Across the world, the biggest smartphone manufacturers are Apple (28%), Samsung (24%), Xiaomi (12%), Oppo (6%) and Vivo (5%). However, there are geographic patterns in popularity, with Apple dominating North America and East Asia, while Samsung leads in South America, Europe, Africa and West Asia in addition to its home turf of South Korea. Xiaomi is the most popular phone brand across South Asia, Spain, Venezuela, Ukraine, Madagascar, Kyrgyzstan and Palestine, while Tecno is popular in West and Central Africa. Oppo, Vivo and Huawei lead in Indonesia, Bhutan and Togo respectively.
It’s “leading” with only ~20% market share, though.
More than enough for Apple to bend to pretty much whatever the Chinese government is asking for.
Sure, 20% of 1.4B is 280 million, more than almost any country’s total population.
Some people don’t use smartphones. An article in prioridata states that, in this year, 974.6 millions of Chinese people use smartphones. They are still a lot of Apple users, but less than 200 million, still probably similar to their USA customer base to put it in perspective.