“China’s mobile phone market is sluggish, AI and foldable cannot save it.”

A survey showed that Chinese smartphone consumers are delaying the purchase of new products in the absence of groundbreaking new technology, which could lead to a continued slump in the Chinese mobile phone market, the world's largest.

Bloomberg Intelligence (BI) announced on the 4th (local time) that according to a survey of Chinese consumers last month, about 69% of respondents said they would not replace their mobile phones until at least next year.

This figure is twice that of the May survey, and BI explains that the number of respondents who plan to continue using existing devices for the next two to three years has increased.

While Apple's recently released first foldable smartphone, the 'iPhone Duo', was controversial due to screen defects, only 5.8% of respondents said they were using a foldable phone or had decided to purchase it, showing that it was still a niche market in China.

It was found that consumers still place importance on hardware such as battery life, camera performance, and memory specifications.

Memory was still considered a key specification when making purchasing decisions, and 87% of respondents said that ideally, a mobile phone for everyday use should have a memory capacity of 16 gigabytes (GB) or more.

Only 8% of respondents cited AI as a purchasing decision factor. This was not only lower than the 12% in the survey a year ago, but also the smallest proportion among the 11 factors considered.

Apple consumers can tolerate price increases more than users of Chinese brands such as Oppo and Vivo and are more willing to spend on new AI technology, so some say they can better prepare for market slumps.

“27% of non-iPhone device users consider AI (when purchasing) but reject the additional cost, compared to 19% of iPhone users,” said BI analyst Stephen Zeng.

Meanwhile, according to Bloomberg News, Apple announced on the 2nd that sales in the Greater China region (including China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau) increased by 21% compared to the same period last year, reaching $17.54 billion (approximately 23.5 trillion won), the highest ever as of July-September, through an announcement of performance for the fourth quarter of the fiscal year (July-September).

Bloomberg said that sales were about $1 billion (approximately 1.3 trillion won) lower than the average market forecast, but added that this was a calculation based on a small number of analysts.

CEO John Turners added, “On a year-to-date basis, sales in the Greater China region increased by 28% compared to the previous year.”

Industry analyst Liu Dingding said in an interview with the Global Times, "(Apple's performance in Greater China) shows the importance of the huge Chinese market," and said that Apple will be able to continue its record-breaking performance in China by improving its ecosystem and AI strategy and adjusting products and services to meet local demand.