CHINESE iPhone shipments jumped about 12 per cent in March after Apple and its retailers slashed prices, official data showed, suggesting efforts to arrest an accelerating decline in sales are yielding early results.
Government data showed shipments of foreign-branded smartphones – the vast majority of which would have been Apple’s marquee device – grew to 3.75 million units in March from a year earlier.
That is an about-face from a 37 per cent slump in the first two months of 2024, according to Bloomberg’s calculations off a monthly report by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology.
The official readout emerged after Apple chief executive officer Tim Cook, addressing an analyst’s question last week about the March quarter, said the iPhone business in mainland China grew without offering more details.
Apple has struggled to turn its Chinese business around since 2023, when the rise of local rivals such as Huawei Technologies and an unofficial ban on the use of the iPhone in state agencies and firms began to depress its most important market after the US.
The academy’s data showed that foreign phone shipments were down 27 per cent in the first quarter of 2024 overall.
Apple and its Chinese resellers began cutting prices around the start of 2024. Last week, it surprised investors with a decent beat on quarterly revenue from China, countering months of data that showed a quickening decline in iPhone sales.
