Tech: New How Iphones Made A Surprising Comeback In China 2026

After a prolonged slump, Apple’s business is suddenly thriving again in China. The tech giant said in its latest earnings report last week that revenue from the country rose 38 percent year over year in the last quarter, primarily driven by surging demand for iPhones. The rebound came after Apple’s China sales had declined for 18 consecutive months between 2024 and early 2025.

In a call with analysts, CEO Tim Cook said Apple set a new record for iPhone upgrades among Chinese customers and saw double-digit growth in the number of users switching from other operating systems to iOS. “Overall, a great quarter in China. We could not be happier with it,” Cook concluded in his signature monotone voice.

Apple’s fantastic performance came as a surprise to many observers of the Chinese smartphone market. In recent years, homegrown brands like Huawei and Xiaomi have chipped away at Apple’s market share by releasing premium, feature-packed devices that directly compete with the iPhone. Huawei, for instance, stunned the tech industry when it released a $2,800 smartphone with a trifold screen in September 2024, long before competitors put out similar products.

The most striking thing about Apple’s comeback in China is how it pulled it off. Instead of trying to compete by developing flashier tech, it simply released a new iPhone that is both powerful and competitively priced, experts tell WIRED. Even though there are devices from local brands that technically have better cameras and more sophisticated artificial intelligence capabilities (Apple Intelligence is not yet available in mainland China), many buyers still opted for Apple’s iPhone 17 line.

That suggests Chinese consumers continue to care more about Apple's brand power and design features than marginal technical improvements. “It's a good story if you're Apple. It's the same old story if you're not Apple,” says Gerrit Schneemann, a senior analyst covering Apple at Counterpoint, a global technology research firm.

Apple owes much of its success in China last quarter to sales of the baseline iPhone 17 model. Traditionally, consumers who buy iPhones at launch tend to gravitate toward the higher-end Pro and Pro Max devices But in 2025, the baseline iPhone 17 represented a much bigger step up from the iPhone 16 than usual, including features traditionally only associated with the Pro series. That may have motivated more people to upgrade sooner than usual after the new phones came out, Schneemann says.

But Apple

Source: Wired