Against a background of the intensifying trade war between the United States and China, with Donald Trump recently announcing fresh tariffs on Chinese products, the ‘Boycott Apple’ movement in China is gaining huge public support in that country.
BuzzFeed News recently reported a surge in anti-Apple posts on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter. One poster said: “I feel guilty watching the trade war. Once I have money I will change my smartphone (iPhone).”
The conflict is starting to make Chinese consumers aware of the fact that their own country produces smartphones that are as good as the iPhone or better. As another post put it:
“I think Huawei’s branding is amazing, it chops an apple into eight pieces.”Yet another user wrote:
“The functions in Huawei are comparable to Apple iPhones or even better. We have such a good smartphone alternative, why are we still using Apple?”This is, of course, not the first time that the ‘Boycott Apple’ movement has become prominent in China. In December 2018, Chinese businesses rallied behind Huawei and started to offer huge discounts to employees who shunned Apple’s iPhone and instead bought Huawei devices.
According to a report in the Nikkei Asian Review, this decision came after Huawei’s CFO Meng Wanzhou was detained in Canada at the request of the United States. More than 20 firms took to social media and publicly stated that they intended to buy more Huawei products.
Readers might remember that Apple had yet another setback in China recently after a court in that country banned the import and/or sale of the majority of iPhone models. This came after Qualcomm was granted an injunction against Apple.
To escape this ban, Apple subsequently made a small tweak to iOS with iOS version 12.1.2, and then claimed that it applied only to China.