Apple's iPhone Sales See Worst Quarter in China Since 2020

I think this is the first kind of real snapshot of what’s happening in China that we’re getting. What it is, is Apple’s popularity has been steadily declining I think around the time, but certainly not just after Huawei released. It’s now infamous made 60 smartphone, the one with the advanced made in China chip. And I think what that was was kind of a wake up call to to many, many consumers within the country that local brands can can outperform. And I think since then, we’ve seen a resurgence of demand for local brands like Oppo and Vivo and Honor and Huawei itself, of course. And that steadily eroded Apple’s market share. At the same time, you see a lot of news reports, including our own, about how the government is actively encouraging or discouraging the use of iPhones within the workplace, particularly at more sensitive agencies and corporations. So it’s, it’s kind of a perfect storm of negative factors that are, that are kind of depressing Apple sales in China. Is this a, is this a product story? I the opposition is better at producing products that the Chinese consumer wants at the moment, or is it that politics and, and, and what are they buying? What are the Chinese consumers buying if they’re not buying Apple? I think that’s The thing is I was alluding to. This has been a steady transition. There has been a process. I think over the past 2-3, maybe four years, a lot of Chinese brands have begun to escape the perception that they are cheaper and lower quality inferior alternatives to Apple and Samsung. Speaking of Samsung, they barely have any market share left, whereas Apple is starting to see a decline. And I think companies like Huawei have managed to get a lot better at not just catering to Chinese tastes, as you mentioned, but also coming up with genuinely high quality products, good cameras, for instance, longer lasting batteries, better memory, that sort of thing. And I think Chinese consumers are responding OK. So China still remains one of the company’s biggest markets as you’ve as you’ve, as you’ve spelled out, it’s still important to Apple, but things are are becoming more difficult and geopolitics does play a role in some of that. So is this the direction of travel for the foreseeable future or does this change? I think it depends on a number of factors. One is how hard Beijing, the Chinese government, pushes consumers away from Apple. But the second, perhaps more important factor is what Apple does in response. I think there is, right or wrong, a perception that at least within the Chinese market, that Apple is lagging in a few areas, not least in terms of integrating artificial intelligence into its gadgets. I think a lot of brands have gotten gotten good publicity around what they like to call the AI phone, AI computing, edge computing, if, if you will, and Apple is perceived as a laggard in the generative AI race. So it depends what Apple does to overcome that perception, and not just in China, by the way, but globally as well. At the same time, consumers do need to see an evolutionary upgrade in the next lineup of iPhones. Whether you know you want to call it the iPhone 16 or whatever, there is a growing sense that there has to be some a leap, a bigger leap forward to really get consumers excited again.