Apple Plans Two More Chinese Research Hubs as iPhone Sales Slow – Bloomberg (Mar 17, 2017)
Two things worth noting here. Firstly, another big commitment by Apple to China, following its billion0-dollar investment in ride-sharing service Didi last year, with the total of these R&D center investments reaching about half a billion dollars in their own right. That signals again that Apple is very serious about continuing to be a big force in China, and is in fact increasing its investment there rather than backing down. That’s important, because in this piece as in other recent ones on Apple in China, the prevailing narrative is that Apple is losing ground there. At a basic level, of course, there’s truth to that over the past year, with declining iPhone sales, though the picture in PRC as opposed to the Greater China region Apple reports as a segment is a little less clear cut. The reality is that the “super-cycle” driven by the iPhone 6 launch led to unprecedented sales everywhere, but nowhere more than in China, and so the comedown has been that much bigger too. But Apple is positioned to start growing in China again in the coming year, and it will continue to be a crucial market for Apple.
via Bloomberg (press release in Chinese here, with Google translation here)
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