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Huawei had a few tortuous days after being blacklisted in the United States. But now people are worried that the treatment of the Chinese technology company could turn against one of the great success stories of US companies.
Apple may well be the victim of a retaliatory move in China. There are signs that Chinese citizens are ready to turn their backs on society, and analysts predict that fragile iPhone sales in the country could face new challenges.
On Wednesday, UBS gave customers a note explaining the risk to Apple if the national opinion turned against the company about the treatment of Huawei by the United States.
"Foreign consumer goods have sometimes been negatively affected in China by nationalist sentiment (which social media could potentially exacerbate)," said UBS.
"This could have been a factor as to the poor performance of the Apple iPhone in China at 4T 18. Although difficult to quantify, we consider this a risk for Apple and the Apple TV channel. supply. "
Read more: Google offers Huawei a brief reprieve by putting its Android suspension on hold
Business Insider reported last week on the "intense discussion" on Chinese social media about the actions taken by US President Donald Trump against Huawei. BuzzFeed News also said that users of the Weibo microblogging site were calling for a boycott of Apple products.
This is not the first time that the threat of an Apple boycott is launched. Chinese citizens and companies have promised to avoid Apple products after the arrest of Huawei's chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, in December.
The Nikkei Asian Review reported at the time that some Chinese companies even threatened to confiscate the iPhones of their employees and punish those who bought them.
Hu Xijin, the editor of the government-owned Global Times newspaper, said that he would switch to Huawei from an iPhone because the Chinese company is "unreasonably repressed" by the US government .
In a tweet explaining the decisionhe added that he did not support a boycott, however. "There are many loyal iPhone users in China and I think they are free to choose the brand of mobile phone they use," Hu said.
Bryan Ma, vice president of client research at IDC Asia-Pacific, echoed the comments. "There will be nationalists who will say no to American products, but there are many other users for whom it does not matter," he told the South China Morning Post.
But even a slight change of opinion with regard to Apple could be extremely detrimental for the company. Apple surprised observers in January by announcing a disastrous profit in which the quarterly vacation business figure would be more than 7.6% lower than its forecasts – largely due to a shortfall in China.
Apple's fortune has improved in China in the first three months of 2019, and the CEO, Tim Cook, pointed out at a conference on the results of last month what that he called the "enhanced trade dialogue between the United States and China".
But relations between the United States and China have dramatically worsened since then, and Apple could again be trapped.
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