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Customers experience the iPhone 15 series at Apple’s flagship store in Hangzhou, eastern China’s Zhejiang province.
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CNN
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Apple is offering temporary discounts on iPhones and other products in China, a highly unusual move for Apple amid increasing competition within the Asian smartphone market.
As part of a sale tied to the Chinese New Year event, Apple’s official China website is listing discounts of up to RMB 500 ($70) on its latest iPhone lineup. As part of the promotion, which will run from January 18 to January 21, other flagship Apple products such as Mac and iPad will also be discounted by up to RMB 800 ($112) and RMB 400 ($56) respectively. is.
Third-party sellers sometimes offer discounts on Apple products, but Apple itself rarely has sales or deals. This is part of an effort to maintain a premium brand image, which is especially important as Apple seeks to attract buyers of high-end products in China.
The move to cut iPhone prices comes just over five months after Chinese technology giant Huawei launched its latest smartphone, the Mate 60 Pro. Huawei’s smartphones have been enthusiastically embraced by Chinese consumers, and their use of advanced chips has drawn scrutiny from U.S. authorities.
Around the same time that Huawei’s Marquis smartphone was released, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing anonymous people familiar with the matter, that China had banned central government employees from using iPhones. However, a Chinese government spokesperson later denied that China had enacted any laws or regulations banning the use of iPhones.
New discounts on iPhones in China are raising new questions about how demand for Apple products has been lately in the world’s second-largest economy. China has long been an important market for the iPhone maker, with about a fifth of Apple’s overall sales coming from China last year.
According to Counterpoint Research, iPhone 15 sales in China decreased by 4.5% compared to iPhone 14 sales in the first two weeks after its launch in September. And last week, Jefferies Research said in a note to clients that iPhone sales fell 30% in the first week of this year, Reuters reported.
China is one of Apple’s most important markets. In terms of sales, it ranks second after the North American market. However, China’s economy has struggled over the past year, hurting Apple’s overall growth. last week, apple lost its position as the most valuable company on the stock market, losing ground to Microsoft.
CNN’s Yong Xiong contributed to this report.