Apple provides massive discounts on iPhones in China

Photo by David Švihovec on Unsplash

Due to the lockdown and coronavirus outbreak in China which started in early February, Apple was forced to close down its production of iPhone and other Apple products, but now China was in a recovering phase as the economy was slowly getting back to normal. There is a massive shopping festival in China this month named "6.18" and Apple is discounting its latest iPhones, reported by CNBC.

Apple was one of the most affected tech giants because of the lockdown in China as most of its production was based in China, now it was trying to recover as the people in China are getting back to normalcy, during the festival of 6.18 which was named after the date of the festival, Chinese businesses provides massive discounts to the customers.

Also Read: Part of AirPods production is moved to Vietnam from China

Although the main festival is just one day, sales and discounts take place for several days around the date of the festival, Apple sells its iPhones in China through several online retailers mainly through Tmall, owned by the biggest Chinese e-commerce site Alibaba and JD.com, these two online shopping sites have given massive discounts to the latest iPhones.

Tmall has priced iPhone 11 64GB at 4,779 yuan ($669.59) which was originally 5,499 yuan, iPhone 11 Pro at 7,579 yuan(originally 8,699 yuan), iPhone Pro Max at 8,359 yuan(originally 9,599 yuan) and the new iPhone SE at 3,099 yuan(originally 3,299 yuan). 

JD.com has provided even bigger discounts than Tmall, Chinese customers can buy the iPhone 11 64GB on JD.com for 4,599 yuan, iPhone 11 Pro for 6,999, iPhone 11 Pro Max for 7,499 yuan, iPhone SE for 3,069 yuan.

Also Read: iPhone 11 is now the "world's most popular smartphone" overtaking iPhone XR's position

These prices are listed on June 1st and will vary from day-to-day, A JD.com spokesperson told CNBC that "transaction volume of Apple products in the first hour of sales on June 1 reached three times that of the same period last year," Apple rarely provides discounts on its products, Will Wong, a research manager at IDC, told CNBC "that it is only the second time that Apple has participated in the 6.18 event."

Nicole Peng, vice president of mobility at Canalys, told CNBC that “The cheaper iPhones are actually attracting quite a lot of attention these days. They are trying to target the older generation iPhone install base for example (those on a) iPhone 6, iPhone 7 and iPhone 8, they don’t want to spend much more compared to what they previously spent, but they will need a device upgrade.”