Apple’s China woes are due to overpriced iPhones, say netizens

For the first time in almost two decades, Apple lowered its revenue outlook, attributing it to the weaker-than-expected sales in China.

Chinese netizens know exactly what to blame: the ever-increasing price of iPhones.

Apple CEO Tim Cook issued a letter to investors and spoke to CNBC, where he cited the economic slowdown in China as the primary reason behind the revenue decline. He also said that the US-China trade war has greatly affected the company’s sales in the country.

Tim Cook has been making frequent trips to China, but it doesn’t seem enough. / Photo credit: Xinhua

Netizens were far more blunt.

“Is it really because of the slowed economic growth? Have you looked at your own products lately?” one of the top Weibo comments said. “Without any major technological breakthrough, iPhone prices have only gone up significantly. You think we are dumb?”

Another Weibo user wrote, “Let me translate what this means: there aren’t as many idiots as we once thought. Turns out, people don’t buy phones that cost more than US$1,400.”

The price of iPhones has gone up tremendously over the years. While the price of an iPhone 5 began at US$650 in 2012, an iPhone XS Max now costs US$1,099 – at minimum.

However, some – by some I mean Warren Buffett – believe that the iPhones are actually “enormously undervalued”. Buffet, an investor in Apple, said last year that a thousand-dollar iPhone is more indispensable than a million-dollar plane (which I suppose is easy to say when you’re worth US$80 billion).

In recent years, Apple’s market share in China has been challenged by many rising Chinese Android brands. According to Counterpoint, the top five phone makers in the third quarter of 2018 were all domestic Android brands.