China’s smartphone makers are attacking each other, but they should be attacking Apple

It’s no secret that China has some pretty cool home-grown smartphones. From startups like Xiaomi, Meizu, and Smartisan to the bigger players like Huawei, there are lots of options in China for those looking for an affordable but powerful Chinese-made smartphone. But it’s also no secret that these companies don’t get along. Xiaomi, Meizu, and Smartisan have been trading barbs for a while as they compete over the US$300 smartphone market, and more recently Xiaomi and Huawei have been engaged in mud-slinging.

As entertaining as all the drama is, I think all of these companies have the wrong target. If they want to sling mud, they ought to be slinging it at Apple and Samsung. The reason is simple: both of those companies still have a big market share, but they have probably never been more vulnerable.

Last year, Apple controlled nearly 13 percent of China’s smartphone market. That may not sound like a lot, but it was enough to make the Cupertino-based company the third-biggest smartphone vendor in the country, lagging behind only Nokia and Samsung in terms of users. But since then, Xiaomi has rocketed past both Apple and Samsung. Huawei now has the same size market share that Samsung does. It’s clear that home-grown smartphone makers have gained a lot of ground in China over the past year.

But no Chinese company has really gone whole-hog in attacking Apple or Samsung the way they frequently attack each other. It’s not hard to understand why: their high-end products are in a different price range, and both companies have a brand awareness that even China’s hottest smartphone startups can only dream of. Moreover, the iPhone is seen by many as a luxury product and a kind of a status symbol. The merits of the product itself don’t even really matter. People will pay US$700 for the phone because it’s an iPhone, period. Most of them don’t know or care what kind of processor it’s using or how many megapixels the camera has. The same is true, though to a lesser extent, for Samsung’s high-end phones.

That’s good for Apple and Samsung, because in terms of the actual product, many Chinese companies offer compelling alternatives at much lower price points. Personally I went from Apple to Xiaomi and then back to Apple when the iPhone 4 came out, and my next phone will probably be a Xiaomi. It definitely won’t be an iPhone. In my opinion, the iPhone just isn’t different enough to justify the massive price increase. And in a year when Apple’s big iPhone “innovation” was a bigger screen and its newest phones are apparently bending, it shouldn’t be that hard to convince people that on a product level, these Chinese phones offer the same things an iPhone does at a lower cost. Unless, of course, they care about the brand.

Many Chinese consumers do care about the brand, but now is the time for China’s smartphone companies to make a case for why they shouldn’t. After all, Apple’s iPhones can hardly be a real status symbol at this point, can they? It ought to be easy to argue that iPhones and Galaxies aren’t really status symbols when they’re both pretty common sights on a public bus. Instead of attacking each other, Chinese companies should be be capitalizing on the momentum they have and attacking the Apple and Samsung brands: these phones aren’t better, and they’re certainly not more unique or exclusive. They’re just more expensive.

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Smartphone makers like Xiaomi have the product quality to compete with Apple, and their climbing sales numbers prove that consumers want what they’re selling. Instead of trying to drag each other down, Chinese smartphone makers would be better served by focusing on Samsung and Apple, and trying to take an even deeper bite out of their market shares. That would further strengthen the domestic smartphone industry, and it might make the PR atmosphere a little less toxic.

So here’s my message to China’s smartphone makers: if you want to fight, aim at the high-end market and fight Apple and Samsung. Otherwise, put the mud down and focus on making the best product possible, not composing the best passive-aggressive Weibo barb. The current status quo of constant infighting is only hurting the industry.