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Cue all the armchair product strategists coming in to tell us all the mistakes Apple made in it's product line up, or $29 batteries, or some other bullshit. Lo

Cue all the armchair product strategists coming in to tell us all the mistakes Apple made in it's product line up, or $29 batteries, or some other bullshit. Look, the reason iPhone sales are slipping is because of China's recent poor economic performance. Apple said EXACTLY that in their last earnings guidance: > While we anticipated some challenges in key emerging markets, we did not foresee the magnitude of the economic deceleration, particularly in Greater China. In fact, most of our revenue shortfall to our guidance, and over 100 percent of our year-over-year worldwide revenue decline, occurred in Greater China across iPhone, Mac and iPad. ( https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/01/letter-from-tim-cook-to-apple-investors/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/01/letter-from-tim-cook-... ) Samsung's earnings have also been hit by similar factors: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-07/samsung-misses-profit-estimates-as-chip-sector-weakens https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-07/samsung-m... A slowdown in China this big is actually huge news so I'm surprised so many people are missing the forest for the trees. It means less foreign investment capital will be coming to the West and might potentially signal another global recession.

dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
> Cue all the armchair product strategists coming in to tell us all the mistakes Apple made in it's product line up, or $29 batteries, or some other bullshit. Look, the reason iPhone sales are slipping is because of China's recent poor economic performance. Why not both?
- CoolGuySteve 8y ago
  Because then it would be illegal for Apple to tell shareholders: "most of our revenue shortfall to our guidance, and over 100 percent of our year-over-year worldwide revenue decline occurred in Greater China"
  - lexs 8y ago
    That quote only says that the revenue declined in China, not why. Economic downturn might be a reason, losing market share in China due to local competition, product strategy or similar might be another reason.
taobility 8y ago
Apple is selling its products globally, not just China. Why China's economy decreasing would impact Apple's revenue so dramatically? All blames go to China?
- CoolGuySteve 8y ago
  Yes. It is illegal to lie to shareholders in the US and I refer you to the quote above.
  - a11595 8y ago
    Umm, no. It is illegal to lie on a financial statement. It is not a lie if your corp statement is a theory of why a foreign market has declined.
    - icebraining 8y ago
      Yes, but taobility was wondering whether China had such a large impact on Apple's sales, not why.
      - a11595 8y ago
        good thing I wasn're replying to taubility. CoolGuySteve on the other hand was talking about why, claiming the wrong "why" is illegal for apple to guess. This is consistent with CoolGuySteve's other replies in this thread.
  - barkingcat 8y ago
    this is impossibly naive. Of course it's illegal to lie to shareholders, but guaranteed 100% of publicly traded companies do. What's the SEC going to do? They are in furloughs right now and have no budget to go after anyone. Looking further ahead, if a company has enough money, they can buy off the SEC by getting laws passed that will let the do whatever they want.
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  China is a big market for Apple.
jgrahamc 8y ago
Arm chair critics are welcome at my web site for iPhone SE owners: https://forum.seclub7.com/ https://forum.seclub7.com/
chewbaxxa 8y ago
Decreasing sales in China may also indicate increasing preference for domestic brands such as Huawei and Xiaomi. Ask most westerners and they have probably never heard of these brands but in China they may actually be more desirable.
- Pimpus 8y ago
  These brands are quite well known in Europe, but not in a good way. When my Matebook stopped charging after two months people called me dumb for buying a Huawei product. Just an anecdote. I likewise have Xiaoimi products and their Mi Home app for smart home products is awful and a far cry from Apple's polish.
  - a11595 8y ago
    Completely agree. Also, lenovo phones are also well known in Europe, not in a good way. the dual-sim one I had while living in Kiev was dirt cheap, plastic screen, as fast as the samsungs out at that time but about 2mm thicker. that plastic screen was awesome and saved me many replacements. the problem with the chinese crap, not just phones but TVs, pads, whatever, is they literally dump a bunch of decent hardware in there, and just stop. no QA, no support, nothing you can find online - so in a few months when any little thing breaks, or there's no way to fix an annoying feature, it goes in the trash. lots of stories, but here's a couple. got a chinese phone so I never have to put a chinese sim into my real phone. pretty popular in china, good specs. root it and put a non-chinese OS? nothing, and I've searched in chinese. About 4 years ago got a xiaoimi tablet. quad core, 2GB ram, mini-hdmi output, $70 on amazon. first month perfect. then - wifi started turning off after about 5min, only fixed by a reboot. no support, no documentation, nothing on forums - and it was sold for about 3 months and then they started selling some identical crap with a different model#. seriously, I have no problem paying $1-2k for a phone or pad. What I don't want is useless crap that wastes days of time and gets me pissed off so I can't fall asleep, a year later on a Tuesday. The thing is, the Chinese culture is used to half-working crap, and they think it's normal. They pump shit out of the sewers, boil it, then use the oil floating on top to dilute cooking oil. At most restaurants. Phone has awkward interface, security holes, and 1 security update after release? who cares - your thoughts are on rent in a dirty apartment and food. If you order your steak medium - it's well done, because yes, they don't toss the beef when it goes bad - they serve it to you, everywhere. Buildings use a bunch more cement and reinforcement than normal countries. Why? Because the construction workers eyeball all measurements and just don't care - if you don't account for error, it'll collapse. Not knocking on the Chinese race (my wife is Chinese), but I am knocking their culture. Zero attention to detail, zero cares, zero pride in what you do. It works there, because life is shitty and you don't care about a UI bug when you're broke, there's no law, and an oppressive police force that puts you in jail to harvest your organs for the rich.
