Focus and coming out with more innovative features and products, not the same phone or iPad last 3-4 years. Look at iPadOS and WatchOS and iOS, they are just sad and slow adding new features. Remember Apple was a 3T company last year. There are of course higher expectations. Maybe hire more people instead of focusing on stock buybacks. Apple is losing its lust. Once was viewed as cool having iPhone or iPad, its no longer the case. Just same thing upgrade camera and cpu every year.
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Apple's iPhone Shipments in China Fell 33% Last Month
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and free government monitoring thrown in. bargain...
Nice headline. but if you know anything about Chinese calendar, you'll know financial people won't do comparison using Jan and Feb data.
Apple's iPhone shipments in China dropped by 33% in February compared to the same month last year, according to governement figures (via Bloomberg).
A report from China's Academy of Information and Communications Technology showed that foreign brands shipped around 2.4 million smartphones last month. Given that Apple is the only overseas vendor with a meaningful market share, the company accounts for the vast majority of those shipments.
The decline in February marks the third consecutive month of lower iPhone shipments. Apple in January shipped some 5.5 million units in China, which is around 39% fewer handsets than the same time last year. In December, the company suffered a 30% year-on-year decline in the country.
Apple appears to be facing an uphill battle to reverse falling iPhone sales in China, with a 24% year-on-year decline in 2023 projected to deepen through 2024. Apple resellers in China have been increasingly dependent on discounts to shift iPhone 15 stock. The discounts followed Apple's own rare price reductions on its website ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday in February.
Apple's efforts to counter the slump are also likely to be hampered by China's decision last year to ban iPhones from the offices of multiple government agencies and state companies. China has a huge number of state-owned enterprises in power generation, seaport construction, mining, manufacturing, education, and investment markets.
Apple is also having to contend with strong interest in Huawei's latest home-grown Mate 60 lineup, which was released in September just weeks before the iPhone 15 launched. Huawei's Mate 60 Pro uses a new China-made 7-nanometer processor tailored for the local market, showcasing the kind of advanced semiconductor manufacturing capabilities that US sanctions were originally designed to prevent.
The overall Chinese smartphone market contracted by almost a third in February, according to research firm Canalys. Analysts still predict growth over the course of the year, but expect iPhone 15 sales to keep falling while local rivals continue to aggressively promote AI features in device marketing. CEO Tim Cook visited China earlier this month to Apple's newest store in Shanghai and attend the China Development Forum in Beijing, where he said the country was "critical" to Apple.
Article Link: Apple's iPhone Shipments in China Fell 33% Last Month
"Maybe hire more people instead of focusing on stock buybacks."
Really? You think that's the focus of Apple's 160,000+ employees?
there's a lot of salty people over Apple being successful...
To be fair, it's not like there's no reason. Apple has become a penny-pincher with nothing to back prices. The second you look outside Apple's offerings, which isn't hard to do outside of the US where people don't care nearly as much about the ecosystem, it becomes clear that the thing Apple offers over competitors is a higher price for a stagnating brand image, making it a worse deal. iPhone 14 and 15 are mid-rangers priced like upper-high end devices outside of the US.
I'm sure a huge chunk of people want them to fail, but a lot of us are begging for them to do better. Yet here they are, on their way to release another €969* ($1,048!) device with 128GB of storage and a 60 Hz screen to carry them through big 2025.
after 15 years phones are a mature market at saturation point.
look at tvs. they are exactly the same. buy this years or last years model and they pretty much are the same item. the odd tweak or design refresh.
iPads offer so many different price points. and where have all the Android ones gone? i look at what's available there and there isnt much on offer that excites. another mature market.
Microsoft 365 is fairly boring too. And Windows 11. 11 was about as underwhelming as you could get with a new version number.
even watches have been around for 9 iterations.
my 5 still works and the only reason to upgrade is that battery doesnt last all day like it used to.
Apple have picked up the pace on chip designs though. M1, M2 and M3 have been rapid. and are at the forefront of laptops and desktops. Guessing you arent excited about the recent Apple Vision Pro? This is groundwork dev kit for a future consumer price point item.
there seem to be two main factors worth considering here:
gee, I’ve focused a lot on the Pro models in this comment. maybe I’ve got the same issue Apple does…🧐
- China’s share of overall Apple market revenue [third behind the Americas and Europe, if this is anything to go off of]
- Apple’s responsibility to maximize shareholder return
gee, I’ve focused a lot on the Pro models in this comment. maybe I’ve got the same issue Apple does…🧐
there's a certain glee watching someone you have never had any discussion with hit that thumbs down button on every one of your posts... you know very soon they will hit their daily limit 
It told me “#1 reason: to satisfy Wall Street”
The Chinese are not stupid. If you can't sell any more innovations and still charge high prices, then they will drop out at some point. You have to go back several generations to see a significant difference in iPhones for consumers. Personally, I think between 13 and 15 there is no explainable difference for $1000+ upgrades every year. USB C and Fantasy Island are not reasons for such an expensive change... Since Russia is more or less gome from the Apple-Market and now China is also declining, things are starting to get tight for Timmy. It's time to rethink price and performance...
That's not true. You can buy Chinese brand phones including OnePlus and TCL in the U.S. Global/international versions of others like ZTE, Oppo, Xiaomi, etc. are also available in the U.S. through Amazon and other retailers.
You just outlined what I predict as the rise and fall of Apple. This is where Steve shined he was not mostly controlled by the bottom line.
Problem is, business friendly countries are becoming more and more difficult to find. Even the US, once the bastion of free markets, is weaponizing its agencies to file bogus claims against Apple and even against a certain individual.
Besides, in this case, China is not the problem. Lack of innovation is. The Chinese people were happy to gobble up Apple gear when they were innovating.
They should get rid of the iPhone pro lineup and have a single flagship phone like they used to for many many years. The only iPhone (if they really want to in two different sales), should actually have upgrades from the year before like that just a name change and hopefully not just messy bugs and no features in the latest iOS.
Apple hasn't changed the model much since the iPhone has come out. I think they made some significant missteps with changing materials in cases and bands, which I hope they reverse with the 16.
Sadly, some people conveniently and intentionally ignore that truth. Why? Because that's at odds with the decades old need to take a swing at Apple and Cook everyday.
That's if you count the dynamic island as an "upgrade," personally for me it's a significant downgrade. Otherwise, yeah...
Apple cutting labor costs in USA to compensate, just not in a layoffs sort of way. Store in my area has geniuses doing sales at a one-to-many capacity, and from the looks of it, theres not much other staff. Huge contrast to a year ago when you could walk in and buy a product from a specialist who worked with you, not 6 people slowly.
I would like to add another thing - shrink profit and decrease price of not only iPhones. In my case if Appl wants more money from me, then make iPhone more price affordable compared to SE. Since then - mwahahaha if the decrease in sales is not the usual - consequences of my own actions.
More like rethinking strategies of maintaining long term profit rather than shortsighted way to bump up revenue that is unsustainable.