A new survey by the Chinese consumer attitude shows that one of the biggest hits due to the US-China trade war has been taken by Apple and its brand image. Now, this is not the case in the US as it is still the top brand when it comes to smartphones but this survey is regarding the Chinese consumers.
It is said that Chinese consumers are not happy about how Apple handled the US-China trade war and Apple’s brand value has come down in their mind. It is known that Apple has stumbled down to number 24 in China’s top brand while it was on number 11 last year. However, Apple was fifth in the ranking a few years back and it was believed that they would become the number 1 brand in the coming months.
On the other hand, Huawei which is believed to be Apple’s biggest rival in China came up to the second spot which took a huge hit in its brand value globally, however. While the first brand in China according to popularity still remained Alipay which is owned by the Alibaba group.
According to one report, there was a lot of patriotism involved in what happened during the US-China trade war. “There’s a lot of nationalistic buying in that category because Chinese consumers interpreted what happened to Huawei as an attack,” said a person familiar with the matter.
Basically, people in China were taking the ban on Huawei in the US as a personal attack since their own company was banned from operating with US companies. Therefore, people started buying Huawei phones more and almost boycotted Apple which meant that Apple took a steep decline in that duration.
However, the report mentions that Apple and Intel don’t have to worry as they remained No. 3 and 9 respectively in the ranking. Because of the fact that “Some Western brands are so integral in the lives of Chinese consumers, they’re almost predisposed to not losing relevance,” “There are no Chinese alternatives so those remain super relevant.”
