Apple's iPhone became the best-selling phone in China last year: Is it strange?

Recently, various data about 2023 have begun to be released, and some people on the Internet seem to have discovered Huadian. For example, domestic mobile phones are struggling, and the best-selling mobile phone in China in 2023 is actually the Apple iPhone.

Seeing this argument, I felt strange -- when was the Apple iPhone not the best-selling mobile phone in China? If you look back at the data of the past few years, it has always been like this? How has this become something worth making a fuss about?

If you look at the data of the last few years, it is not difficult to find that the Apple iPhone is the best-selling mobile phone in China for the vast majority of the time.

Realistically, if you want to change your phone and don't know which one to buy, the Apple iPhone might be the best choice. Even on the Internet, you can often see "isn't it fragrant to buy an iPhone at this price" on paper, and they don't even care about your data synchronization and usage habits, so they dare to tell you about iPhone YYDS. Why? Because that's what they think about the Apple iPhone.

But it is foreseeable that Apple's iPhone may not be the best-selling one in the future, and at best it can be maintained at the level of TOP3. And Apple's best-selling iPhone in the Chinese market in recent years should not have happened. What are the factors that cause Apple's iPhone to sell well in China, we can summarize three reasons.

1. Apple's only "nemesis" encountered force majeure

In fact, Apple's best-selling in the Chinese market is only a matter of the last three years. Apple has been the best-selling brand in the Chinese market since September 2021, and this state has been in this state until the end of 2021, and Apple will be firmly in the first position in the Chinese market in 2022 and 2023.

The last time Apple did this was in 2015. For six years, Apple has been slammed to the ground by a domestic brand, and has even been squeezed out of the top three in the domestic market.

If you query the data chart given by a third party before, it is not difficult to find that there is always only one brand in the Chinese market that can suppress Apple. With Huawei being added to the entity list in 2020 and difficulties in the supply of mobile phones, Apple has a chance to turn around in the Chinese market, and the market share line chart of the two brands has shown obvious trade-offs.

So if Huawei hadn't been sanctioned, it would not have been possible for Apple to become the best-selling mobile phone in the Chinese market, and Apple is a brand that has won Huawei by plug-ins. It is a pity that history has no ifs, everything can only be imagined.

2. Is the domestic mobile phone really "high-end"? Only the price is high-end

Although Apple won Huawei by "plug-ins", it was effortless to win against other domestic brands. It is not difficult to find some problems through historical data, that is, the "high-end" of other domestic mobile phone brands has no impact on Apple's iPhone share in history.

As far as the brands in the line chart are concerned, Apple turned over precisely because Huawei is in the darkest moment, and other brands have almost nothing to do with Apple. It's a brand in two worlds.

In the face of such data, one can't help but ask: In recent years, various brands have been claiming to "rush to the high-end", and all kinds of top-level flagships have come up with all kinds of tricks, but have they really succeeded? Why has it not had the slightest impact on the Apple iPhone in the high-end market? On the contrary, they are fighting each other just to carve up the market share other than the Apple iPhone.

Many domestic brands operate their top flagships like this, of course, they have no ability to stop Apple's iPhone, and it is no accident that Apple's iPhone sells well in China.

3. Apple users are trapped in the "besieged city" and don't want to change their phones anymore

Another reason why Apple can sell well quickly is that high-end users are trapped in the "siege", and many of them don't want to come out anymore. This is not derogatory, if it were me, I am used to using a brand of mobile phone, I will not toss to change, not to mention that changing from Apple is not just as simple as changing your habits, if you store a lot of data in iCloud and buy a lot of software in the App Store, some of which are still exclusive to iOS, then you don't want to change.

For high-end users, the only thing that can make people feel the urge to change their phones may be Huawei's flagship, but Huawei has been trapped by force majeure for a long time.

We can see that after the release of the Xiaomi 14 in December 2023, many users have been guided to switch from iPhone to Xiaomi, which is already an amazing feat after Huawei, and no other brand has been able to generate such appeal for a long time.

For more Apple users, because they have not been exposed to domestic mobile phones for too long, many people's cognition is still stuck in a few years ago or even more than ten years ago.

For example, when I said in 618, domestic mobile phones can't receive all kinds of messy promotional text messages, and some Apple iPhone users said they couldn't understand it. Not to mention counting on them to understand the differences in fast charging, taking photos, gesture operations, systems, etc.

So, will Apple's iPhone remain the best-selling in China?

The first is that the brand that has been able to suppress Apple has come back with their latest products, and there will be stronger products in the future.

The second is that Apple has encountered a situation that it doesn't want to see, in terms of Q4 data in 2023, Xiaomi, Huawei, and Honor are all rising, and Apple is declining. In two years at most, Apple's iPhone will give way. Since the release of the iPhone 15 series, Apple has seen unprecedented signs of both marketing methods and price cuts.