iPhone Shipments Crash 50% In China As Local Brands Dominate (macrumors.com)
- Reference: 0177511427
- News link: https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/25/05/14/2118214/iphone-shipments-crash-50-in-china-as-local-brands-dominate
- Source link: https://www.macrumors.com/2025/05/13/iphone-shipments-down-china-local-brands/
> The steep decline saw shipments fall to just 1.89 million units, down from 3.75 million during the same period last year. That shrinks Apple's share of the Chinese market to approximately 8%, while domestic brands now control 92% of smartphone shipments. For the entire first quarter, non-Chinese brand shipments declined over 25%, while total smartphone shipments in China actually increased by 3.3%.
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> Apple's struggles come as domestic competitors have gained ground. Counterpoint Research [2]reports Huawei now leads with a 19.4% share, followed by Vivo (17%), Xiaomi (16.6%), and Oppo (14.6%). Apple has slipped to fifth place with 14.1%. Several factors are driving Apple's declining fortunes. The company faces competition from rejuvenated local brands like Huawei, which has rebounded with proprietary chips and its HarmonyOS Next software. Chinese government policies appear to be playing a role too. Under government subsidies, consumers of electronics get a 15% refund of products that are priced under 6,000 yuan ($820). Apple's standard iPhone 16 starts at 5,999 yuan.
[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2025/05/13/iphone-shipments-down-china-local-brands/
[2] https://www.counterpointresearch.com/insight/post-insight-research-notes-blogs-china-smartphone-sales-rise-25-yoy-in-q1-2025-driven-by-government-subsidies
They are centrally planned economy (Score:2)
Not communism of course not even close. They are very much a capitalist Nation but one that is centrally controlled by a fascist government. This means you get a whole lot of slave labor and you've got Vans driving around harvesting organs but it also means you can instantly kick out any foreign government you don't like.
Doesn't really help the people any. But it means the ruling class gets to stay in charge and doesn't have to put up with economic imperialism. The United States isn't going to be bringi
Trump is a genius (Score:4, Funny)
If Trump were president he'd never have let this happen.
8% or 14.1%? (Score:2)
The summary says two conflicting things:
(1) Apple's sales dropped around 50%, from 3.75 million to 1.89 million units and is currently at 8% market share. Meanwhile, the total market expanded by 3.3%. That means that Apple's market share a year ago was 16.4%.
(2) Apple's market share dropped from 15.7% to 14.1%, while the total market increased by 2.5%.
Maybe this discrepancy suggests that getting accurate numbers on market share is really hard. Or the definitions for these numbers are not consistent. Sti
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Not everyone buys a new phone every year. Can't compare market share in annual sales to existing market share like you tried.
China imperialism (Score:2)
China is intensely imperialist and deep down believe they should be the world’s leading nation. They feel like they have a multi thousand year history of being the global superpower and their weakness for the last century was a temporary mishap. The long term plan since they opened up to Nixon was always to adopt western technology then drive out western companies with their own home grown brands and products.
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> China is intensely imperialist and deep down believe they should be the world’s leading nation.
Phew, I was a little worried there. As long as they don't believe they have some kind of manifest destiny. Then they'd end up with some kind of orange jesus trying to take over the world
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Yeah I don’t think the US has a history of massacring its own people by the tens of millions. Sure republicans might fantasize about it, but that’s as far as it goes.
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> The United States of Amurrikah are intensely imperialist and deep down believe they should be the world’s leading nation. They feel like they have a multi hundred year history of being the global superpower, and their growing weakness in this century is a temporary mishap. The long term plan since they embraced absolute corruption during the Reagan presidency was always to use military power to coerce economic subversion and then drive out domestic companies in the dependent territories with their own home grown brands and products.
See how easy it is to turn a piece of bullshit into something that is a lot closer to the truth?
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You china bots are so stupid. What you wrote doesn’t even make sense.
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Not really my problem that you are so ignorant of the history of the world and the foreign policies of your country that you cannot follow a simple recount of the latter.
Non-localised mobile services are a vulnerability (Score:2)
You'd be crazy to buy an iPhone in the knowledge that someone in Washington can on a whim block updates to Chinese users, close the App Store to Chinese users and block all purchasing by Chinese users. The first two are merely inconveniences, but the last is strategically important given how China's economy is built around electronic payment systems and the sudden widespread loss of payment processing would hit the domestic economy.
The risk is not just theoretical. When the US blocked Mastercard and Visa
iPhones are expensive in China⦠(Score:2)
Government taxes foreign phones in China making iPhones more expensive than those in other places, including Hong Kong. iPhones are not allowed to use the AI being sold with the phones elsewhere, plus a host of other restrictions. So basically, an iPhone purchased in China isnâ(TM)t the same as an iPhone purchased elsewhere. Many people buy them from third party distributors to get non-mainland SKUs or go elsewhere to buy iPhones to sidestep restrictions/tariffs/taxes/etc.
