“Apple Inc. will launch an expected ‘iPhone 8’ on Tuesday, hoping the number’s auspicious connotations in China will help turn around fortunes in the world’s biggest smartphone market after six quarters of falling sales,” Cate Cadell reports for Reuters. “Chinese shoppers, however, are already counting the cost, with the latest model tipped to have a price tag upward of $1,000 – roughly double the average Chinese monthly salary.”
“The success of Apple’s next iPhone in China is crucial for the Cupertino-based firm, which has seen its once-coveted phone slip into fifth position in China,” Cadell reports. “Greater China, which for Apple includes Taiwan and Hong Kong, accounted for roughly 18 percent of iPhone sales in the quarter ended in July, making it the company’s top market after the United States and Europe. Yet those sales have been declining steadily and are down 10 percent from a year earlier, in contrast with growth in all other regions.”
“Eight is the luckiest number in China because it sounds similar to the phrase meaning ‘to get rich,'” Cadell reports. “Mentions of ‘iPhone 8’ on popular Chinese social media platform Weibo – an indicator of consumer interest – were running slightly ahead of the similar period before the iPhone 7 launch, but were far more muted than with the iPhone 6.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Perfect! iPhone 8, the successor to iPhone 7, and iPhone 8 Plus, the successor to iPhone 7 Plus will be less expensive that Apple’s flagship OLED iPhone X. Try to keep up, Reuters.
So, what we have here is perfect naming (for a change) by Apple! The sky’s the limit for iPhone in China!
And, oh by the way: Newsflash: Apple sells premium products at premium prices to premium customers.
SEE ALSO:
Apple’s iPhone 8/Plus are updated iPhone 7/Plus with glass backs, wireless charging, faster processor – September 11, 2017
Apple’s next-gen iPhone names: iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X – September 10, 2017
Apple, enough with the stupid iPhone ‘S’ naming already – September 16, 2015
Sure, Cate Cadell, Apple chose the name for the new iPhone because of Chinese superstition. Or, it could be because 8 comes after 7…just maybe?
Reuters, you might want to perform employee appraisals, both for Cate and the editor, because this is crap.
the so-called editor in chief told her what to say to grab headlines, fake news, come on media get a spine and stick to facts not trumped up opinions
Actually, in Apple’s more recent numbering scheme for iPhones, “7” would be followed by “7s.” It could very well be that considerations of the Chinese market helped Apple decide to finally drop that unnecessary and confusing letter.
I only know a couple of things about the Chinese smartphone market. The Chinese seem to be very bargain conscious and will certainly grab any smartphone that’s offered for a bargain. I don’t believe the Chinese have any company brand loyalty apart from choosing domestic brand smartphones. I’m also certain most Chinese consumers aren’t in the market for high-end flagship smartphones if they’re only going to be using them to run WeChat.
It’s likely there are plenty of consumers who will still want iPhones but in such a saturated smartphone market my gut feeling says iPhone sales won’t be very high in China. I hope I’m wrong but the declining iPhone sales trend doesn’t give me much confidence. I think there are going to be a lot of Chinese companies offering bargain-priced smartphones to counter any iPhone sales.
I’m less concerned about China iPhone sales than Gene Munster telling people there’s going to be a huge sell-off of Apple stock. Man, these people make me sick with their Apple negativity. Boeing (55%) has gone up higher than Apple (42%) over the past 52 weeks, but I don’t hear anyone talking about selling off Boeing stock. I realize all stocks are not created equal but Apple’s cash reserve is more than double Boeing’s market cap.
This situation is so simple and predictable. Here come the Bullets:
• China: Criminal Nation
• Communism strangles incentive, strangles creativity, strangles invention, strangles innovation.
• Communist countries, as a result, rely upon CRIME to obtain new technology.
• Communist countries are intensely desperate to justify their existence by way for promoted nationalism.
• Communist nationalism includes keeping out all foreign influence, instead promoting their nation instead.
• But without invention, Communist countries decline into antiquity.
• Therefore, Communist countries use their CRIMES to obtain FOREIGN innovation and PRETEND it to be their own.
• The desired result is complete and total, FRAUDULENT, ISOLATION whereby the Communist Party can play MASTER and SERVANT with their populace by allowing the populace to make use of STOLEN IP within their own nation’s technology.
This isn’t hard! It’s history repeated over and over. It’s what’s going on in China: Criminal Nation and North Korea: Criminal Nation, ad nauseam.
End result: Who needs Apple in China?
Or rather:
• Apple doesn’t need China.
• China wants to steal all of Apple’s IP, as proven by their recent law, linked below.
• But of course Apple, send China your money for manufacturing because China also loves “8”, aka getting rich.
The Ultimate Mao Phone:
1) A line by line ripoff of the latest iPhone.
2) An IP by IP ripoff of the latest iPhone.
3) Each Mao Phone contains:
– a) One piece of rhino horn
– b) One piece of elephant tusk
– c) A quote from Mao etched on its CPU.
I’m only sort of being funny.
China’s cybersecurity law grants
government ‘unprecedented’ control over foreign tech
Relinquish your IP or lose one of the world’s largest markets
…The impact on foreign businesses has been severalfold, according to Hagestad.
“IBM has acquiesced building servers for Larkspur to serve (no pun intended) the Chinese banking industry; Apple has removed nefarious VPN applications from its app store to appease the Communist boys and girls in Beijing… ALL foreign companies must submit to data inspections, and most importantly, if there is Chinese data it can never leave the Middle Kingdom.”
Mighty Sick Shite IMHO.
Sadly, WordPress doesn’t allow editing of one’s blunders.
Sadly, I am too low on caffeine to have detected a missing italics closing tag. Sorry. 😥