Apple cuts iPhone prices in China as competition heats up

Apple (AAPL) has cut prices on its iPhones sold in China, specifically offering discounts to its products on Tmall, China's biggest e-commerce site. The aggressive cut comes as competition heats up with competitor Huawei as it released its latest high-end smartphone: the Pura 70 Ultra.

Yahoo Finance's Akiko Fujita joins Catalysts to break down the latest development for Apple in China and what it means for the device maker moving forward.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Catalysts.

This post was written by Nicholas Jacobino

Video transcript

Well, Apple is making changes to its iPhone pricing in China.

Yahoo Finance's Akiko Fujita is following that story for us and more Akiko Good morning to you, that aggressive price cut that we saw from Apple coming through on Apple's official site on T Mall, which is China's largest eCommerce site.

The discounts apply largely to iPhone 15 models with the steepest price cuts on the high end iPhone Pro Max model.

The price of the device is being slashed by as much as $318.

That's this week alone.

Apple offered price cuts before, but this is among the most aggressive, and it comes amid heated competition with Huawei.

Just last month, the Chinese Tech released its highest high end phone, the P 70.

The revival of Huawei is really ramped up.

Pressure on Apple in its largest overseas market.

Since Huawei's made 60 was launched last fall, the company has chipped away at Apple's market share in China.

IPhone sales fell 19% in Q one, according to the latest data from Counterpoint Research, with Apple capturing just 15% of the market behind vivo and honour, and that led Apple to lose its lead in the global smart market, with iPhone sales falling 10% globally, according to I DC estimates.

And we keep saying this.

But that came at a time when global smartphone shipments increased 8% year on year.

Now there is some important context to provide here.

When you think about Apple's market share slipping specifically in China, which could have led to these steep price cuts, you look back to 2019 before Huawei was slapped with these very strict export controls coming through from the US, Huawei was a dominant player in China.

So in many ways you could argue with the re emergence of Huawei.

Huawei is just kind of taking back that market share, that it had pre export controls now that they've got their own domestic chip operation in place, Apple slipping.

But in many ways you could argue that Apple is kind of going back to where they were in 2019, where they had that competition on the high end of smartphones coming through from Huawei or right back to where we were before