iPhone sales rebounded slightly from their February slump in March, as Apple shipped approximately 2.5 million iPhones in China during March.
Reuters reports Apple sold fewer than 500,000 iPhones in China during February, during the height of the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak in the country. The sales figures were a 60% drop in sales.
Data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), a government think tank, shows mobile phone shipments in China in March totaled 21 million units, a more than three-fold increase from February. Those figures were still down roughly 20% compared with March 2019.
Third-party resellers in China have been offering discounts on Apple’s iPhone 11 lineup in an attempt to spur demand for handsets during the economic downturn caused by the pandemic.
Mobile phone companies are looking to renewed demand in China, where restrictions on citizen movement have recently been eased. Companies are hopping increased sales in the country will ease the fallout from sales declines in other markets around the world that are still restricting movement as they attempt to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.
