Apple fans get their hands at the latest iPhones at an Apple Store in Shanghai on October 17. Photo: CFP

 

Having resisted the temptation of buying the iPhone 5S, which became available in the mainland market in September 2013, Jane Zhang was no longer able to say no to getting "an apparently bigger iPhone."

The iPhone 5S's mainland launch marked the market's first appearance in Apple Inc's first-batch release map for its iconic phone lineup.

The iPhone 6 Plus, boasting a 5.5-inch display, succeeded in winning back her attention.

 There had been "almost invisible changes to the iPhone" since the launch of the iPhone 4 in June 2010, the 30-year-old employee of a State-owned company in Beijing told the Global Times on Wednesday.

Zhang's undisguised preference for the largest-ever iPhone over the 4.7-inch iPhone 6, which hit the mainland market at the same time on October 17, is shared by many of her compatriots.

In a sign of a conspicuous tendency among mainland consumers to opt for the iPhone 6 Plus, whose supply is falling well short of demand on the mainland, the country's three telecom carriers, China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, all said on their online ordering pages that the phone was out of stock as of Thursday.

Staffers with the Beijing branches of the three carriers' customer service hotlines said it is not yet known when the operators will replenish their stocks for the gadget, when contacted by the Global Times on Thursday.

In comparison, the pages show that there is enough stock for the iPhone 6 to meet demand.

In yet another sign of the trend, Apple's official site for the mainland market shows orders for the iPhone 6 Plus will be shipped out in three to four weeks, while that for its smaller sibling will be mailed out in seven to 10 working days. 

Bigger is better

Catering to stronger-than-anticipated demand in the mainland for the larger phone added to Apple's iPhone portfolio, the California-based firm is likely to adjust once again its supply ratios of the twin phones, Taipei-based Digitimes reported on Tuesday, citing unidentified industry sources.

In a report released earlier in October, when the phones were yet to come to the mainland, which was not included in the first batch of markets for the latest duo, Digitimes  said Apple had already been adjusting the supply ratios as a result of robust demand for the iPhone 6 Plus globally.

The sizable mainland market may force Apple to "shift more production capacity to the 5.5-inch model," according to the Tuesday report, which added that "the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus supply ratio is likely to change to 55:45 from 70:30 or 65:35 set originally."

Apple's China spokesperson could not be immediately reached for comment.

Other than an announcement on September 22 in which Apple said it had set a new record with sales of more than 10 million new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus models, only three days after the debut in a handful of markets including the US, Australia, Hong Kong and Japan, the firm has yet to unveil specifics on the phones' performance in the mainland, widely acknowledged as perhaps the most crowded market for smartphones.

Adding to worries that Apple is being increasingly caught up in a tense competition with a variety of local manufacturers, the company's latest quarterly disclosure was announced on Monday to have shown a fall of 3 percent in sales revenues in its Greater China region that include the mainland, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan in the quarter ending September 27 over the previous quarter, its first such decline in the region.

Even those who claim to be "diehard Apple fans" may refuse to trade in their old phones for the new ones. 24-year-old Yu Liuyang, who works at a clinic in Beijing, told the Global Times on Wednesday that she feels the latest iPhones are not as "in" as they used to be, whether measured in terms of design or functionality.

The reluctance could be exacerbated by reduced subsidies offered by the telecom carriers, particularly China Mobile, for the new iPhones.

As of the second quarter of 2014, local brand names including Xiaomi, Lenovo, Coolpad and Huawei seized four of the top five smartphone vendor spots in the mainland market, nearly unseating the shaky crown held by Samsung Electronics, as per the newest data from Beijing-based consultancy Analysys International.

Apple took sixth position in the market in the second quarter, which many analysts are betting may not see any improvement despite the availability of the new phones.

Signs of trouble

The actual excitement brought about by the new phones among mainland consumers needs to be backed up by concrete sales figures by Apple or its partners in the market such as the three telecom operators, analysts said.

But something far more worrying would be the outlook for the iPad, a new category added to Apple by the firm's visionary Steve Jobs in January 2010 that has carved out a new territory for the tech world as a whole.

Aiming to continue its dominance in the tablet arena, Apple announced on October 16 the unveiling of the 9.7-inch iPad Air 2 and the 7.9-inch iPad mini 3 as new members of its iPad family.

The Wi-Fi models were made available for online orders in the mainland market starting from October 17. The availability of the Wi-Fi plus Cellular models in the market is still uncertain. But Apple's latest fiscal report takes the shine off the good news brought by the new iPads, with the announcement of a drop of 10 percent on a quarterly basis in its iPad sales globally during the quarter ending September 27.

"It is disappointing - particularly to enterprise buyers - that there wasn't a 12.9-inch iPad model," J.P. Gownder, a US-based analyst at Forrester, said in a note e-mailed to the Global Times shortly after the latest gadgets' launch.

"In order to return iPad to high growth, form factor innovation will be required. We'll have to wait until 2015 to see if Apple addresses this issue," the analyst noted.

Experts also believe that behind the falling sales of the iPad is the fact that tablet upgrades take longer than those for phones.

Liu Kaijun, who works with a Beijing-based investment and immigration agency, told the Global Times on Wednesday that she will not upgrade her iPad Air for at least a year. The 30-year-old, however, revealed plans to purchase an iPhone 6 Plus soon.

The prolonged upgrade will be in part attributed to slowing growth momentum in the tablet sector at large, the US-based research firm said in a statement e-mailed the Global Times on October 17, according to which growth in tablet shipments globally is projected to fall to an annualized rate of 11 percent in 2014 compared to over 50 percent logged in 2013.