robteix 8y ago
> Look, the reason iPhone sales are slipping is because of China's recent poor economic performance. Apple said EXACTLY that in their last earnings guidance: Sure but that was one of the sections with reasons. They also said > While macroeconomic challenges in some markets were a key contributor to this trend, we believe there are other factors broadly impacting our iPhone performance, including consumers adapting to a world with fewer carrier subsidies, US dollar strength-related price increases, and some customers taking advantage of significantly reduced pricing for iPhone battery replacements. I don’t think we should ignore these either.
- CoolGuySteve 8y ago
  You've cherry-picked one sentence out of the whole document. And even that sentence mentions US dollar strength. Right before your quote they use the words VAST MAJORITY to describe China's impact. And it's not just one section, it's stated at the top of the release in the summary, along with supply constraints, as the reason for the revised estimate. My point is that almost every other comment here was confirmation bias about things hnews readers think are important. They're not important. They're worthy of a throwaway sentence in an earnings estimate at best. It's obnoxious.
  - bootaccount 8y ago
    it's at the top of the release to distract the investors that don't spend the time to dig through all the details in the rest of the document.
  - Damogran6 8y ago
    Meh, IMHO, I loved buying the top tier phone...and that top tier phone jumped from $900-ish to $1200-ish and I'm choosing to not make the jump. The changes are not compelling enough to make me feel like spending that kinda dough. Incorporating the carrier costs in the analysis, are you getting more than $5 in value a day? Because with an Xs max and a noncapped plan, that's what I'd be spending.
    - piva00 8y ago
onion2k 8y ago
It's telling that Chinese consumers aren't buying cheaper, locally-produced alternatives. That demonstrates that while consumers don't have the money for a new Apple phone they're also happy keeping their old Apple and Samsung hardware rather than buying new cheaper alternative. That could be good news for Apple as it shows effective vendor lock-in, but it might also show that consumers are going to keep phones for longer and that the 18 month sales cycle is getting longer. That would have a big impact on future hardware sales.
webmobdev 8y ago
(This is a repost of my comment here because others seems to have made the same observations.) Ok, That is a valid excuse. And the abnormal price hikes of the new model of iPhones indicate that Apple was well aware of the possible economic downturn, and thus sought to compensate the anticipated fall in sales by squeezing higher profit margins. But what is their excuse for not penetrating the next biggest market in the world, one of the world's fastest growing economy, right next to China - India? To me, Apple's attitude in India, and many other countries, is akin to that of a spolied brat who won't do things unless he has his own way. Some examples - a) Apple management lamenting that India doesn't have a debt-based culture. (That's a broad view - the comment was more on how the cellular services providers don't sell their phones bundled with "plans" in India, and Indians tend to buy their cell phones outright which obviously makes the iPhones too expensive and unaffordable to many). b) In the last 2 decade are so, India has witnessed a revolution in digital payments and seen various innovations in this area. This has made it very easy to do micro-transactions. And yet Apple in India REFUSES to integrate with the local financial infrastructure of the country, and only accepts credit cards / debit cards only from Visa or MasterCard for Apple Pay or iTunes. (Note that this is deliberate because the indian options give more privacy to the user - for example, with a credit card, Apple can know our credit rating and better profile us, but with certain indian payment options they will be deprived of this valuable information). c) Objecting to certain policies of the government (this is understandable though from a capitalist point of view to maximise profit). d) Totally ignoring the way how Indians use their phones and their requirements. (For example, Indians have been demanding a dual SIM phone for many years, and it is kind of a de facto standard feature here. And yet, it took about a decade or so for Apple to respond to that). To summarise, Apple's management seems to lack creativity and the COURAGE to step out of their comfort zone and try out new business models and / or new processes in other countries.
- kamaal 8y ago
  Very well said, the day Apple fixes itself for Indian market, they will likely open a sales flood gate like none other in their history. Remember Xiaomi? All they do is launch a product and people take more they can afford to manufacture. Lastly Apple products are just impossibly expensive for almost all of India.
_Codemonkeyism 8y ago
As others have written Apple conveniently ignores the trend that users are upgrading in longer and longer intervals. But we'll see when China picks up again, if Apple is back on it's level or not there - everything else is speculation.
dana321 8y ago
