Monday, September 22, 2014

Politics Of Selling iPhones in China - Record 10 Million iPhone Sales Forced Beijing To Lose Face

Assuming you follow everything Apple either as a financial analyst (you guys suck by the way), Apple fan, or a general mobile tech fan, you know that Apple has not yet begin to sell the latest and greatest iPhones, the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.  Why is that?  Didn't Tim Cook say that China is one of Apple's most important market? 

Yes, but see with the Chinese government, as bad as they are, they really are worse than one might imagine because not only is it a biggest apparatus in the history of mankind at suppress freedom and truth, justice, and the American way (yes, to me, Superman still stands for that - DC, grow one, please), they really like people to respect them.  Fine, I'm okay with that.  But what they hate more than freedom is losing face.

Now, recently, Beijing has been bully foreign companies around. Why are they doing this?  Because many of these companies including Apple and Microsoft are American companies.  And spying scandals aside, Beijing is really trying to foster its own home-grown companies to compete better no only on its home turf but globally as well.

However, to think that Xiaomi, an even better copycat of all things Apple than Samsung is, will ever be a high-end player against Apple is laughable.  But Beijing is trying hard.  And that means if it can delay the sales of the new iPhones by a few days or weeks, it will.  Plus, I'm sure Beijing is also attempting to extract additional concessions from Apple.

However, Beijing did lose face today and big when Tim Cook, Apple CEO, announced proudly that Apple has sold more than 10 million iPhones since it went on sale in select countries on Friday, Setpember 19th (pre-sale started on the 12th).  While the number of 10 million is impressive compared to the sales figure of the 5S last year, there is one major difference.

Last year, Apple launched the iPhone 5S in China the same time it did in the US.  Let me repeat:  the sales of 5S and 5C during opening weekend was 9 million.  Without the Chinese market, Apple still managed to top that by 1 million. 

While, Apple only cares about making the best products it can, without actively participating in Beijing's political game, it for the Chinese government to lose a lot of face.  Beijing overplayed its hand with the iPhone sales. 


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