Apple's iPhone 15 launches in China with people flocking to stores — even as Huawei revival emerges

cnbc.com:

BEIJING — People flocked to a flagship Apple store in downtown Beijing on Friday morning to pick up the latest iPhone, despite market worries that nationalistic fervor would dampen the U.S. company's sales in China.

Many also ordered the phone for delivery. As of 10 a.m. Beijing time on Friday, iPhone 15 sales via JD's Dada one-hour delivery app surged by 253% versus that of the iPhone 14 last year, Dada said.

In the first 10 minutes after deliveries began at 8 a.m., the company said 25,000 phones were on their way to customers. Dada said this year it is working with 4,600 authorized Apple retailers in China — up from 500 in 2020.

Apple started delivering the iPhone 15 on Friday after pre-orders began on Sept. 15. This year's release comes as the smartphone giant faces economic and political headwinds in its third-largest market.

About two weeks prior to Apple's launch event this month, Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei quietly released its Mate 60 Pro in China with a reportedly 5G-capable chip from SMIC. That's despite U.S. sanctions since 2019 which have almost wiped out Huawei's smartphone business.

However, for people waiting in line at the Apple store, there was a general ambivalence about the phone brand.

One man, surnamed Zhao, said he'd wanted to buy Huawei's new phone, but it sold out the moment he tried to buy it online. «Since I couldn't get the Mate 60 I decided to get the new iPhone instead,» he said in Mandarin, translated by CNBC. «I don't think there's too much of a difference.»

Zhao declined to share his first name due to the sensitivity of the matter. He was 10th in line at the Apple store in Sanlitun, Beijing, and said he arrived at 6:30 a.m. The first person in line, who also requested