Chinese buyers falling out of love with iPhones
Shunning Samsung, too, in favour of local brands like Xiaomi
Google famously failed to make a big dent in China and now it looks like Apple may be about to hit the Great Wall too, after new analysis of local sentiment found the fruity company out of favour with local consumers.
The source of that analysis is Taiwan’s TRENDforce which teamed with Chinese outfit AVANTI Research Partners to figure out which smartphones are in demand among Chinese punters, and which brands they recognise.
The research says Apple is struggling in China due to a combination of price and the fact its handsets won’t work with dominant local carriers.
The iPhone nonetheless remains the most-desired next purchase phone for Chinese mobe-wielders, even if just 25 per cent now want to get their hands on the phone instead of the 37 per cent in the previous quarter’s report. Samsung-lust is up from 12.2 per cent to 17.8 per cent.
Local outfit Xiaomi comes in third, with 12.2 per cent of Chinese wanting one of its handsets despite just 14.1 per cent of Chinese recognising its brand. That combination makes Xiaomi a brand to watch, as while it is not shipping handsets at the same rate other locals like Lenovo, Huawei and ZTE have achieved, the research suggests its social media presence means it has captured the Chinese zeitgeist.
TrendForce and AVANTI's analysis of smartphone usage by brand in China
A quick look at Xiaomi.com (with help from translation engines) suggests it’s a pretty slick marketer: a recent online-only sale saw 200,00 phones head out the door in just over 13 minutes.
The cumulative efforts of Xiaomi and its local cousins will, the research says, mean phones from Chinese vendors account for 34 per cent of global smartphone shipments in 2013, up from 28 per cent this year.
Chinese smartphone purchasing intentions data from TrendForce and AVANTI
Lenovo’s well-placed to take a chunk of the action, having gone from not having a smartphone business to two per cent of the global market in under a year. Samsung looks at risk of losing market share in China, and beyond, while Blackberry now has just .7 per cent of the Chinese market and is expected to account for only 1.3 per cent of future purchases. Things also look grim for Nokia, as brand recognition of the company as a supplier of smartphones share has collapsed from 91.6 per cent a year ago to 38.2 per cent. ®
COMMENTS
Well, did you actually spell it Xioami? It's xiaomi so it looks like you swapped the 'ao' for 'oa'. Literally it's "little rice". One of their phones is actually quite impressive with a quad core Qualcomm Krait at 1.5 GHz, 4.3" 1280 x 720 display and Miui Android 4.1 going for around $320 or £200. Oh the standard battery is 2000 mAh with an available 3100 mAh battery. I'm actually thinking of ordering one if it's unlocked and will work in the US if Santa doesn't deliver.
Apple can fool some people sometimes
But they can't fool all the people all the time.
Ah, thank you. I copied & pasted from the article, but it's been edited since.
If you're an English speaker you will get a phone make by a company that speaks English. It means the phone will be designed for you and will be optimised for you.
Same goes for the Chinese.
German, French and Spanish are all fairly similar in alphabet, with a few extra symbols, but Mandarin etc are quite different. So the GUI has to take this into account.
Re: Cost
> The average Chinese worker can't afford the iPhone without selling a kidney,
While that is no doubt true, there is a bigger reason highlighted in the article.
> the fact its handsets won’t work with dominant local carriers.
Might also be a deciding factor.
There is only so much posing you can do, like the people you used to often see talking on their phone on the Underground in London, back when mobiles were " for the rich elite" here, rather than things you buy to give to the kids to chuck into the bottom of their school bag in case they can't get on the bus.