Its reached a plateau technologically, there isn't much else they can do to excite consumers to entice them to replace what they already have, and most people have a phone as well. Chinese people also have a higher rate of fixing things when they break and they have specialist repair shops everywhere that can replace any component of the phone, so its a different market. You can't just look at a market and say "oh, its going down for no reason whatsoever" there is always a reason. Its just a question whether the lack of growth will cause a crash in the overall market now.
rblion 8y ago
> A slowdown in China this big is actually huge news so I'm surprised so many people are missing the forest for the trees. It means less foreign investment capital will be coming to the West and might potentially signal another global recession. Ding ding ding. There are all kinds of variables driving a global recession but the biggest pieces are the Chinese economy plateauing, Brexit and Trump showing just how divided the Western world really is. America's political civil war just driving this point home even more. These factors combined with a changing climate and a general populace that is only short of revolting thanks to the infinite variety of 'bread and circuses' available to us. It's like this is by design or something...
tinus_hn 8y ago
‘...post Jobs era...’ /s
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
dominotw 8y ago
> A slowdown in China this big is actually huge news so I'm surprised so many people are missing the forest for the trees. I don't think ppl are ignoring it. Appl cannot only be a 'good economy company'. Look at Xiaomi for example in your link, its winning international markets by making good affordable phones. Apple should adapt to the market conditions, like xiaomi did, and give ppl what they want in all economic circumstances. Pointing out that apple is( self-admittedly) a fair weather company is not missing forest for trees. From your own link > Samsung loses ground in global phone market as Chinese rivals gain share > While Samsung still leads the world in smartphone sales, it’s being squeezed by Chinese handset makers like Huawei Technologies Co. I think I missed it somewhere but where did samsung say that their slowdown is due to 'poor economic performance' of china?
- dep_b 8y ago
  > Look at Xiaomi for example in your link, its winning international markets by making good affordable phones. True, but that's why Samsung is hurt more than Apple. > Apples should adapt to the market conditions and give ppl what they want in all economic circumstances. There's a hole in their phone line-up about the size of an iPhone SE or iPhone 6. I think the new iPhones are great and there's something to be said to have premium and super premium tiers. Their Mac line-up used to be four different products as well divided in more or less the same way (pro / prosumer and desktop / portable) where in this case it should be premium / super premium and phablet / pocketable. The pocketable premium phone doesn't exist anymore.
  - dominotw 8y ago
    > True, but that's why Samsung is hurt more than Apple. It should hurt apple too right? doesn't 'poor economic performance' mean ppl are buying cheaper phones(xiaomi) vs appl's expensive phones? Chinese didn't just stop buying phones( looking at those graphs) but just stopped buying expensive apple phones. Apple blaming the economy is like farmer blaming the monsoon instead of admitting that he should've built a reservoir last year.
IkmoIkmo 8y ago
Cue the guy assumingg weak performance in China is solely due to macroeconomic and trade issues, and not, say, due to Apple making an uncompetitive value offer with its products in a major market, where some (not all) competitors do fine or thrive with better price/quality offers.
- mixmastamyk 8y ago
  Isn’t samsung in a similar situation? The article also mentions car purchases are down.
  - pas 8y ago
    How is Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi and Huawei doing? Maybe Apple and Samsung simply fell out of vogue? Alas so far I haven't found any real data, only this chart showing Apple slowing down in Q3 already: https://venturebeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/idc-smartphones-q3-2018.png?resize=1024%2C515&strip=all?w=1910&strip=all https://venturebeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/idc-smart...
Hippocrates 8y ago
Yes, it's insane how media and commenters have latched onto the $29 battery upgrade as if it is the headline of the press release.
- partiallypro 8y ago
  Maybe Apple shouldn't have mentioned it, since they are the ones that blamed the battery upgrades.
shrimpx 8y ago
I think people are saturated with rehashed versions of yesterday's technology. Remove a headphone jack here, round some screen corners there. Yes there's "economic deceleration" a major factor being a stalling of innovation.
csomar 8y ago
> It means less foreign investment capital will be coming to the West and might potentially signal another global recession. It could be the other way. Capital flight from China to safer grounds.
tooltalk 8y ago
Samsung's earnings have been hit, but not by similar factors. Samsung's declining earnings has all to do with the declining memory price. The company had been under pressure to increase production to lower the price of memory products all year last year. Apple's problem is in China, fewer unit sales -- their timing is pure coincidence. Also note that Samsung's market share in China is almost nil, from #1 just four years ago. The company has really nothing to lose at this point.
partiallypro 8y ago
Ok, but "armchair strategists" at Apple themselves blamed batteries on their conference call. You want to know the main reason for the revenue shortfall? Market saturation. China certainly has to do with it as well, but generally Chinese fluctuation have been offset by other markets...but now they aren't, due to saturation.
auiya 8y ago
Wasn't the whole point of the iPhone SE to shore up the lower end for exactly these types of situations? Why then did they kill it and simultaneously release the most expensive versions yet? It's easy to say "well China had a rough year" but if your business model doesn't account for market swings like that you're Doing It Rong™

dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago

> Cue all the armchair product strategists coming in to tell us all the mistakes Apple made in it's product line up, or $29 batteries, or some other bullshit. Look, the reason iPhone sales are slipping is because of China's recent poor economic performance. Why not both?

CoolGuySteve 8y ago
Because then it would be illegal for Apple to tell shareholders: "most of our revenue shortfall to our guidance, and over 100 percent of our year-over-year worldwide revenue decline occurred in Greater China"
- lexs 8y ago
  That quote only says that the revenue declined in China, not why. Economic downturn might be a reason, losing market share in China due to local competition, product strategy or similar might be another reason.

taobility 8y ago

Apple is selling its products globally, not just China. Why China's economy decreasing would impact Apple's revenue so dramatically? All blames go to China?

CoolGuySteve 8y ago
Yes. It is illegal to lie to shareholders in the US and I refer you to the quote above.
- a11595 8y ago
  Umm, no. It is illegal to lie on a financial statement. It is not a lie if your corp statement is a theory of why a foreign market has declined.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    Yes, but taobility was wondering whether China had such a large impact on Apple's sales, not why.
    - a11595 8y ago
      good thing I wasn're replying to taubility. CoolGuySteve on the other hand was talking about why, claiming the wrong "why" is illegal for apple to guess. This is consistent with CoolGuySteve's other replies in this thread.
- barkingcat 8y ago
  this is impossibly naive. Of course it's illegal to lie to shareholders, but guaranteed 100% of publicly traded companies do. What's the SEC going to do? They are in furloughs right now and have no budget to go after anyone. Looking further ahead, if a company has enough money, they can buy off the SEC by getting laws passed that will let the do whatever they want.
tonyedgecombe 8y ago
China is a big market for Apple.

