2024-1016 [Quartz]: Apple is losing to Huawei in China. Here's why
Quartz interviewed Professor Tsay about the competition between Apple and Huawei in China.
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China is “more isolated” than it was during its superpower status in the 2010s, Tsay said.
Meanwhile, companies are “trying to extricate themselves from being too reliant on China,” and Western governments continue to ban China’s access to certain technologies, such as equipment to build advanced semiconductors.
“You combine that all together with the rise of domestic products, and if people, locally, can feel a little bit good about themselves by supporting the home team, there’s a little bit of something in the trend,” Tsay said...
The competition between Apple and Huawei in China is also tied to the difference in what Apple can offer its U.S. consumers versus its Chinese consumers, Tsay said.
Apple’s advantage in the U.S. is its control over its ecosystem, according to Tsay, allowing it to deliver a differentiated user experience. China, however, has a “unique situation” where its “version” of Apple’s iOS is WeChat.
“You almost don’t need the tightly integrated, walled garden of the Apple ecosystem in China to deliver that experience because it already exists inside the WeChat world,” Tsay said. “That gives the local cell phone companies an advantage in the sense that they can use Android or their own version of Android or a brand new operating system — they don’t need to create that self-contained ecosystem that Apple has so painstakingly created over the years because Tencent already did it for them by creating WeChat.”