China No Longer Apple's #2 Market After Revenue Plunges
Apple has had its fair share of setbacks in China this year, what with the banning of iTunes and iBooks in April, the Apple News app being blocked, Apple TV remaining unavailable and a local court ordering the American technology brand to stop selling the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in Beijing just last month.
The latest blow to Apple's China Dream is its abysmal third quarter revenue reports for 2016, which show that China lost its title as the tech giant's second biggest market. This comes on the heels of Apple launching its cheapest ever iPhone in order to be more competitive when taking on cheap homegrown rivals Xiaomi and Huawei.
Apple's revenue during the last quarter fell to USD8.8 billion, down 33 percent year-on-year. Europe, which dropped back to become the third-largest market in 2015, was able to reclaim its #2 spot place with a USD9.6 million revenue.
It's the second bad quarter in a row for the Cupertino-based company, which reported a record-breaking decline in earnings in April.
Meanwhile, recently released remarks from Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei were pretty tough on Apple. Ren called the company "conservative" and "cowardly":
Apple has so much money, but they’re too conservative. We don’t have money, but we invest it as though we were rich. Even without money, we dare to do things. Apple has so much money; why don’t they dare to do anything [new]?
If Apple wants to continue leading society forwards then we can follow, but if they don’t dare to invest [in innovation] then we can only follow ourselves, and we’ll become a company that has as much money as Apple.
Ouch. Perhaps Tim Cook is due for another China visit soon.
[Images via Atlas, TechInAsia]
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