An Apple retailer in Shanghai, China.
Future Publishing | Future Publishing | Getty Photos
Apple CEO Tim Cook dinner is on a go to to Shanghai, in accordance with a put up on his official Weibo account on Wednesday, forward of the inauguration of a brand new retail retailer and declining iPhone gross sales within the nation.
A video connected to the put up confirmed Cook dinner taking a stroll alongside one of many metropolis’s common vacationer districts and having breakfast with Chinese language actor and tv character Zheng Kai.
In response to a press launch on Monday, the brand new retail retailer, positioned within the metropolis’s Jing’an district, will open Thursday.
Cook dinner usually visits China — an important market and manufacturing base for Apple — to launch merchandise, open factories, and meet with native officers. Earlier this month, Apple additionally introduced plans to broaden its analysis facilities in Shanghai and Shenzhen.
His newest journey additionally comes amid reviews that iPhone gross sales in China declined 24% within the first six weeks of 2024 in contrast with the identical interval a 12 months earlier.
The decline in gross sales was partly attributable to abnormally excessive shipments by Apple at the beginning of 2023 but in addition elevated competitors from native manufacturers resembling Huawei, in accordance with analysts.
Final 12 months, Cook dinner visited China in October following reviews that iPhone 15 gross sales within the nation had been weaker in contrast with gross sales of the sooner mannequin.
That journey got here a month after reviews on staff at China’s central authorities companies being banned from utilizing iPhones for work. The Chinese language Overseas Ministry denied the reviews.
On Friday, Apple reportedly agreed to pay $490 million to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging that Cook dinner misled traders a couple of steep downturn in iPhone gross sales in China again in November 2018, in accordance with a preliminary settlement filed in Oakland, California, federal court docket.