On January 15th, a reporter from Nandouwan Finance News Agency noticed that Apple's official website had launched a promotional notice - announcing the launch of the "Spring Festival limited time discount" from January 18th to 21st, which mentioned that multiple Apple products would experience price reductions and the latest iPhone 15 series models would be added for the first time.
According to industry insiders, according to Apple's previous sales style, the new phone series usually only lowers prices after the Spring Festival or during the 618 period in the following year. Even discounts mostly appear on third-party platforms, and the official website prices have remained firm. So, it is rare to announce a price reduction directly on Apple's official website this time. As a result, the entry "Rare Big Price Reduction on Apple's Official Website" appeared on Weibo's hot search that day.
According to the information on the Apple page, this event will use eligible payment methods to purchase specified products from January 18th to 21st, with a maximum savings of 800 yuan.
The activity content shows that users only need to purchase specified Apple products through eligible payment methods to receive a maximum discount benefit of 800 yuan. A reporter from Nandouwan Financial News Agency found that the products participating in the price reduction event involve multiple product categories such as iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Among them, when purchasing iPhone 15 series, iPhone 14/14 Plus, and iPhone 13, you can get a discount of up to 500 yuan. When choosing iPad Pro, iPad Air, 10th generation iPad, and iPad mini, you can save up to 400 yuan.
The biggest discounts are on Mac products, including 13/15 inch MacBook Air (M2 model) and 13 inch MacBook Air (M1 model), which can save up to 800 yuan. In addition, Apple Watch SE, AirPods, and Apple Pencil products also have certain discounts.
However, it should be noted that the number of products participating in this promotion is limited -30000 iPhone products, 5200 iPad products, 750 Mac products, 1000 Apple Watch products, 2500 AirPods products, and 540 Apple Pencil products.
A reporter from Nandouwan Finance News Agency noticed that during the same period last year, Apple launched a New Year's price reduction campaign on its official website in China, specifying that Apple products can save up to 1000 yuan. However, at that time, the latest series of Apple phones did not participate in the event, and this year's New Year's Eve event, compared to previous New Year's Eve events, Apple significantly increased its iPhone inventory and added the latest iPhone 15 series models for the first time.
In fact, Apple launched a cross year promotion last year, which had a positive impact on its sales - global smartphone shipments decreased for the fifth consecutive quarter in the first quarter of 2023, with a year-on-year decrease of 13%. Therefore, the market had previously believed that the iPhone was difficult to stand alone in the overall environment, and a decline in sales was inevitable. However, Apple's second quarter financial report for 2023 showed that iPhone revenue in the second quarter was $51.334 billion, accounting for about half of the total revenue, reaching 54.1%, an increase of 2% from $50.57 billion in the same period last year, far exceeding market expectations of $48.84 billion. At that time, Apple ranked second in the world with a market share of 20%.
According to data from research firm BCI, a total of 270 million smartphones were sold in China last year, with the iPhone holding 17.1% of the market share, ranking first and being the best-selling smartphone in China in 2023.
And this time, the iPhone 15 series in China participated in the "New Year's Price Reduction Campaign" for the first time. Some industry insiders believe this is related to the change in the trend of the Chinese mobile phone market in the fourth quarter of 2023. Although Apple still ranked first in the Chinese mobile phone market with 15.0116 million activation units in the fourth quarter of 2023, the activation volume for the entire quarter decreased by 10.6% year-on-year. In December, it was only 0.18% lower than the second place Xiaomi market share, and compared to Xiaomi The gap between Huawei has been rapidly narrowing, and the first position has been challenged, mainly due to the continuous hot sales of domestic high-end flagship smartphones such as Xiaomi 14 series and Huawei Mate60 series, which have seriously impacted the sales of iPhone 15 series.
According to the latest data released by Counterpoint, the Chinese smartphone market is showing signs of recovery, with an average year-on-year growth of 11% in the first four weeks of October. During the two-week sales period from October 30th to November 12th, Huawei and Xiaomi's sales increased by 66% and 28% respectively compared to the same period last year. The sales growth of Huawei and Xiaomi has driven a year-on-year increase of 5% in total sales of Chinese smartphones during the Double Eleven period.
It is worth noting that as Apple's main model this year, the iPhone 15 series is not the first time it has announced a price reduction. A reporter from Nandouwan Finance News Agency found that during last year's Double Eleven, the official flagship store of Taobao offered discounts of 700 yuan for iPhone 15 and 15 Plus models, and 500 yuan for 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max models, exceeding previous years.