Challenges ahead of Apple as China becomes world’s biggest smartphone market – Part 2

But the Chinese market is a different culture in terms of sales and consumption of services. Samsung addressed the issue first and laid out a simple strategy on a simple dogma, if you want to increase profits, include everyone in the team.

“We make product innovation and make our brand very desired in the market,” Juha Park, senior vice president of product strategy, said. “That’s what we do to become a major player. We have been doing quite strong growth in the China market.”

Samsung not only has the largest cell phone carrier, China Mobile on its side but the company has inked sales and services agreements with almost every carrier in the country. This has helped its devices to penetrate deeper into the Chinese market with subsidies. Mind you, Chinese masses do not have the same purchasing power compared to the US public, on average of course.

On the other hand, Apple has recently shaken hands with a Chinese carrier, China Telecom, Inc., one of the smallest company in terms of customers. China Telecom had a total of 129.3 million wireless users at the end of January, including 38.7 million 3G subscribers as opposed to China Mobile’s 655 million subscribers. The start contrast is obvious, even to a layman.

Apple has put hurdles in its own growth by limited their partnership in China. In order to increase their market share, the company needs to include more carriers into the fold. That is the only way they are going to reach the vast population in the country.

“Having access to more subscribers gives vendors like Samsung an advantage,” said Teck Zhung Wong, a Beijing-based analyst with IDC China, who forecast the 52 percent jump in smartphone sales this year. “If Apple is going to continue to grow in the Chinese market, it has to consider very seriously a handset with China Mobile.”

Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=15493

Posted by Usman Khalid on Mar 12 2012. Filed under Sci-Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.