What happened to Apple?

Apple's share price fell by over 9 per cent today, following the news that Apple cut its Q1 guidance from a range of $89B-$93B to $84B. Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, also talked about the China-US trade tension would be a challenge that Apple would face in Q1.  People have been talking about if Apple is in its decline for years since Steve Jobs passed away; now I personally think it is the time to conclude that Apple is definitely in its decline. 

Apple has been dependent of its iPhone sales heavily for years. Although some Apple products are also popular and amazing, such as iPads, other Apple products simply do not have the ability to generate revenues which possible match the revenues generated from its iPhones. Nowadays the smartphone market is very competitive that there are not only many smartphone makers, but also each smartphone makers are producing various lines of smartphones which match different needs of different types of consumers. In some way, the smartphone market is still an oligopolistic market that the main competition is between Android phones and iOS iPhones. However, now smartphone makers are producing different distros of Android on their smartphones. Such move does not only increase the competition within the Android phone market but also increases the competition between Android and iOS, since some Android distros are a lot like iOS and provide even more functions which make them more competitive when comparing with iOS. Apple's iPhones are becoming more and more expensive but having less and less surprise, this is not appealing for consumers. In China, there are many local players who also produce very good smartphones, such as Xiaomi, Huawei and many others. In fact, a large proportion of smartphone producers are Chinese companies. Therefore, Chinese consumers have more choices and face better pricing policies by these producers, and why do they still have to choose Apple? Furthermore, the trade tension between China and the US is another big issue. The tension will make Chinese people more hostile towards the US, so they will prefer their local products rather than American products. 

Overall, Apple is losing in the Chinese market because of the trade tension and also losing the battle against the Android phones because Apple does not produce much surprise nowadays while Android phone producers are catching up in this game.