News circulating on the Internet recently stated that certain groups will not be able to use iPhones in public, which directly caused Apple's market value to plummet by one trillion yuan, highlighting the huge impact of the Chinese market on Apple. China is now Apple's largest revenue source market. This year In the second quarter, China surpassed the United States for the first time to become the number one market for iPhone sales.
The withdrawal of Apple and Foxconn is a waste of money. Their success is inseparable from the Chinese market and Chinese manufacturing. When Apple first launched the iPhone, Nokia was the global leader in mobile phones, and Nokia held more than 40% of the market share in the Chinese market. However, China provided opportunities for Apple, and Chinese operators also actively supported Apple.
In the 3G era, China's two major operators, China Mobile and China Unicom, competed for iPhone users. In the end, China Mobile won, and China Mobile also became the winner in the 3G era, with the number of new users reaching 300 million, while China Unicom Gained nearly 150 million users. With the support of Chinese consumers, Apple launched its first large-screen iPhone 6 in 2014. Apple ranked first in the Chinese mobile phone market for the first time in Q4 of 2014.
For Foxconn, the Chinese market has made it even more brilliant. Its founder Terry Gou was still a small boss when he came to the mainland to invest in the 1980s. He was not ranked in the foundry industry. Mainland China provided him with the opportunity to set up a factory. With many conveniences, it has surpassed Quanta and other Taiwanese foundries in more than 10 years, becoming the world's largest foundry.
When Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, Foxconn and Apple hit it off immediately. Foxconn aggressively built factories in many cities in mainland China, mainly to undertake OEM production of iPhones. At its peak, Foxconn’s number of employees in mainland China reached 1.3 million. China’s efficient and high-quality manufacturing achievements It has created high-quality iPhones, thus also achieving success for Apple and Foxconn.
In recent years, under the influence of many factors, Apple has begun to promote its manufacturing plan in India, prompting Foxconn and Wistron to set up factories in India. Although they all claim to be developing smoothly in India, in fact they have suffered setbacks in India. After all, India is It’s not called a foreign-owned cemetery for no reason.
Wistron should be the worst company to set up factories in India. Wistron sold its iPhone foundry in mainland China in 2020 and went all out to set up factories in India. However, in more than two years, Wistron has suffered successive losses in India. Troubled by problems such as vandalism and employee shutdowns, it took two years of development in India to have 10,000 workers. However, such a "small-scale" factory was favored by an Indian consortium and was eventually forced to sell the Indian factory. Wistron closed all its businesses, and Apple only handed over 1% of its iPhone 15 orders to Wistron, thus sending Wistron away.
Foxconn is not doing well in India. It took Foxconn more than three years of development in India before the number of factory employees increased to 17,000. This is completely disproportionate to Zhengzhou Foxconn's two years to reach 300,000. Wistron's setback is even more frustrating. Foxconn is on pins and needles. Foxconn has scaled back its expansion plans for its Indian factories and withdrawn from its chip plans in India. It has returned to Zhengzhou and established Foxconn's new business headquarters in Zhengzhou.
For Apple, the Indian market is even more useless. The number of iPhones sold in India is only about one-tenth of that in the Chinese market. Moreover, Indian consortiums have set their sights on Apple and asked to participate in Apple's retail store plan. This has reduced Apple's position in India. The development is cast a shadow. After all, the Indian consortium is quite greedy and Apple is equally strong. I am afraid that Apple’s development in the Indian market will not go smoothly in the future.
The Indian market is obviously far from being comparable to the Chinese market. With the news coming out of China, the Chinese market becoming the largest market for iPhone may be short-lived, and the reaction of the capital market has also revealed that Apple’s prospects in the Chinese market are not good. Once Apple has suffered a heavy setback, and Foxconn, Apple’s main OEM, may not fare well either.