jgrahamc 8y ago

Arm chair critics are welcome at my web site for iPhone SE owners: https://forum.seclub7.com/ https://forum.seclub7.com/

chewbaxxa 8y ago

Decreasing sales in China may also indicate increasing preference for domestic brands such as Huawei and Xiaomi. Ask most westerners and they have probably never heard of these brands but in China they may actually be more desirable.

Pimpus 8y ago
These brands are quite well known in Europe, but not in a good way. When my Matebook stopped charging after two months people called me dumb for buying a Huawei product. Just an anecdote. I likewise have Xiaoimi products and their Mi Home app for smart home products is awful and a far cry from Apple's polish.
- a11595 8y ago
  Completely agree. Also, lenovo phones are also well known in Europe, not in a good way. the dual-sim one I had while living in Kiev was dirt cheap, plastic screen, as fast as the samsungs out at that time but about 2mm thicker. that plastic screen was awesome and saved me many replacements. the problem with the chinese crap, not just phones but TVs, pads, whatever, is they literally dump a bunch of decent hardware in there, and just stop. no QA, no support, nothing you can find online - so in a few months when any little thing breaks, or there's no way to fix an annoying feature, it goes in the trash. lots of stories, but here's a couple. got a chinese phone so I never have to put a chinese sim into my real phone. pretty popular in china, good specs. root it and put a non-chinese OS? nothing, and I've searched in chinese. About 4 years ago got a xiaoimi tablet. quad core, 2GB ram, mini-hdmi output, $70 on amazon. first month perfect. then - wifi started turning off after about 5min, only fixed by a reboot. no support, no documentation, nothing on forums - and it was sold for about 3 months and then they started selling some identical crap with a different model#. seriously, I have no problem paying $1-2k for a phone or pad. What I don't want is useless crap that wastes days of time and gets me pissed off so I can't fall asleep, a year later on a Tuesday. The thing is, the Chinese culture is used to half-working crap, and they think it's normal. They pump shit out of the sewers, boil it, then use the oil floating on top to dilute cooking oil. At most restaurants. Phone has awkward interface, security holes, and 1 security update after release? who cares - your thoughts are on rent in a dirty apartment and food. If you order your steak medium - it's well done, because yes, they don't toss the beef when it goes bad - they serve it to you, everywhere. Buildings use a bunch more cement and reinforcement than normal countries. Why? Because the construction workers eyeball all measurements and just don't care - if you don't account for error, it'll collapse. Not knocking on the Chinese race (my wife is Chinese), but I am knocking their culture. Zero attention to detail, zero cares, zero pride in what you do. It works there, because life is shitty and you don't care about a UI bug when you're broke, there's no law, and an oppressive police force that puts you in jail to harvest your organs for the rich.

robteix 8y ago

> Look, the reason iPhone sales are slipping is because of China's recent poor economic performance. Apple said EXACTLY that in their last earnings guidance: Sure but that was one of the sections with reasons. They also said > While macroeconomic challenges in some markets were a key contributor to this trend, we believe there are other factors broadly impacting our iPhone performance, including consumers adapting to a world with fewer carrier subsidies, US dollar strength-related price increases, and some customers taking advantage of significantly reduced pricing for iPhone battery replacements. I don’t think we should ignore these either.

