I’ve never used the Huawei, but I imagine its camera is not as inferior to the iPhone as is its CPU.
I don’t blame Tim Cook for Apple’s current China troubles as much as I do Donald Trump and now Joe Biden (who has largely continued Trump’s self-defeating trade policies). With increased tensions between the two countries, come tit-for-tats. It was the US who began with the black-listing of Huawei in the 5G market because of never-substantiated claims Huawei equipment might ‘phone home’. Since then it’s only gone downhill. I see not only Apple increasingly becoming a target of this political game, but also Tesla. Both are global names who are very reliant on China for both production (Tesla’s Shanghai plant sends many of its cars to Europe) and consumer market.
Apple may learn something from the failure of Betamax. Not everyone needed the performance and cost of Sony’s Betamax and would easily settle for VHS offered by more OEMs and thus with more price competition.
Next you going to blame Trump for China’s Communist troubles. Cook created this mess and dependence on China for slave labor profits and NO ONE ELSE is to blame.
“Apple needs and deserves a new, energetic, visionary, and inspiring CEO.”
Amen, MDN…
I am sure the Biden regime and democrats have this under control. We can trust and believe in them. Look at the success in the Afghanistan withdrawal, and the success of democratic policies in the big cities. We have nothing to worry about. They tell us all the time we are in the best shape ever! Right?