Bottom line: China’s telcos won’t accelerate their 5G network building even if licenses are issued earlier than expected this year, though foreign equipment suppliers could benefit if Huawei is hobbled by the US-China trade wars.
5G coming to China sooner than expected?
What a difference a decade makes. That’s about how long has passed between China’s issuing of 3G wireless licenses and the upcoming issue of 5G licenses two generations later. I remember in the 3G era how China dragged its feet forever, and finally issued licenses several years after the rest of the world. This time around it appears to be moving more quickly, driven by what appear to be political and economic factors.
The topic has popped into the headlines again this week with word that China’s telecoms regulator will “soon” issue 5G licenses. (English article) The signals coming from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) have been pointing to a release of licenses this year all along. But this could mean that will happen sooner rather than later, since many were previously expecting licenses toward the end of the year. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Apple will continue discounting its iPhones in China to stop its sinking market share, which could slow but not halt its decline in the face of growing competition from the likes of Huawei.
Apple’s retail partners pare back China iPhone prices
Following a break of a month, I’m returning to my writer’s seat with discussion of the China outlook for tech giant Apple(Nasdaq: AAPL), which has turned to a very un-Apple-like strategy of discounting its products in the world’s largest smartphone market. China has been a fickle place for Apple, at one point accounting for nearly a quarter of the company’s global sales, as brand-conscious Chinese paid big premiums for trendy iPhones. That’s hardly the case now, with China accounting for just 15.6 percent of Apple’s total sales in its last quarterly report. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Xiaomi’s stock is probably oversold at current levels due to selling at the end of a lockup period, but will remain an underpeformer for at least the next 1-2 years until it can prove its strategy of moving up-market has legs.
Xiaomi’s stock takes a bath
It’s been a rocky week so far for smartphone wannabe Xiaomi(HKEx: 1810), which is desperately trying to show investors it’s more than just a maker of cheap, low-margin products. The company is getting set to unveil a new strategy to show it plans to wean itself from the low-end phones that are its bread-and-butter, with an upcoming announcement that it will spin off its popular Redmi line of cheaper models. (English article)
But that hasn’t stopped investors from dumping Xiaomi shares en masse over the last two days, in a major no-confidence vote over whether the company can actually execute that strategy. We should be fair here and note that the share dumping that has seen Xiaomi’s stock tank by more than 10 percent is at least partly due to the expiry of a lockup period following its blockbuster IPO last year. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: The US case against Huawei’s CFO is likely to end with her release on technical grounds as part of a deal between the US and China, though the company could still face punishment for illegally selling US products to Iran.
Huawei CFO detained for violating US anti-Iran sanctions
It’s a few days old by now, but I wanted to begin the new week by sharing some of my thoughts on the recent blow-up involving telecoms equipment giant Huawei’sCFO, who was detained in Canada at Washington’s request. At this point I mostly want to give my views on the politics behind this story, and also my take on how things are likely to play out.
I’ll start off with the view that this particular story has been a long time in the making, and anyone who thinks it was cooked up by Donald Trump as an excuse to wring concessions out of China is mistaken. I’ll also give my view that this kind of come-uppance for a corporate giant like Huawei is relatively deserved, since Chinese companies have basically thrived and grown as quickly as they have by frequently thumbing their noses at the law. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Huawei’s new push into India looks like a smart and well-timed move to take advantage of the country’s emerging middle class, and could help it take the global smartphone crown by the end of next year.
Huawei takes aim at India
As it creeps up on its goal of becoming the world’s largest smartphone maker, the controversial Huaweiappears to finally be waking up to the potential of the fast-growing India market. That’s the key takeaway from some Indian media reports last week, which quoted a company executive saying Huawei is planning a major push into an India market that it has largely ignored up until now.
The bigger theme in this particular story is that India is quickly emerging as a market not to be taken lightly on the smartphone scene. Global leader Samsung(Seoul: 005930) learned that early on, and until recently was the market leader before getting eclipsed by China’s Xiaomi(HKEx: 1810). I was quite surprised when doing some quick research for this post to learn that India actually passed the US to become the world’s second largest smartphone market in the third quarter, behind only China. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Washington’s punishment of a Chinese chipmaker accused of stealing from Micron Technology is part of a savvy targeted approach by the Trump administration aimed at spotlighting illegal business practices by Chinese tech firms.
Trump punishes China chipmaker for IP theft
I thought I’d begin this Monday with a wrap and look at what’s ahead for a Chinese chipmaker called Jinhua, which fell squarely in the crosshairs of Donald Trump’s trade war with Beijing in a series of breakneck developments last week. This particular case seems to be part of a growing pattern that is seeing Trump pick his battles one at a time, at least when it comes to handling Chinese technology companies.
