Apple takes a big hit in Washington’s trade war with China
Apple has lost about $200 billion in capitalization this week as a result of the latest moves in the trade war between the United States and China: in return for the trade sanctions and component import restrictions imposed by the United States, Beijing has prohibited government officials and employees from using the iPhone at work, and is now progressively extending those restrictions to all state agencies and public companies.
In a country with a state-controlled economy and where the public sector accounts for a very large number of workers, sanctions like these will hit Apple hard: owning an iPhone in China is a status symbol for many, but the trade war is making it less popular, and even unpatriotic.
Add in the recent launch of the Huawei Mate 60P Pro+ and the huge foldable Huawei Mate X5, high-end handsets equipped with a mysterious seven-nanometer chip, the HiSilicon Kirin 9000S — the US cannot work out how it was made with the lithography technology available in China without violating its sanctions — and the Chinese smartphone market looks set to be dominated by domestic players.
We should remember that Beijing’s restrictions on iPhone use are the same as those the United States and other countries have imposed on their government workers with respect to Huawei and ZTE devices, or…
