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There's a question under which people discuss what would happen if WeChat is blocked from AppStore on a Chinese quora like Q&A site Zhihu.[1] Tencent removed a

There's a question under which people discuss what would happen if WeChat is blocked from AppStore on a Chinese quora like Q&A site Zhihu.[1] Tencent removed a tipping the author feature from WeChat because Apple wanted a share from the tips, which made the blocking worries more realistic than many people may think. The people on Zhihu, possibly the richer and more knowledgeable among the Chinese internet users, supported WeChat, which is a vital tool for work as well as everyday life. It's an IM, and when every relative and friend uses it, it's not possible to switch overnight if Apple actually blocks it. What's more, its only competitor in China is another product of Tencent, QQ. So, Apple is facing a huge China problem, and it's trying to solve it. However, it is yet unclear if it can solve it, or be solved by it. I think the walled garden policy actually backfires in China. Android, as an open platform, is not that easy to kill, even though all Google services are blocked here. However, iOS can. Without a big enough market share, it will die like IE6, without Chinese developers willing to write apps for it. [1] https://www.zhihu.com/question/58776977 https://www.zhihu.com/question/58776977

echaozh 9y ago
And in China, many iPhone buyers are among the students and blue collar workers who buy it because it's subtly expensive, coming from a foreign country (though assembled in China), and was used by richer people. They don't buy it because it's a good phone, but because it's a luxury. This is beginning to change, as some Android phones are actually getting more expensive to appeal to their vanity (well, being more expensive is so much easier than the reverse), and they're working on a very appealing feature for the those who mainly use the phone to take selfies and photos of their food: automatically beautification. Also, it boosts China's computer vision technology as a side effect, which is good for us as well.

echaozh 9y ago

And in China, many iPhone buyers are among the students and blue collar workers who buy it because it's subtly expensive, coming from a foreign country (though assembled in China), and was used by richer people. They don't buy it because it's a good phone, but because it's a luxury. This is beginning to change, as some Android phones are actually getting more expensive to appeal to their vanity (well, being more expensive is so much easier than the reverse), and they're working on a very appealing feature for the those who mainly use the phone to take selfies and photos of their food: automatically beautification. Also, it boosts China's computer vision technology as a side effect, which is good for us as well.