CoolGuySteve 8y ago
You've cherry-picked one sentence out of the whole document. And even that sentence mentions US dollar strength. Right before your quote they use the words VAST MAJORITY to describe China's impact. And it's not just one section, it's stated at the top of the release in the summary, along with supply constraints, as the reason for the revised estimate. My point is that almost every other comment here was confirmation bias about things hnews readers think are important. They're not important. They're worthy of a throwaway sentence in an earnings estimate at best. It's obnoxious.
- bootaccount 8y ago
  it's at the top of the release to distract the investors that don't spend the time to dig through all the details in the rest of the document.
- Damogran6 8y ago
  Meh, IMHO, I loved buying the top tier phone...and that top tier phone jumped from $900-ish to $1200-ish and I'm choosing to not make the jump. The changes are not compelling enough to make me feel like spending that kinda dough. Incorporating the carrier costs in the analysis, are you getting more than $5 in value a day? Because with an Xs max and a noncapped plan, that's what I'd be spending.
  - piva00 8y ago

onion2k 8y ago

It's telling that Chinese consumers aren't buying cheaper, locally-produced alternatives. That demonstrates that while consumers don't have the money for a new Apple phone they're also happy keeping their old Apple and Samsung hardware rather than buying new cheaper alternative. That could be good news for Apple as it shows effective vendor lock-in, but it might also show that consumers are going to keep phones for longer and that the 18 month sales cycle is getting longer. That would have a big impact on future hardware sales.

webmobdev 8y ago

(This is a repost of my comment here because others seems to have made the same observations.) Ok, That is a valid excuse. And the abnormal price hikes of the new model of iPhones indicate that Apple was well aware of the possible economic downturn, and thus sought to compensate the anticipated fall in sales by squeezing higher profit margins. But what is their excuse for not penetrating the next biggest market in the world, one of the world's fastest growing economy, right next to China - India? To me, Apple's attitude in India, and many other countries, is akin to that of a spolied brat who won't do things unless he has his own way. Some examples - a) Apple management lamenting that India doesn't have a debt-based culture. (That's a broad view - the comment was more on how the cellular services providers don't sell their phones bundled with "plans" in India, and Indians tend to buy their cell phones outright which obviously makes the iPhones too expensive and unaffordable to many). b) In the last 2 decade are so, India has witnessed a revolution in digital payments and seen various innovations in this area. This has made it very easy to do micro-transactions. And yet Apple in India REFUSES to integrate with the local financial infrastructure of the country, and only accepts credit cards / debit cards only from Visa or MasterCard for Apple Pay or iTunes. (Note that this is deliberate because the indian options give more privacy to the user - for example, with a credit card, Apple can know our credit rating and better profile us, but with certain indian payment options they will be deprived of this valuable information). c) Objecting to certain policies of the government (this is understandable though from a capitalist point of view to maximise profit). d) Totally ignoring the way how Indians use their phones and their requirements. (For example, Indians have been demanding a dual SIM phone for many years, and it is kind of a de facto standard feature here. And yet, it took about a decade or so for Apple to respond to that). To summarise, Apple's management seems to lack creativity and the COURAGE to step out of their comfort zone and try out new business models and / or new processes in other countries.

kamaal 8y ago
Very well said, the day Apple fixes itself for Indian market, they will likely open a sales flood gate like none other in their history. Remember Xiaomi? All they do is launch a product and people take more they can afford to manufacture. Lastly Apple products are just impossibly expensive for almost all of India.

_Codemonkeyism 8y ago

As others have written Apple conveniently ignores the trend that users are upgrading in longer and longer intervals. But we'll see when China picks up again, if Apple is back on it's level or not there - everything else is speculation.

dana321 8y ago

Its reached a plateau technologically, there isn't much else they can do to excite consumers to entice them to replace what they already have, and most people have a phone as well. Chinese people also have a higher rate of fixing things when they break and they have specialist repair shops everywhere that can replace any component of the phone, so its a different market. You can't just look at a market and say "oh, its going down for no reason whatsoever" there is always a reason. Its just a question whether the lack of growth will cause a crash in the overall market now.

rblion 8y ago

> A slowdown in China this big is actually huge news so I'm surprised so many people are missing the forest for the trees. It means less foreign investment capital will be coming to the West and might potentially signal another global recession. Ding ding ding. There are all kinds of variables driving a global recession but the biggest pieces are the Chinese economy plateauing, Brexit and Trump showing just how divided the Western world really is. America's political civil war just driving this point home even more. These factors combined with a changing climate and a general populace that is only short of revolting thanks to the infinite variety of 'bread and circuses' available to us. It's like this is by design or something...

