Apple Offers iPhone Discounts in China as Competition Intensifies (reuters.com) 32
Apple is offering rare discounts of up to 500 yuan ($68.50) on its latest iPhone models in China, as the U.S. tech giant moves to defend its market share against rising competition from domestic rivals like Huawei. From a report: The four-day promotion, running from Jan. 4-7, applies to several iPhone models when purchased using specific payment methods, according to its website.
The flagship iPhone 16 Pro with a starting price of 7,999 yuan and the iPhone 16 Pro Max with a starting price of 9,999 yuan will see the highest discount of 500 yuan. The iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus will receive a 400 yuan reduction. The discounts come as consumers remain cautious with spending amid China's slowing economy and deflationary pressures, with the country's consumer inflation hitting a five-month low in November.
The flagship iPhone 16 Pro with a starting price of 7,999 yuan and the iPhone 16 Pro Max with a starting price of 9,999 yuan will see the highest discount of 500 yuan. The iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus will receive a 400 yuan reduction. The discounts come as consumers remain cautious with spending amid China's slowing economy and deflationary pressures, with the country's consumer inflation hitting a five-month low in November.
Which is it? (Score:4, Interesting)
Is it due to domestic competition, or consumers remaining cautious due to supposed economic pressures?
Imo, Apple has lost a lot of its lustre. Some will still buy just because it's Apple or they're locked into that ecosystem, but the number of such people are dwindling because Apple products just aren't significantly better, if at all. Many of the apps Chinese people use are essentially the same, and potentially better on non-Apple platforms if they're one of the prolific "mini-programs" which are usually using Web technologies and so are better with Chromium engines rather than mobile Safari. I've seem this myself with "discount games" being better on Android (non-GMS) than on iPhone, as well as there being more choice.
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The Chinese government banned Apple products for government employees on security grounds.
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smartphones as a commodity, discuss.
Since COVID-19, everyone deserves to be happy. Android users settling for Apple hipsters. Raining cats and dogs. Sheep laying down with wolves.
The destruction of humanity, I tells you.
tl:dr no one cares what phone you own, it's 2025 ffs.
Re:Which is it? (Score:4, Interesting)
The Chinese government banned Apple products for government employees on security grounds.
That was a tit-for-tat because the American government banned Huawei.
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That would be a dumb tit-for-tat because Huawei has been caught [breakingdefense.com] putting in back doors and Apple has been steadfast in making their equipment harder and harder for governments to break into.
It's much more sensible as pure protectionism and mercantilism.
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Most of your examples would be valid arguments to blacklist Cisco, and I think SDN is usually a good reason to avoid Cisco anyway. They're crap arguments to blacklist Apple, which you obviously know because you posted as AC. Your argument also ignores that, as my earlier link pointed out, Chinese companies -- including Huawei -- move, rather than remove, the backdoors that are reported as security vulnerabilities.
As for the example of undocumented MMIO registers being used in an exploit chain, that's an a
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Yes it was, but equally justifiable given what we know the NSA gets up to.
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Do you think NSA has made headway in getting backdoors into remotely recent Apple products? That would be required to justify picking Apple as the target for blacklisting.
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Meanwhile McAfee is just malware by corporate design, and Norton isn't much better, and both are ready to become weapons if the US electes a despot.
Google, Apple, and Microsoft do the spying for profit, and are saving the NSA a lot of money. Facebook builds shadow profiles of non users.
You might think this is all fine because you are an American and domestic/commercial spying is okay, but as a European there isn't much difference between what Huawei is alleged to do and what we know for sure US companies ar
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Is it due to domestic competition, or consumers remaining cautious
I would say a 6% discount does not say either of those. Apple can have declining sales for both and more reasons than that,
and the small discount is just a marketing tactic to try and drum up sales. A small discount is not able to overcome serious issues like those two matters, however.
If people are considering other competitors at a slightly lesser price, then Apple has already lost in a way, as their whole company's strategy is to
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Apple products just aren't significantly better, if at all
Their phones in particular are worse. They are missing ports that much cheaper phones with the same water resistance have got, the phones aren't as water resistant as they claim and they are infamous for denying warranty claims for devices used in humid environments claiming that they were submerged even though their magic stickers don't actually show the difference, the interface is terrible with far less discoverability or consistency than Android (what's up with that stupid software back button that's th
if you can "discount" it there... (Score:4, Funny)
why not everywhere?
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My 8 year old iPhone still gets regular security patches. Let me know when any Android phone can do that. The special colored bubbles are awesome actually. It tells me the message was actually received and I can send 4k video and not have it show up in potato quality. It's built into the OS and we don't have to all agree on a random third party app to use.
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My 10 year old Android devices are still getting updates. Let me know when your iPhone can do that.
I have an old iPad Pro but it's useless because it's stuck on iOS 16 and can't be upgraded. No custom ROMs, and Apple has excluded it from the new EU alternative app stores. It's unusable without decent ad blocking apps.
I'm trying to save it from e-waste but Apple don't make it easy.
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why not everywhere?
It's called Market Segmentation [wikipedia.org].
Splitting customers into subgroups and marketing to them separately with different pricing is basic business.
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Or buy it in China? :P
It's market share is 14% (Score:4, Insightful)
It's an also ran in China
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The Chinese market has a lot internal stratification. There's a huge difference between "86% of Chinese cannot afford an iPhone" and "14% of Chinese would choose an iPhone if they could", and the former is probably a lot closer to being true than the latter.
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Apple Vision Pro screwed them (Score:1, Offtopic)
After the Apple Vision Pro, it became more obvious that Apple sucks. It exposed Apple as just a bunch of idiots with brand aura. The Apple Vision Pro weighs nearly a kilogram, with most of that weigh pressing on your face --which can supposedly be reduced by wearing a top headband and fiddling with it for 30 minutes. Either way, it can't be worn for more than 20 minutes, maximum. They clearly hadn't tried on the product themselves. 100% guaranteed Tim Cook or anyone with power at Apple didn't try out the he
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After the Apple Vision Pro, it became more obvious that Apple sucks. It exposed Apple as just a bunch of idiots with brand aura. The Apple Vision Pro weighs nearly a kilogram, with most of that weigh pressing on your face --which can supposedly be reduced by wearing a top headband and fiddling with it for 30 minutes. Either way, it can't be worn for more than 20 minutes, maximum. They clearly hadn't tried on the product themselves. 100% guaranteed Tim Cook or anyone with power at Apple didn't try out the headset until launch day or after. They needed to reduce the weight at least 2x or 3x before launching that piece of shit.
The Vision Pro has as much to do with the iPhone as the Chevy Bolt has to do with the Chevy Corvette.