iPhone Sells in China Despite Criticism
The iPhone is popular in China, although in most quarters, its share lags behind a number of Chinese smartphone brands. The partial demise of what was China’s formerly best-selling brand Huawei (pvt) a result of US trade sanctions, has given Apple a bit of room to gain former Huawei customers as iPhone buyers, although other Chinese brands have also gained share for the same reason. The lower price of the iPhone 13 have even more incentive to Chinese buyers when it was released last year but there is a certain status associated with the US brand in China and that is also a contributor to the iPhone’s success and share on the Mainland over the last two years.
That success seems to have continued with the recent release of the iPhone 14 line, which is available for pre-order in China. According to numbers from JD.com (9618.HK), who hosts the Apple store, just 24 hours after the iPhone 14 line became available for pre-order, 2m orders had been placed, despite the fact that no price reductions relative to last year’s models were given. In fact it was noted that some configurations were seeing mark-ups over standard pricing. Significant was the fact that the two iPhone 14 models that the iPhone Pro Max and the iPhone Pro, the two of the four models that contain the new A16 Bionic chip and are the most expensive models, received the most orders, 1m and .8m respectively, while the iPhone Plus and the iPhone 14 models received only 10% combined.
This all comes as the iPhone 14 line received a lukewarm reception from critics, with little innovation, both from the technology and the design, from many reviewers, with which we agree. It would seem that relative to Huawei’s most recent offerings, which do not offer 5G, the iPhone offers both more valued features and the cache of status to Chinese buyers, especially in the premium smartphone segment. Complaints about the fact that Apple’s China site was slow or unable to process payments during the onset of the pre-order period seemed to create a bit of a stir, but the with that number of orders going through, roughly matching the popular iPhone 13’s first 24 hours last year, the site issues did not seem much of a deterrent.
That success seems to have continued with the recent release of the iPhone 14 line, which is available for pre-order in China. According to numbers from JD.com (9618.HK), who hosts the Apple store, just 24 hours after the iPhone 14 line became available for pre-order, 2m orders had been placed, despite the fact that no price reductions relative to last year’s models were given. In fact it was noted that some configurations were seeing mark-ups over standard pricing. Significant was the fact that the two iPhone 14 models that the iPhone Pro Max and the iPhone Pro, the two of the four models that contain the new A16 Bionic chip and are the most expensive models, received the most orders, 1m and .8m respectively, while the iPhone Plus and the iPhone 14 models received only 10% combined.
This all comes as the iPhone 14 line received a lukewarm reception from critics, with little innovation, both from the technology and the design, from many reviewers, with which we agree. It would seem that relative to Huawei’s most recent offerings, which do not offer 5G, the iPhone offers both more valued features and the cache of status to Chinese buyers, especially in the premium smartphone segment. Complaints about the fact that Apple’s China site was slow or unable to process payments during the onset of the pre-order period seemed to create a bit of a stir, but the with that number of orders going through, roughly matching the popular iPhone 13’s first 24 hours last year, the site issues did not seem much of a deterrent.
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