Comment by tooltalk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tooltalk | Hacker News Reader

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>> look at market share. Samsung PRC share peaked and started dropping right before/around when Xi entered office ... <<

Sure, you could use either metrics, but it shows the same thing: Samsung China's market share in 2012 was 17.7% (30M). Xi came to power in mid 2013 and Samsung's sales in each quarter 2013 were 18% (12.5M) in Q1, 19% (15M) Q2, 18% (17M) Q3, and 19% Q4 -- ie, it's a steady YoY growth, in relative % or absolute terms.

In other words, Samsung's sales were not affected by local competition "right before" or "around" Xi. Only after Xi's "In China, For China," both market share and absolute sales plunged from 17.7% (2012), to 19% (2013) to 7.9% (2014) or 31M (2012), to 70M (2013) to 35M (2014).

Again, this was isolated to China and as a result of Xi's anti-foreign policy in China only -- Samsung's sales continue to grow outside China to maintain their global lead.

Further, I cited McGee's recent excellent work which clearly demonstrates how Xi's anti-foreign policies suddenly changed business climate in China against foreign competitors -- which starts at Part 5: Political Awakening, Chapter 26 -- why it has everything to do with "The DESPOT." Not market competition, or THAAD/Note 7 fire.

Your theory doesn't work in real world timeline where we have to factor in actual execution time. Also it simply doesn't match actual policy history. Xi doesn't get to flip switch and conjure a bunch of domestic phone brands and shift market share within a few quarters. That stuff takes years, not suddenly. Hence on/around. The fact that Samsung peaked right when Xi entered office means Xi was not causative since Xi wouldn't have any time to implement buy domestic policy, which also didn't exist at the time. Market share changes work on multi year lag, for Samsung shares to decline, it requires Xiaomi, Vivo, Oppo etc to have build out manufacturing years prior, i.e. before Xi.

Samsung global sales stagnated few years later and saw some decline in the same period as Huawei was doing double digit global YoY growth - again factor in actual market lag of PRC companies cornering domestic market before going abroad. Then HW got knee capped by export controls. Now maybe HW might not have surpassed Samsung but it's pretty clear Samsung wasn't growing while PRC brands were, while none sanctioned brands continue to chip away at Samsung (i.e. this article).

Either way, claiming there was some anti foreign policy in 2013 simply doesn't comport with reality because we have paperwork of Xi's actual year 1 policies, there wasn't any anti-foreign or buy domestic initiatives. Hence I don't see the relevance of McGee regardless. I think chapter talks about political awakening to PRC business climate not any mobile sector industrial substitution policies (which again, did not exist).

PRC telling Apple to follow PRC laws, i.e. cloud sovereignty isn't anti foreign it's just forcing foreign companies to compete on same requirements as domestic companies like data localization. That happeneing in 2013 was part of broader cybersecurity/ideological work, i.e. the institution work stuff that applied to domestic and foreign companies. Actual MIC2025 related industrial policy didn't happen until years later. Procedurally Xi's first year focused on corruption/CCDI, institutional stuff, there wasn't any industrial policy like MIC until a year later, like 3rd plenum was in December 2013. Xi wasn't going around telling domestic consumers to stop buying Samsung phones or kicking Samsung out of the country. Otherwise Samsung again, wouldn't have freely returned to PRC to partner with PRC ODMs for low end lines that they realize even PRC has cost advantage on vs Vietnam. Incidientally the same cost advantage that made PRC / global consumers buy from affordable PRC brands in the first place.

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