Apple’s new iPhone 13 lineup won favorable reviews from Chinese consumers thanks to its competitive pricing, although supply constraints and competition from local brands remain challenges in one of Apple’s most important markets. Stephanie Yang and Yang Jie for The Wall Street Journal : In China, consumers latched onto the comparatively low price of the latest iPhones, which cost about as much as iPhone 12s did a year ago. By Wednesday morning, the topic “iPhone 13 price” had garnered more than a billion views on the Twitter-like social-media platform Weibo. Some internet users drew on a similarly named Chinese spice brand to make a punning comment that “thirteen is delicious.” China accounts for about one-fifth of iPhone sales, according to analyst estimates, making it a critical part of Apple’s (AAPL) success. Apple kept prices in place despite rising costs for raw materials and electronic components that have driven up the prices of other consumer goods. The least-expensive model in the new lineup, the $699 iPhone 13 mini with a 5.4-inch screen, has 128 gigabytes of memory and costs the same as the 64-gigabyte iPhone 12 mini did when it was introduced a year ago. “What attracts me here is getting more capacity for the same price or even lower,” said Deng Yu, a 32-year-old media worker in the central Chinese city of Changsha. Mr. Deng is buying a new iPhone for his wife, whose current iPhone XR has lasted for about three years… “Right now, Apple’s biggest challenge is still that some components will be impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic and lead to tight supply, but we expect the scope of the impact to be limited,” analysts at Taiwan-based research firm TrendForce said in a report. They said they expected iPhone production to increase 15.6% this year. MacDailyNews Take: More for the same price is a surefire way to win favor with consumers worldwide! This article was originally posted here
