An Apple Inc. (AAPL) Smartphone Update From China, Where Does The Company Stand?

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has made it perfectly clear that it wants to dominate the China smartphone market in the years to come. While this is a nice goal to have, there are many companies standing in Cupertino’s way.

Even CEO Tim Cook has talked in depth about the fact that China could be Apple’s biggest market in the future.

For now, Cupertino is struggling to keep up with the competition in this market. In addition to stiff competition, many believe that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is lagging behind due to a lack of a more affordable smartphone.

Is it possible that the release of a cheaper iPhone could be just what Cupertino needs to gain more market share in China? While this is a good question, it is one that it not going to be answered until the company actually moves forward with this idea. Whether or not that happens in the near future is up for debate.

According to a study by Sino Market Research, reported by DigiTimes, “Samsung Electronics posted the largest market share of 18.8% in April 2013” in the Chinese market.

Once again, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is losing out to Samsung. This is definitely Cupertino’s number one competitor, not just in China but in many other parts of the world as well.

However, this is not the only bad news for Apple. The company is trailing many others in this market. Here is an excerpt from the DigiTimes piece:

“China-based vendors Coolpad, Lenovo, Huawei Device and ZTE ranked second to fifth with respective market shares of 11.5%, 11.2%, 10.1% and 6.4%, while Apple ranked sixth with 5.4%, Sino was cited as indicating. China-based vendors together occupied 71% of the market while international vendors had the rest.”

As you can see, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is losing out to more than just Samsung. The company and its iPhone is sitting in sixth place and trailing some smaller competitors such as Huawei Device and ZTE.

Even scarier for Apple has to be the fact that Samsung is holding onto nearly 19 percent of the market while it struggles to reach 6 percent. This means that Samsung has more than three times the market share of Apple at the present time.

It will be interesting to see if these numbers adjust any as the months go by and the end of 2013 gets closer.

For now, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is in sixth place and hoping to grab some momentum in the months to come. If the company hopes to do so, a cheaper iPhone may be the answer. All eyes are on Cupertino. What is the company going to do next?