Is Apple doing enough to reach Chinese customers? Not even close, if you ask Lenovo. According to The Financial Times, Lenovo’s founder Liu Chuanzhi said his company is “lucky that Steve Jobs has such a bad temper and doesn’t care about China. If Apple were to spend the same effort on the Chinese consumer as we do, we would be in trouble.”
It's a bit odd for a company chairman to speak about competition in that way, and a Lenovo spokesman later said the remarks were uttered during a "relaxed" moment during a dinner interview. But is Chuanzhi right?
It's true that it took several years for the iPhone to finally reach China (although the phone is actually manufactured there) and that Apple only has a handful of stores in China (the first was opened only recently, in 2008). Furthermore, a lot of what Apple has to offer lies within its brand, and Chinese customers are all about value which -- compared with the price of its products -- is not one of Apple's strengths.