On December 7, the Financial Times disclosed that amid Apple's sluggish rollout of AI functionalities in China—the world's largest smartphone arena—Chinese smartphone manufacturers are seizing this opportunity to market phone-switching applications. These apps are designed to facilitate iPhone users' migration to the Android ecosystem, thereby capturing a larger market share. Throughout this year, China's five leading domestic smartphone producers have all rolled out such applications, simplifying the process for users to transfer data from Apple's iOS system. This enables them to use Chinese-brand smartphones while still keeping their Apple devices. Despite the iPhone 17 experiencing a 22% year-on-year sales surge in China one month post-launch, suggesting that consumer worries over its AI feature shortcomings were less severe than rivals had anticipated, the strategies employed by Chinese smartphone makers still present a formidable challenge to Apple.
