- Apple is battling to keep the iPhone relevant in China.
- New figures show foreign smartphone shipments to China almost halved in November.
- Apple’s struggles come in the face of stiff competition from local smartphone makers like Huawei.
Apple’s battle to keep the iPhone popular in China appears to be getting tougher as foreign smartphone sales in the country dipped by almost half in just one month, according to new data.
Signs of fresh struggles for Apple came on Friday as new figures from the government-backed China Academy of Information and Communications Technology showed foreign smartphone shipments dropped 47.4% year-on-year in November.
The drop to 3.04 million non-Chinese smartphone shipments, which include iPhones, marks a consecutive decline following the 44.3% drop in foreign smartphone shipments in October.
The figures, first reported by Reuters, highlight Apple’s continuing challenges in its most important international market. Apple’s annual net sales have declined for two consecutive years in the Greater China region, where the company has also built a vast supply chain empire.
Among the biggest threats to Apple’s iPhone sales in the country — which fell almost 8% to $66.9 billion in its last fiscal year — has been the rise of new powerful smartphones from domestic competitors.
Chinese tech giant Huawei has provided Apple with one of its biggest recent challenges in the form of its Mate 60 series of smartphones, first introduced in 2023, and the Mate 70 series released in November of 2024 as a successor.
The Mate 60 series stunned the smartphone industry upon its release thanks to its inclusion of advanced chips made in China.
US export controls aimed to curtail Chinese access to advanced chips, but Huawei’s inclusion of domestic-made chips with similar capabilities to US technology has highlighted how quickly local companies in China are working to innovate past the constraints facing them.
Apple has been pushed to respond to the rising competition in China by introducing discounts at strategic moments to entice consumers. The company is introducing discounts worth around $70 on its iPhone 16 Pro models, for instance, ahead of the Lunar New Year.
It also faces pressure to accelerate the rollout of its new suite of generative AI features to iPhones in China, with Apple Intelligence not yet available in the country.
Apple did not immediately reply to a Business Insider request for comment.
