Apple Could Lose Rights to iPad Name in China

[rosen380]

Do you have a source for the 3 of 5 stat?

http/www.apple.com/retail/storelist/

On their store finder, they list five Apple stores in China. On the US page, there are 246 US Apple stores... I count 363 total, which puts just over two-thirds in the US and just one in 72 in China.

Granted, you didn't want to check my sources, so why am I not surprised that you didn't check the 3 in 5 source...?

 

[rosen380]

'Considering the great success Apple is seeing, I think that China is a huge market for them right now, regardless of the average person's net worth. Maybe China has so many people that there are still enough people in China that can afford Apple's overpriced products."

If the average Joe in China has about a tenth of the assets of the average Joe in North America/Western Europe, then lets ballpark the market as one tenth the size. If they'd expect to sell about 20-30M iPads in the US per year [long term], and China has four times the population each with 10% of the buying power, then maybe the market there is something like 8-12M units per year. That certainly isn't nothing and they would save some money since they only need to be transported within the country, not shipped overseas, but it also means building a huge amount of stores [which costs a lot of money] or allowing existing stores to re-sell [which also costs them a lot of money because they are sharing the mark-up].

Sure, if they really did have 60% of their stores already there, then I bet they give a pretty big crap about it-- but I can't find any evidence that they do...

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]rosen380[/nom]Do you have a source for the 3 of 5 stat?http/www.apple.com/retail/storelist/On their store finder, they list five Apple stores in China. On the US page, there are 246 US Apple stores... I count 363 total, which puts just over two-thirds in the US and just one in 72 in China.Granted, you didn't want to check my sources, so why am I not surprised that you didn't check the 3 in 5 source...?[/citation]

"This could deal a crippling blow to Apple's China operations, as Shanghai is one of Apples biggets single Chinese markets, with 3 of the company's 5 Apple stores there"

Pulled that strait from the article that we commented on. No, I didn't check it, but that is stated right above here... Reading your comment I now realize that this was probably intended to mean three out of the five stores in China are in Shanghai, my bad for misunderstanding a poorly worded sentence in the article.

Either way, with Apple having a lot of the assembly of their products (all of it?) done in China, they have to care about not being able to export their iPads through China. Apple cares greatly about China and will continue to care about it so long as the factories that produce Apple products are located in China, regardless of how many Apple products are actually sold there.

 

[del35]

The name iPad is quite ludicrous. iCrap should be grateful.

 

[rosen380]

Of course the export issue is a huge deal-- if China does block the export, what do you think will happen? Do you think every other company that produces things in China will have second thoughts, concerned that their billions invested in production there could come to a screeching halt?

China blocking the export of iPads for this trademark dispute [without maybe giving them a very generous amount of time to work out manufacturing elsewhere] would almost certainly lead to the loss of tens of millions of jobs in China [that will just go to Malaysia, South America, India, etc] -- there is no way the Chinese government will allow that to happen.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]rosen380[/nom]Of course the export issue is a huge deal-- if China does block the export, what do you think will happen? Do you think every other company that produces things in China will have second thoughts, concerned that their billions invested in production there could come to a screeching halt?China blocking the export of iPads for this trademark dispute [without maybe giving them a very generous amount of time to work out manufacturing elsewhere] would almost certainly lead to the loss of tens of millions of jobs in China [that will just go to Malaysia, South America, India, etc] -- there is no way the Chinese government will allow that to happen.[/citation]

I agree with you there, but I'm not sure about Apple caring about what happens to the other companies and the Chinese workers. I was pointing out why I think Apple would dislike China blocking exports, not why most other people would dislike this happening.

 

[rosen380]

I wasn't really saying Apple cares about anybody, just pointing out that CHINA blocking the iPad exports has a decent chance of scaring away some of the large companies that have their production there away. And a long with that perhaps millions of jobs, that despite being under $2/hr, are pretty high paying for the area.

I am saying that if CHINA cares about the economic value of having these mega corporations sticking manufacturing in their country, then they probably shouldn't do crazy things over what is a minor trademark infraction [if there is one at all, we don't really know what Apple bought from ProView].

 

[acerace]

[citation][nom]SirGCal[/nom][/citation]Quiet = Making little or no noise...Quite = To a considerable extent or degree...It's a small typo, but in this case, a pretty confusing one. I also was confused to what you meant until I figured out what you were trying to mean.But on topic;Still, I don't think it's going to matter one way or the other. Apple will just drag it out until the company no longer exists. The only thing that might be a thorn to apple is if somehow the courts did stop the imports/exports temporarily. Otherwise it's only something for Apple's lawyers to do for a few months.[/citation]

Oh my, I didn't realize that. Thanks very much for that.