We’ll review the details on this latest case involving Jinhua and its dispute with US chip giant Micron Technology (Nasdaq: MU) shortly. But the bigger picture is that Trump has accused Chinese companies of stealing US intellectual property and has made that issue central in his current push for a trade deal. Previously US companies with such complaints could only seek assistance from the courts, mostly in the US and EU, since few believe the Chinese court system could handle such cases effectively and objectively. But the government can obviously take action much more quickly and effectively, as Trump is showing with his latest actions. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: A Bloomberg report on Chinese government spying microchips in hardware used by Apple, Amazon and others may be flawed, but highlights the potential for such spying due to China’s important place in the global supply chain.
Controversy builds over story of China spyware
As I return to blogging after a couple weeks absence, I wanted to weigh in on an explosive story that ran last week in Bloomberg about tiny spying chips that had been secretly loaded by China’s military onto globally used motherboards. Quite a bit has happened since the original story’s publication (English article), which said that tiny custom-made chips developed by the People’s Liberation Army had secretly been installed into motherboards assembled in China by US hardware maker Supermicro (OTC: SMCI).
The story, which went out of its way to quote quite a few unnamed sources to bolster its credibility, went on to say that those motherboards had been used in servers used by a wide range of companies and government agencies, including Apple(Nasdaq: AAPL) and Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN). Everyone initially applauded the ground-breaking report, which appeared to show how China could easily insert itself into the global high-tech complex by taking advantage of its important place in the hardware supply chain. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Huawei could challenge Samsung for the global smartphone crown in as little as a year, though a potential Achilles heel could be the “outing” of its surging Honor brand that most may not associate with the Chinese parent.
Huawei passes Apple in global smartphone ranks
Smartphone pioneer Apple(Nasdaq: AAPL) has just reported its latest quarterly results, which means that all the data tracking firms can simultaneously release their own industry data showing the latest trends. Those trends show that Apple’s sales were basically flat for in the quarter on a unit basis, even as the bigger story was that the US giant lost its spot as the world’s No. 2 smartphone seller to a surging Huaweiduring the period.
The big picture is less that Apple is losing market share, and more that Huawei is surging in its march toward market dominance. Part of the reason behind the surge is booming popularity for Huawei’s sub-brand called Honor, which perhaps doesn’t carry the same stigma of the Huawei name. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Xiaomi appears to be gaining confidence of investors through moves like its entry into South Korea, but it will take at least another year to prove it really has the savvy to thrive over the longer term.
Xiaomi calls on South Korea
Newly listed smartphone maker Xiaomi(HKEx: 1810) has kept the world guessing these past two weeks with its on-again-off-again performance both on the Hong Kong stock exchange and now in the real world. The former is a reference to its stock, which did quite poorly in the run-up to its trading debut last Monday but has done a U-turn since then and posted some impressive gains.
The latter is a reference to the company’s latest strategic move, which has it launching its low-end smartphones in South Korea. That may not sound like much, since the market is relatively small and Xiaomi already sells its products in more than 70 countries and regions globally. But the symbolic significance is quite large, since South Korea is home to leading global smartphone maker Samsung(Seoul: 005930). Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Xiaomi’s stock is likely to be volatile over the next year and could move broadly downward as investors wait to see if the company’s comeback has legs and it can move into higher-end products.
Xiaomi fizzles in trading debut
Smartphone maker Xiaomi(HKEx: 1810) seems to have become the proverbial lead zepplyn sinking further and further into the mire as it finally made its trading debut in Hong Kong. The company has been dogged by skepticism almost since the get-go of its blockbuster IPO, which ended this morning here in Asia with the stock’s official trading debut. The question from here now becomes: how far will the stock sink before it finds a bottom, and what are its real prospects over the mid- to longer-term?
Let’s jump right in with the news, which had Xiaomi shares dipping 2.3 percent when their long awaited trading began here in Hong Kong on Monday morning. The shares opened at HK$16.60, versus an IPO price of HK$17. Things didn’t get much better after that, and the stock was down to HK$16.36 the last time I checked midway through the morning session. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: ZTE will experience fallout from its run-in with Washington through much of next year, and could see an even longer-term hit to its global business as international customers start to look for alternate suppliers.
ZTE off life support, but major challenges remain
The saga of embattled smartphone and telecoms equipment maker ZTE(HKEx: 763; Shenzhen: 00006) appears to be nearing an end, as trading resumed in the company’s stock following an official settlement with Washington over illegal sales to Iran. The ending to this story certainly came with a big climax, with ZTE shares plunging by 42 percent in Hong Kong on the first day after trading resumed.
They fell by a smaller 10 percent in China on Wednesday, but only because China places a 10 percent limit on daily rises and declines in individual stock prices. Not surprisingly, the stock was down another 10 percent in China on its second day of trade, while the Hong Kong shares did a dead cat bounce and were up slightly. Read Full Post…
