Edible Apple

One year ago, Lenovo CEO Liu Chuanzhi expressed relief that Apple wasn’t taking China seriously.

“We are lucky that Steve Jobs has such a bad temper and doesn’t care about China,” Chuanzhi explained. “If Apple were to spend the same effort on the Chinese consumer as we do, we would be in trouble.”

I don’t know if that was an official challenge, but Apple has since taken Chuanzhi up on his pseudo-dare and is eyeing the Chinese market with utmost seriousness. During Apple’s most recent quarter, for example, $3.8 billion of Apple’s revenue came from China. Moreover, Tim Cook explained that Apple has yet to scratch the surface in China – and with reports that Apple has already inked a deal to bring the iPhone to China Mobile’s 600 million+ subscriber base, it’s hard to argue that Apple doesn’t care about China anymore.

So much for Steve Jobs’ bad temper.

Late last week, the Financial Times reported that Apple’s sales in China have for the first time passed Lenovo’s with respect to shipment volume.

Revenue wise, Lenovo during the most recent quarter reported sales of $2.8 billion. As we mentioned earlier, Apple during the same period recorded revenue of $3.8 billion.

Of course, the comparison isn’t necessarily analagous.

Apple’s revenue is derived from Mac, iPhone, iPod, and iPad sales whereas Lenovo is primarily a PC business. Still, with the PC itself a nebulous term, one can argue that how a company makes their money is largely irellevant. After all, Apple had the foresight to recognize that what we deemed as a PC was changing from standard notebooks and desktops to mobile devices.

To be fair, Lenovo isn’t exactly slacking. Indeed, the report is more a reflection of Apple succeeding than Lenovo failing.

Year over year, Lenovo’s PC sales rose 23.4% and the company’s share in the Chinese PC market increased by 2.3% from the same quarter a year-ago to 31.7%.

via Financial Times