(Yicai Global) Feb. 7 -- Industry insiders still have a bullish outlook on Apple’s high-end smartphone models, despite the USD2.4 trillion tech company selling them at a discount of up to 10 percent on third-party e-commerce platforms in China.

“Apple will likely perform well in the Chinese market this year, but it should mainly consider whether the European market will drag on the US tech giant,” Zhu Jiatao, an analyst at Singapore-based market research firm Canalys, told Yicai Global. It is a normal business strategy for Apple to cut the prices of high-end mobile phones through some channels at this time, he noted.

The 128-gigabyte black iPhone 14 Pro is on sale at CNY7,199 (USD1,062) on Chinese e-commerce platform JD.Com, CNY800 (USD118) cheaper than on Apple’s official website. The prices of other high-end models, including the iPhone14 Pro Max, were also lowered.

Apple, Oppo, Honor, and Vivo each had about 18 percent of the Chinese smartphone market last year, while Apple dominated the high-end segment, according to Canalys data. Apple sold 51.3 million phones in China in 2022, up 4 percent from a year earlier.

“If we define smartphones priced above USD800 as high-end, Apple should maintain more than 80 percent of the high-end market share in China,” Zhu said. “Its share improved significantly last year.”

Demand for Apple’s high-end models will not change, Li Bing, global partner, vice president, and head of the tech, media and telecoms industry at Roland Berger China, told Yicai Global. So it may be hard to see Apple introducing disruptive technologies for the iPhone, while it may introduce improvements for new products such as longer life batteries and new screen and artificial intelligence functions, Li added.

Despite a sluggish global smartphone market, Apple Chief Executive Time Cook revealed during the firm’s earnings conference call on Feb. 2 that consumers would like to pay more for high-end mobile phones.

Apple may continue to increase high-end model prices as its share of the Chinese high-end handset market has grown since Huawei Technologies lost its position and the competitiveness of rival Samsung is waning, said Li Zegang, an analyst at research institute Omdia.

In fact, over the past few years, Apple has been widening the technological gap between its flagship high-end models and the basic versions and raising the prices of the former. The top iPhone model in 2017, the 256-GB iPhone X, was priced at USD1,150, while the top model in 2022, the one-terabyte iPhone 14 Pro Max, cost USD1,600, an increase of nearly 40 percent in five years.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Futura Costaglione