Lenovo: Apple is losing out in China | Hacker News Reader

Lenovo: Apple is losing out in China

ft.com

19 pointsmjfern28 comments

Well, first of all the article is just a PR release from Lenovo claiming Lenovo is ahead of their competitors. Not very surprising.

Not to say that they are wrong. But I think the main reason is piracy. Windows has been so popular in China and Eastern Europe primarily because pirated copies of the OS could run on a variety of hardware. Apple OS is designed to run on a rather limited set of hardware. This is also coupled with generally a easier way to download pirated version s of Windows software vs. Mac OS X versions of the same software.

The large availability of Windows then creates an environment for a home grown software market that runs on Windows only, which in turn make Windows even more desirable.

A third factor is perhaps the design. Apple products cost a lot more, it seems, because Apple feels their applications have a much better designed UI. It is true, and I am not arguing with that. But that UI is designed to appeal to American and Western tastes and preferences. Or, rather, Americans and West Europeans would pay a lot more for a well designed UI vs an an with equivalent functionally but without a polished UI. In other words, they are happy running Office in Windows and using Windows' file manager vs paying more to run the same version of Office and using Mac OS X file manager on Apple hardware and software.

I would add more points:

- availability: Apple's presence in Eastern Europe and China is spotty. Plus the value added services do not work (cannot buy from iTunes Store? What's the integration of Apple stack good for, if you can't use it?). This point was partially addressed in the article, that Apple is planning to open new stores in China.

- pricing: They also use strange exchange rate for their prices. It is cheaper to fly to New York, have a weekend in nice hotel, purchase a Mac and fly home, than just purchase it at home. Western Europe has similar problem - at the time, when 1 EUR = 1.5 USD, Apple used 1:1 exchange ratio. WTF?

- service: it is bad, really bad. When something breaks and you need your Apple product fixed, you don't want to wait for weeks until they bother to do. On the other hand, the competition tries hard, I have experience of having my stuff fixed NBD (no, I didn't purchase NBD service).

Regarding the MS Office - they are not the same. MSO2007 for Windows is better than MSO2008 for Mac. Not only it is significantly faster, but also has more functionality. So when it comes down to decision, whether you want to look at aqua widgets or have solver available, it comes down to getting your job done.

"But I think the main reason is piracy. Windows has been so popular in China and Eastern Europe primarily because pirated copies of the OS could run on a variety of hardware"

Isn't the reason kind of irrelevant? I mean of course it is relevant, but to point out that "yeah, but it is because..." is just making excuses.

Why would it be irrelevant? Without it being known (or theorized for hypothetical discussion), any discussions as to its future direction or how it came about are aimless. You might as well say that it'd be irrelevant if the main reason were because Chinese like Clippy, or that a bunch of gerbils typed out the article. Both would have massive impacts in the reception of this article, and how other software companies react to it.

As I said, it is relevant, but not in a "yeah, but..." kind of way.

Wagh, I totally misinterpreted that, must've been zoning out or something o_O Need more coffee!

The article hasn't mentioned OS X or Macbooks anywhere. The article is talking about the limited success of the iPhone.

> that UI is designed to appeal to American and Western tastes and preferences

You know, even in the American and Western countries it took Windows 7 just one month to surpass OS X's marketshare, reaching 10% in only 4 months.

After the failure that was Vista, you could say that customers are fed up ... but apparently a lot of people prefer Windows. Over 90% of them, Chinese or not.

obligatory Win7 joke: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/10/30/seventh-house/ (my sentiments exactly)

I wonder if the beta launches helped things... my dad tried the beta. Probably the first beta he's ever touched. But I'm not aware of the scope of 7's beta push as compared to Vista / XP / whatever, just that it was pretty shockingly successful from what I've seen.

And I think a lot of customers prefer (their) Windows (-only software), and what's familiar over something more radically new (however minor). Don't discount people's laziness in choosing what to buy. Similarly, Apple is pretty wrapped up in being fashionable now, and I wonder how well they'll do if any real design-competitors arise.

> "it seems, because Apple feels their applications have a much better designed UI"

and

> "But that UI is designed to appeal to American and Western tastes and preferences"

These lines killed your last paragraph, they are completely baseless, what do you know about design and how it relates to product valuation or cultural preference to support these assertions? I know a bunch of ethnic Chinese, Indians and Arabs who use Macs and iPhones.

Being a Brazilian and having the majority of my family in Israel, I think that Apple strategy for developing markets, and some markets such as Israel and the Gulf States where people that earns the same amount of money the common American earns are not uncommon, is a mess, it is basically something Apple inherited from 90s and the situation is slowly improving, although with the money that the company does have it should be faster.