tinus_hn 8y ago

‘...post Jobs era...’ /s

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

dominotw 8y ago

> A slowdown in China this big is actually huge news so I'm surprised so many people are missing the forest for the trees. I don't think ppl are ignoring it. Appl cannot only be a 'good economy company'. Look at Xiaomi for example in your link, its winning international markets by making good affordable phones. Apple should adapt to the market conditions, like xiaomi did, and give ppl what they want in all economic circumstances. Pointing out that apple is( self-admittedly) a fair weather company is not missing forest for trees. From your own link > Samsung loses ground in global phone market as Chinese rivals gain share > While Samsung still leads the world in smartphone sales, it’s being squeezed by Chinese handset makers like Huawei Technologies Co. I think I missed it somewhere but where did samsung say that their slowdown is due to 'poor economic performance' of china?

dep_b 8y ago
> Look at Xiaomi for example in your link, its winning international markets by making good affordable phones. True, but that's why Samsung is hurt more than Apple. > Apples should adapt to the market conditions and give ppl what they want in all economic circumstances. There's a hole in their phone line-up about the size of an iPhone SE or iPhone 6. I think the new iPhones are great and there's something to be said to have premium and super premium tiers. Their Mac line-up used to be four different products as well divided in more or less the same way (pro / prosumer and desktop / portable) where in this case it should be premium / super premium and phablet / pocketable. The pocketable premium phone doesn't exist anymore.
- dominotw 8y ago
  > True, but that's why Samsung is hurt more than Apple. It should hurt apple too right? doesn't 'poor economic performance' mean ppl are buying cheaper phones(xiaomi) vs appl's expensive phones? Chinese didn't just stop buying phones( looking at those graphs) but just stopped buying expensive apple phones. Apple blaming the economy is like farmer blaming the monsoon instead of admitting that he should've built a reservoir last year.

IkmoIkmo 8y ago

Cue the guy assumingg weak performance in China is solely due to macroeconomic and trade issues, and not, say, due to Apple making an uncompetitive value offer with its products in a major market, where some (not all) competitors do fine or thrive with better price/quality offers.

mixmastamyk 8y ago
Isn’t samsung in a similar situation? The article also mentions car purchases are down.
- pas 8y ago
  How is Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi and Huawei doing? Maybe Apple and Samsung simply fell out of vogue? Alas so far I haven't found any real data, only this chart showing Apple slowing down in Q3 already: https://venturebeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/idc-smartphones-q3-2018.png?resize=1024%2C515&strip=all?w=1910&strip=all https://venturebeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/idc-smart...

Hippocrates 8y ago

Yes, it's insane how media and commenters have latched onto the $29 battery upgrade as if it is the headline of the press release.

partiallypro 8y ago
Maybe Apple shouldn't have mentioned it, since they are the ones that blamed the battery upgrades.

shrimpx 8y ago

I think people are saturated with rehashed versions of yesterday's technology. Remove a headphone jack here, round some screen corners there. Yes there's "economic deceleration" a major factor being a stalling of innovation.

csomar 8y ago

> It means less foreign investment capital will be coming to the West and might potentially signal another global recession. It could be the other way. Capital flight from China to safer grounds.

tooltalk 8y ago

Samsung's earnings have been hit, but not by similar factors. Samsung's declining earnings has all to do with the declining memory price. The company had been under pressure to increase production to lower the price of memory products all year last year. Apple's problem is in China, fewer unit sales -- their timing is pure coincidence. Also note that Samsung's market share in China is almost nil, from #1 just four years ago. The company has really nothing to lose at this point.

partiallypro 8y ago

Ok, but "armchair strategists" at Apple themselves blamed batteries on their conference call. You want to know the main reason for the revenue shortfall? Market saturation. China certainly has to do with it as well, but generally Chinese fluctuation have been offset by other markets...but now they aren't, due to saturation.

auiya 8y ago

Wasn't the whole point of the iPhone SE to shore up the lower end for exactly these types of situations? Why then did they kill it and simultaneously release the most expensive versions yet? It's easy to say "well China had a rough year" but if your business model doesn't account for market swings like that you're Doing It Rong™