[hendersoon]

Neither pricing nor the economy fully explains why Apple's suddenly doing so poorly in China and not in the US or EU. They're triggers certainly, but not the root cause. There's one keystone here-- WeChat.

In the US and EU, Apple has people locked into their ecosystem. That doesn't apply to China. WeChat is their alpha and their omega. They use it not only for chatting, as you might expect from its name-- WeChat is in many ways their _entire operating system_.

You pay your utility bills with WeChat, it's your social network, map app, phone app for VOIP, video calls, you access local services, your banking, payments like Venmo, your healthcare, read the news, buy stuff from online stores, EVERYTHING is in WeChat.

And WeChat is cross-platform.

[jdminhbg]

And WeChat has been all of those things for years, so what's different about 1Q19?

[izacus]

General availability of significantly cheaper, but still quality, phones from Huawei, Xiaomi and other competitors.

[nicoburns]

Are many people really locked into the apple ecosystem. Most apps that people here in the UK use are cross-platform too...

[hendersoon]

The key differentiator is that in China your smartphone can in many ways be abstracted down to the platform that runs WeChat. So Apple's key lock-ins like iMessage and FaceTime don't matter and it has to compete on price.

Apple greatly increased prices in the US/EU also and many of these regions are facing a recession too, but according to Tim Cook's letter those consumers didn't abandon the iPhone. What's unique to the Chinese market? WeChat.

[nicoburns]

Hmm... I'm not convinced by that. At least in the UK, I don't know many people who use FaceTime (WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are the most popular video chat software). People do use iMessage, but that falls back to SMS if you don't have an iphone, and SMS messages are universally free here these days.

[taobility]

But in UK, there is not too many alternative phones, like Huawei, OPPO/vivo, Xiaomi. All those local players in China are based on Android, but still provide customized OS with unique features.

[nicoburns]

Huawei and Xiaomi phones are both available in the UK, along with the usual Samsung/Sony/Nokia, etc options.

[taobility]

But they are not UK's local manufactures. They are same as Apple as foreigner brands.

[niteshade]

As a UK counterpoint, most of my friends and family (at least 15 people) use iPhones and iMessage/FaceTime is a major reason for sticking to the Apple ecosystem for us.

[lozaning]

To add to this, if you travel to China, find someone ahead of time that you can prearange to send USD to in exchange for red envelopes in WeChat. Getting it setup with any of your own banking is a royal PITA, and many places only accept wechat payment or alipay.

[dpflan]

Do you know of any good analysis, reports, discussions about the rise, impact, and influence of WeChat?

[Markoff]

no, I don't see we are in Europe locked in apple ecosystem, we use WhatsApp/messenger over here, nobody really user imessage, seem like some protection of american using archaic SMS or imessage

as for WeChat again wrong, THE map app it's Baidu maps, for shipping you have Taobao and JD, not WeChat, same for watching TV shows, same for short funny videos, same for other social stuff, same for games

you are overstating significance of WeChat, yes it has monopoly in messaging and social networking plus significant majority in payments over Alipay but that's it, other uses drop a lot and don't hold so during foothold over other apps