Apple Offers Big iPhone Discounts in China Amid Sales Slump

Apple is handing out big discounts on some iPhones in China, after a sales plunge in the first quarter and amid an intensifying rivalry with US-sanctioned Huawei.

The US tech giant launched an aggressive discounting campaign on its official Tmall site in China, offering discounts of up to 2,300 yuan ($318) on select iPhone models.

The discounts on offer are more substantial than the ones Apple offered in February.

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While the highest discount in the earlier campaign was 1,150 yuan, this time discounts are up to 2,300 yuan.

The steepest discount applies to the 1TB iPhone 15 Pro Max model, while other models also see significant price cuts. The 128 GB version of the base iPhone 15 model has a discount of 1,400 yuan, according to Reuters’ checks on Monday.

The sales campaign follows Apple’s rough start to the year in China — a market it led in terms of smartphone sales until last year.

In the first quarter, Apple’s iPhone sales in China sunk 6.6% amid a series of high-profile smartphone launches from Chinese rival Huawei.

During the period, Huawei saw smartphone shipments jump by 110% thanks to its Mate 60 series, whose surprise launch stunned analysts. The phones, backed by China’s first-ever homegrown 7nm chip, saw such massive sales that they ended a 10-quarter-long downturn in the country’s smartphones market.

In April, Huawei launched a new smartphone series — the Pura 70 — whose sales are likely to make the firm the biggest smartphone seller in China, according to Canadian research firm TechInsights.

The intensifying competitive pressure has added to Apple’s larger revenue woes. Earlier this month the company vowed to step-up its focus on sales in China.

Graph: Reuters

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A fresh round of discounts seems ideal considering Apple’s previous discounting effort appears to have helped the company.

Apple’s shipments in China increased by 12% in March, according to Reuters’ calculations based on data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT). That was a significant improvement from the first two months of 2024, when the company experienced a 37% slump in sales.