Of course (Score:3)
They're backdoored by the NSA, and we know this as a fact due to Snowden leaking the NSA's own slides that stated as such.
Nonsense (Score:3)
I don't recall that slide in the leaks, but even if I'm just old and forgetful, Chinese consumers care about that shit just as much as Americans - barely more than not at all.
As the article said, domestic phones are subsidized. 15% off is going to shift units.
What has changed, though, is that I think recent American stupidity has changed perceptions. Watching Clown Shoes repeatedly humiliate himself is hurting the American Brand(tm). The iPhone is probably the most recognizable "American" product worldw
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> What has changed, though, is that I think recent American stupidity has changed perceptions.
That's not new. The rest of the world has seen Americans as [1]this [imgur.com] for quite awhile now. What is new is Trump's escalation of the trade war, and with war there's always casualties on both sides. We've managed to piss off Canada pretty good too with idiotic trade war escalations, I wonder how iPhone sales are doing there?
[1] https://imgur.com/gallery/whats-that-saying-every-joke-has-little-bit-of-truth-to-hIuBVIN
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I was interested enough to do a quick one-shot web search, and found [1]this [freedomhacker.net] and [2]this [nbcnews.com], and also [3]this [pcmag.com].
None of these are a slide from the leaks, and none of these are proof of the poster's claim. Maybe it's out there, maybe it's not, but I am tired of looking.
Be that as it may, anyone who doesn't assume that the NSA has their nose in your phone, pc, tablet, and smart tv, is a fool. Similar for the Chinese government and probably a few others. The hardware manufacturing and distribution chain is full of opport
[1] https://freedomhacker.net/edward-snowden-reveals-secret-nsa-backdoor-in-iphones-3617/
[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/apple-denies-working-nsa-backdoor-iphone-flna2D11821229
[3] https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-10-most-disturbing-snowden-revelations
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I'm not disagreeing with you about the reach of various states' surveillance apparatus. I'm disagreeing with you that large numbers of people respond meaningfully to learning about modern surveillance reach. Fools or not, they just don't. I have talked to people about this stuff a lot, including trying to raise awareness and just explaining to friends and family who want to know why I care about this stuff.
The first problem is this stuff is super opaque to normal people. They aren't used to thinking about
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this might help: https://www.kaspersky.com/about/press-releases/kaspersky-discloses-iphone-hardware-feature-vital-in-operation-triangulation-case
it's not Snowden revelations, but it's really shocking, we all remember reading this last year-ish ... there's undocumented hardware on the iphone.
more
https://securelist.com/operation-triangulation-the-last-hardware-mystery/111669/
I dozed off somewhere down the page, but the complexity of the exploit is effing impressive
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If you make an outrageous claim like that, you could at least put up a link.
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Headlines (erroneously) say iphones were backdoored; Snowden's words were less affirmative:
> The iPhone has special software that can activate itself without the owner having to press a button and gather information about him
> It was not made clear what "special software" lies within the iPhone making it similar to a backdoor, or if the NSA found an easy way to compromise the iOS operating system. [1]https://freedomhacker.net/edwa... [freedomhacker.net]
[1] https://freedomhacker.net/edward-snowden-reveals-secret-nsa-backdoor-in-iphones-3617/
iPhone & Watch Analytics, configure during set (Score:3)
> Headlines (erroneously) say iphones were backdoored; Snowden's words were less affirmative:
>> The iPhone has special software that can activate itself without the owner having to press a button and gather information about him It was not made clear what "special software" lies within the iPhone making it similar to a backdoor, or if the NSA found an easy way to compromise the iOS operating system. [1]https://freedomhacker.net/edwa... [freedomhacker.net]
It's the "iPhone & Watch Analytics". Apple analyzes how people use their devices so they know how best to spend they development dollars and their marketing dollars. Its something users can configure during their initial setup, the default option is "on", ie to "share" this info with Apple.
[1] https://freedomhacker.net/edward-snowden-reveals-secret-nsa-backdoor-in-iphones-3617/
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The NSA, the CCP, etc. At least the Chinese population isn't fooling themselves about who might be listening in on their calls. In that sense, they are more enlightened than we are.
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I just need one look at the price tag to not care about the iphone, never mind care about whose backdoors are on it.
It costs probably less than 80 euros to make, but cook is asking for at least 1.1k so that he can bribe trump better.
Some other time, tim, the value proposition to me in this is deeply negative, buddy.