Employees man a Huawei Experience Store in Jiangsu Province. (Photo : Getty Images)
Apple declared a 21 percent loss in the third quarter in a report released recently. The 21 percent loss in iPhone sales amounted to $42.4 billion.
The sales were lower than expected by analysts and Apple attributed the sales dip because the company ls losing its grip on the Chinese market.
China is the largest market in the world. The country's current population of 137 billion is seven times larger than Western Europe and four times larger than the U.S.
Latest trends show that buyers prefer to buy cheaper phones manufactured Xiaomi or ZTE. These manufacturers sell units as cheap as $99 to $300.
The fierce competition in the smartphone market is ruled by Huawei, Lenovo, ZTE and Xiaomi. Each manufacturer is launching heavily-packed units with very low prices.
ZTE launched the Axon 7 this month. For a low price, the smartphone is loaded with a QHD display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 SOC, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage with microSD, a 20MP camera with dual LED flash, a fingerprint scanner, and 802.11ac Wi-Fi.
Huawei's basic smartphone, Honor 5, is selling at $120. ZTE stepped up an almost identical unit priced at $99.
This Android unit is ZTE's ZMAX Pro, which is packed with a 32GB storage capacity and a fingerprint scanner.
Even Samsung is finding a hard time to beat their price. Samsung's S7 sells for $700. An iPhone S6 sells for $800.
Other brands like HTC are feeling the crunch in sales loss. A price slash was done by HTC to remain competitive.
Apple also tried to remain competitive in the price war and launched the iPhone SE, which meant that Apple had to sacrifice a big chunk of its revenue.
Another competitor that is threatening Apple's sales is Oppo, who was reported to have claimed the to be the most purchased smartphone brand in the country and has stolen Huawei's top position.
