24/7 Wall St. Insights
- iPhone sales have surged in China, the world’s biggest smartphone market.
- Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) has struggled in the past against local manufacturers such as Vivo, Oppo, and Huawei.
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China is not Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) largest market, but based on its size, it could be. Estimates are that over 900 million people in the world’s biggest market by population have a smartphone, at least three times the U.S. number. Apple’s new iPhone 16 has taken this market by storm, with unit sales up 20% from last year, when the U.S. company’s flagship model was the iPhone 15. The research directly compared the iPhone 15 and iPhone 16.
The data comes from CounterPoint, one of the world’s most carefully followed electronics research firms. “We’re seeing strong iPhone 16 series unit sales in China,” its experts wrote. Moreover, iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max sales are up 44% over the same period, CounterPoint reported. Once again, the comparison is between last year’s iPhone 15 and the new iPhone 16.
The news also means that Apple is doing well against local manufacturers, which is the greatest threat to Apple’s sales. Vivo, Oppo, and Huawei have large market share in China.
Apple’s past struggles in China are evident in its quarterly earnings. In the most recently reported quarter, Greater China sales were $15 billion. This includes all of Apple’s products. The company does not break out product sales by region. That figure for Greater China compares to Apple’s total revenue for the period, which was $86 billion. The challenge is that Greater China sales dropped to $15 billion in the quarter from $16 billion in the same quarter a year ago. Apple will announce its latest financials on October 31.
The news is good for another reason. Some Apple observers worry that potential iPhone 16 buyers will wait for its most advanced AI features, which will be in the iOS 18 release at the end of this month. It appears that did not happen in China. There, buyers did not hold back.
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