A week after what appeared like a coordinated
attempt by China’s state-run TV network to
have celebrities badmouth Apple’s customer service in social media,
a newspaper known as the Chinese government’s “traditional mouthpiece” publicly
went after Apple over another issue: the way it handles media relations. For a
country so prized by Apple, why all the Apple hate lately?
The
Wall Street Journal has a good post on the recent
drama. It explains that these recent brushback pitches the state-run media
outlets are throwing could be the government’s way of defending Chinese
companies from being crowded out by foreign competitors, or its way of “doing
more to encourage the growth of domestic smartphone companies and eat away at
dominant foreign companies, such as Apple.”
In the most recent case, it’s not clear if Apple’s
PR team in China is acting any different than their PR teams do everywhere else
on the globe – let’s just say Apple is extremely choosy as to what kinds
of requests it responds to.
This story is important because Apple’s increased
presence in the country, and how its products and brand are portrayed, is
critical to Apple’s future: CEO Tim Cook said he’s set his sights on
China becoming Apple’s No. 1 market eventually. Right now,
it’s No. 2, behind the U.S., but China’s growing population along with the
company’s growing momentum in sales make it almost inevitable that the Chinese
market will one day be the most important to the company.
But operating in a country run by the Communist
Party of China, which has outsize control over domestic businesses, industries
and press, means the rules are much different than almost anywhere else Apple
has a significant presence. As with the
copyright and trademark laws in the country, Apple’s
relationship with the Chinese state-run media is going to be something to keep
an eye on.
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