The Fruity Cargo Cult Apple’s ultra-thin iPhone Air has tanked in China, and the numbers are ugly enough to make even the fanboys blink.
Tipster Ice Universe says: “Apple has managed to sell just 200,000 units of the iPhone Air in China vs. the 17 million units of the iPhone 17 lineup.”
That is 1.1 per cent of the iPhone 17 line’s volume in a market where annual smartphone sales run into the hundreds of millions, so even 17 million is hardly the conquest story Job’s Mob wants.
The flop is made funnier by the earlier chatter that China would be especially keen on the ultra-slim idea, particularly with the knock-on push towards eSIMs in a country that has been famously eSIM-shy.
Job’s Mob has been trying to shift stock with discounts of up to 2,000 yuan ($286, about €242) through its Tmall official store, which is the retail equivalent of whistling past the graveyard.
JD.com is reportedly piling on a subsidy of about $57, bringing the combined cut to roughly $415.
The Air has posted the worst depreciation of any iPhone model launched since 2022, losing 47.7 per cent of its value in its first 10 weeks, which is impressive for a device sold as a premium fashion statement.
The hardware compromises do not help, with a “hobbled battery capacity”, a single 48MP camera with a 2× zoom trick and a single speaker, which is a brave bill of materials for a phone meant to sell on vibes.
Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman said: “Apple always expected the iPhone Air to constitute between six per cent and eight per cent of its annual iPhone sales, and that the ultra-thin smartphone continues to retain utility for Apple as an experimental platform for testing new technology.”
