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Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

As of December 2017, iOS had around 19.7% of China's mobile web browsing market. That is unexpectedly huge, is there a large enough middle class to support that many iPhones?

https://www.statista.com/statistics/262176/market-share-held...

Sales in China have been expanding, though it goes up and down with new iPhone releases:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2018/01/13/apples-ne...

Samsung has absolutely gotten killed in China recently, but I don't think Apple has.

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It’s not killed for sure, but it used to have bigger market share

Not according to the forbes article, but that is indicating sales in quarter rather than overall marketshare (Apple sold more phones than Xiaomi in Q4 17, see https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/25/chinas-smartphone-market-i...).

Apple is not doing poorly in China by any economic measure, but ya they don't sell many $200 Xiaomi/Huawei phones. I'm sure that Apple wins consistently based on phone sales revenue, even if they trail in total units sold.

Apple got some good number with iPhoneX launch it seems, after several years' of decline in market share. They're no where close to getting killed though.

The fact it's moving servers to China is most likely going to have positive effect on their sales, not negative.

The X was basically designed for China, you can’t show off with a design that is 3 generations old already! Apple didn’t bother updating their ID for 3 years (6, 6s, 7), which is why sales were so tepid in China for the last two years. The X fixed that.

The effect of iCloud moving will be mostly neutral. As long as WeChat continues to work on iPhone, whatever iCloud does won’t be very significant. I doubt most iPhone users in china even know what iCloud is.

it depends on your definition of market share - whether it is quarterly shipment or % of phones on carrier networks.

apple devices are a few times more expensive than say Xiaomi, they thus stay in people's pocket for much longer. for shipment data, Apple's figure is not that fancy any more, they count for only 8% of the shipment in Q2 2017.

http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-and-samsung-are-losing-...

It does fall and rise on any quarter given apple’s predictable release schedule. Still, 20% sustained marketshare for China at the price they are selling compared to local competitors is quite the feat.

Apple shipped 18% of phones worldwide, but when it comes to the Chinese market, it counts only 8%. You need a lots of explanations if you refuse to acknowledge the obvious here.

https://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3859963

Before start to waste your time, the 8% shipment in China figure was >14% just 24 months ago.

https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/11/8584277/smartphone-shipme...

To give you some extra details - I live in downtown Shanghai, as of writing, several months after IPhone X's release, I have not even seen the IPhone X yet as not any single one of my families, friends or colleagues has switched to that.

That is why i wasn't very optimistic in iPhone X China figures. I dont see them around in China much as well. And the craze was no where near my expectation, and nothing compared to iPhone 6. But the sales figure was very different when announced.

You are not the only one with this observation as well. Most of my friends and colleagues in different area of China had the same observation as well. I wonder why.

So where did they go? 8% is a lot.

I think parent just doesn't hang around Xintiandi very much.

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