Apple's sales drop in China continues to favor rivals such as Oppo, Vivo, Huawei and Xiaomi. The Wall Street Journal resumes an IDC Research report, the same one that had also released sales data Fitness bands, to illustrate the reasons for Apple's loss of competitiveness in China and the features of the Chinese market.
The boom of smartphones has led Apple's growth for several years, but nowadays Chinese companies such as Oppo, Huawei Technologies Co. and especially Xiaomi are offering mobile devices that are less expensive and at the same time sophisticated as the iPhone.
Apple's sales in the region have also been hampered by a design that has not renewed in the transition from one series to another, such as from the iPhone 6S to 7, reveals a Counterpoint Research analyst, James Yan, who deals with of the Chinese market. The analyst also explains that the Chinese have a lower amount available for this type of purchase than their Western counterpart, so they are less likely to spend large sums for a new phone that is very expensive but which could be confused for a previous model. "Chinese consumers now have new choices," adds Yan.
Oppo and Vivo, on the other hand, managed to conquer the home market because they followed Samsung's example by investing heavily in advertising, also using famous characters in their well-built spots. Apple's target is their buyers: as Tim Cook says, half of Apple's sales in China consist of people who buy a smartphone for the first time or people who have decided to switch to Apple after trying national brands. In the photos below, taken from the Weibo site of the famous KJuma blogger, you can see how Oppo literally taped the city of his banners. There are also no small promotional booths in shopping malls with cute plush mascots.
Xiaomi still remains a solid rival of Apple, but unfortunately it loses positions compared to its competitors, as we can see from the image below. Analyzing the graph we can see how the decline in sales began in late 2014 and precisely favoring the competitors, Oppo, Vivo and Huawei. The overtaking of Huawei has been there poco afterwards, while the growth of Oppo and the subsidiary Vivo has been very rapid in the last year.
Where is the crux of this decline in market share? Xiaomi since its creation has always used online "fan clubs" to promote sales, thus becoming a "niche" brand. Unfortunately, this was a double-edged sword, because a more traditional company like Oppo found favor with most consumers by building a vast network of physical stores where possible buyers could try the phones before buying them. Another analyst, this time from the company Canalys, also says that the online sales channel is reaching its limit.
However, it is a great achievement for a company that has been on the market for only 5 years, not to mention the fact that the smartphone industry is not the only one in which Xiaomi is present and where Apple has reached and surpassed itself.
Analysts therefore agree with Lei Jun, CEO Xiaomi, in saying that Xiaomi needs to review its motherland home sales strategy, one of the goals stated in speech of the Chinese company CEO for Chinese New Year celebrations a few weeks ago, instead of thinking of an international expansion.
