Apple’s China Problem Is That Local Phones Are Good – And Cheap
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Apple is a luxury brand and people are willing to pay for luxury goods. If you amortize the additional cost of an iPhone over a year or two it's really not that expensive from a luxury/status good standpoint. Less expensive than visiting Starbucks 5 days a week.
People need to be able to justify that cost though and with Apple they can because it is a substantively different product and integrates well into the entire Apple product line. What can premium brand Android purchasers say?
This spirit of this comment has been replicated verbatim every year for the last 5 years by some random HN commenter.
I guess, eventually, it might be true.
Security, or lack thereof on Android.
Relative size of app ecosystems.
Whether devs can make money selling apps (hint: it's much harder on Android).
Fragmentation.
Etc.
http://9to5mac.com/2016/01/20/app-store-ios-downloads-vs-and...
As for the others... yes. I have concern with China re backdoors, but otherwise, I'm done with the U.S. market and carrier channels, except for Nexus.
I just bought a Xiaomi fitness band directly from Shenzhen. Shipping was a bit ridiculous, percentage-wise, but the band itself was so inexpensive compared to U.S. competition, and it shipped the day it was release to the domestic Chinese market.
Based on that experience, I have no concern with returning to that Shenzhen retailer for a phone, tablet, or whatever else I may want from the Chinese domestic market. And with those items, the air freight cost will be a reasonable percentage of the total purchase cost.
U.S. big business is benefiting from Chinese production costs. Why shouldn't I cut them out of the loop and do so directly, myself?
I don't need their useless mark-up. Nor, in the case of phones and U.S. carriers, their mostly useless and problematic skinning.
As a practical matter, I like that models from Samsung/LG/Mot/etc have a large installed base of users (vs no-name or lower tier Android manufacturers). I think a corollary to Linus' Law should be "Given enough users, all bugs are easily discovered." If there were a low-end brand of Android phones that had a large amount of share, I'd probably consider them instead. (or is there one already?)
[1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wileyfox-Swift-Dual-SIM-Free-Smartp...
The battery situations is strange, though. The battery is replaceable, but you cannot get a battery?
http://www.cyanogenmod.org/blog/cyanogen-inc-and-cyanogenmod
Cmon, that's highly misleading when one model is six months older than the other. Samsung flagships are blown out of the water in any sort of 12 month comparison with the iPhone.
The cheaper phones are really good now. And if you are asking a premium you need to be significant better.
As I see it iPhone 4 was a lot better than the competition where as the current lineup is not.
Simply relying on expanding the market (selling more in China + other emerging markets) won't do the trick as they are not going to sell with their old big margins unless they are a lot better than the competition.
Apple doesn't need to 'rely' on selling more into China. If they end up locked out of the China market completely, they'll still do fine. As it is, they have a I've premium niche over there and will do just fine.
Marketing, specifically understanding the market for their products, is something Apple does insanely well compared to other companies.
Before xiaomi, I used asus and it eats mobile data like crazy with no control other than airplane mode.
bonus is that xiami has finer permission control too on app level. I can disallow whatsapp to access my contact and camera, for example. whatsapp can still function; however, it shows phone numbers instead of names in chats.
so even though xiaomi is cheaper, it's more powerful to use. definitely great user experience, easily beats any, more expensive android devices i ever use: motorolla, asus, samsung, etc
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/prevent-any-app-using-mobile-da...
I used it on my recent trip, so I dont accidentally use all my roaming data.
That's a Marshmallow thing, not a Xiaomi thing.
the problem with iphone (&ipad) is that apple forces some limitations, like say... no sd card. my sister -- who has ipad -- always have trouble moving files to non-apple devices
i used to say "i don't own iphone, i can't help you", just like when someone asks for general computer problem, equivalently as saying "i don't use windows, sorry"
now i don't get apple related questions because everyone i know uses android, either as primary or secondary phone.
Either add some premium service like some sort of concierge on call, or I dunno some premium UI interface that is definitely measurably better then there is no reason to buy a more expensive phone. App's are all starting to look the same and it doesn't matter anymore. I'm a long time iOS user because I started that way and while
I love the platform it's only because of all the apps i've bought that keeps me on it. While I hate using android I'd probably learn to deal with it's nuisances for a difference of $200.
Samsung has tried that to death. It has had the opposite effect, instead of people seeing the additional functionality as a benefit, it is criticised as clutter (and in fairness some of it does slow the device).
Worse still Samsung turns around and blames their "premium features" for why their phones lose software updates sooner. And then people see more benefit in a cheap phone with virgin Android then a premium phone with supposed premium features, since updates last longer and the phones are borderline disposable.
Give it a shot. I tried Android for 3 years going through 4 different phones because each one sucked (except the Z3 Compact which was incredible but I accidentally broke) and gave up. Back to iPhone now.
See models from Xiaomi, or even the Asus ones, it seems the bigger the better.
I already dislike how big my Moto G3 is, but it seems they're fine with it
I only looked on from the outside as an observer, since I don't have the money to throw away on replacing my phone ever 2 years like everyone else seems to.
But now, with the iPhone SE, they're reversing that trend again.
It reminds me of that scene in Wall-E, where they say "red is the new blue" on all the screens, and suddenly everyone presses the button to change all their personal possessions (including clothing) to blue!
I hate the word sheeple, I really do, but seriously guys, what the hell? It's a fucking phone.
I guess it's not much a reversal of the trend rather as a "return to normal"
Pockets and hands are still the same size as always
Chinese companies are getting it right where it comes to affordable phones
Apple products premium price doesn't represent, have, offer or convey any benefit to China buyers.
Other local phones, since you'd be hard presses to find something un-Chinese about the iPhone.
Is there even a homegrown Chinese mobile OS? Re-skinning android doesn't count.
Its probably also a stretch to call Linux international considering its founder is an American citizen now and the vast majority of contributors are Americans and American companies. Not to mention its essentially a clone of an American proprietary product.