What I know is that ideas about usability, layout, functionality and design differ between cultures.

Think about interior design and architecture, for example, you'll find different cultures look at those differently.

> These lines killed your last paragraph, they are completely baseless

They just reflect my hunch. You are free to tear them down.

Also, you are arguing a general point by providing a small sample of your acquaintance (i.e. "well, my couple of friends use Apple, so see there are some Chinese using it, there it has the same appeal to all the Chinese exactly in the same way as it does for all the Westerners").

The reasons I listed are in order of importance. I still maintain that piracy is the main reason. The other reasons are just wild guesses.

So, premium gadgets are worse off in a country where the entire national income is about 2.5 times less than the disposable income of the USA?

Shocking.

Na. Chinese pay good money for high quality stuff. They'll pay a high proportion of their income into a few well-targeted purchases. If they don't want a good item, then they pay next to nothing for a low-quality knock-off. But high-quality stuff sells well.

Mac is losing because QQ (IM client) works better on Windows, and Xunlei (torrent client) is Windows-only.

  Mac is losing because QQ (IM client) works better 
  on Windows, and Xunlei (torrent client) is Windows-only.

Those are two pieces of software which would be trivially easy to port to OS X. I doubt they're the primary reason the Mac isn't doing well in China.

> Those are two pieces of software which would be trivially easy to port to OS X

Not really. QQ login requires QQDoctor which is a ring3 level driver. Thunder has it's own network stack to speed things up.

What's the reasoning behind implementing a ring3 driver for an IM Client and a custom network stack for a torrent client?

> What's the reasoning behind implementing a ring3 driver for an IM Client and a custom network stack for a torrent client?

To fight against rampant keylogger and malware in China.

Once you starts Thunder without speed limit or concurrent connection limit, your whole LAN suffers.

Sorry, what?

http://cl.ly/6d3c5bbf3dc88653693e

it lacks several core features, like audio & video chat, group file sharing, etc. Millions of years passed now it's still Beta.

Yes, but where is disposable income growing faster? I'd rather own a small slice of an expanding market than a bigger piece of a stagnating one. The US (& by extension Europe) is financially overstretched on both the government and consumer level.

From what I know about Chinese consumer psychology, Apple could double the prices of iPhones & make more sales. The Chinese love luxury products.

From what I know about Chinese consumer psychology, Apple could double the prices of iPhones & make more sales. The Chinese love luxury products.

I've been in front of the Versace and Gucci stores in Paris and when the Chinese tourists come they are absolutely swamped. They could buy the cheaper knockoff in their own country but it's considered low-class to walk around with those. And once you've seen the real thing you know how to spot a KIRF

Per capita GDP is deceiving, because the wealth gap between the urban middle class and rural population is huge.

For example, Guangzhou, a metropolitan city, has a per capita GDP of $23,232, about the same as Portugal, yet the country as a whole averages $6,567. (wikipedia 2009 numbers)

edit: links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangzhou

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prc

you're right, this is same in east asian, south asian and africa. There people want value for money to make buying decision and value = features ... more features means more value, i clearly remember that iPod was a super-flop product because it only played recorded music while other mp3 players played music, radio, had a voice recorder etc. so it was very difficult for apple to gain any grounds against other mp3 brands like sony, Lg, samsung etc. Apple product thus are for classes and not for masses (at least in that part of world where price against features plays a major role).

>Speaking of Apple’s chief executive, Lenovo’s founder and chairman, told the Financial Times: We are lucky that Steve Jobs has such a bad temper and doesn’t care about China. If Apple were to spend the same effort on the Chinese consumer as we do, we would be in trouble.

Perhaps Steve Jobs worked out long ago only Chinese companies, e.g. Lenovo, succeed in China, so why try too hard.

Yeah. In other news, thinkpads are the best laptops ever.

(not sarcasm. There's a need for some lenovo fanboys, too.)

Most of the article reads like Lenovo CEO's scorned-love-poem from China: ". . . a manager needs to be the string on which he puts one pearl after another. But Jobs himself is a big pearl. . . has such a bad temper and doesn’t care about China. . ."

I suppose that Lenovo's CEO really wanted to talk about their new phone. But whatever tiny sliver of competition acknowledgement he let slip in turned his news coverage into a weird "CEO gives the competition advice" article.

I wonder how well the iPed is doing.

Lots of iPhone clones & Gucci bags on the subway last time I was in Shanghai: when the device is mostly a fashion accessory UI & hardware quality does not matter all that much. Not sure if the iPad is a fashion accessory in China yet though.

Not really - Apple still has the better product.

China is losing out on Apple.

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