Apple has launched an unusually large promotional push in China, cutting the price of its recently released iPhone Air and staging a wide-ranging sale across phones, iPads and MacBooks on its Tmall flagship store for the Lunar‑New‑Year shopping period. From the evening of January 25 until February 11 Apple will offer steep reductions — the 256GB iPhone Air is listed with an official RMB 2,000 cut and, after a national subsidy, a take‑home price beginning at RMB 5,499. Other discounts range from RMB 300 to RMB 1,200 on key models, and accessories such as AirPods and Apple Pencil are also cheaper for the promotion window.
The scale of the campaign is notable. Apple says it has allocated roughly 200,000 units of iPhone 17 Pro/Pro Max, 13,000 iPhone Air handsets, 7,300 M4 MacBook Airs and tens of thousands of iPad Air and mini units to the event — but it stresses inventory is limited. The iPhone Air itself is only three months old in China, having gone on sale domestically on October 22, 2025. A lightweight, ultra‑thin model built around eSIM technology, the Air was delayed from a global rollout because China’s major carriers were initially slow to support eSIM services.
Price moves on third‑party e‑commerce platforms have been even more aggressive: after trade‑in credits the iPhone Air has traded down to around RMB 5,099, a roughly RMB 2,900 drop from Apple’s original launch price in just three months. This promotion forms the third large-scale discounting initiative Apple has rolled out in China in little more than a month, following a limited RMB 1,000 maximum cut on Apple’s China website and earlier temporary discounts on iPhone 17 Pro models in December.
Apple has also broadened its trade‑in programme in China to accept a wider range of Android phones from Huawei, Xiaomi and others, increasing the maximum trade‑in allowances for recent iPhone models. The company’s local promotional cadence and the liberalised trade‑in rules suggest a two‑pronged strategy: stimulate near‑term upgrades while lowering the effective price of new hardware for buyers trading out of competing devices.
For global investors and competitors the timing matters. Apple is due to report fiscal first‑quarter results (covering the quarter to the end of December 2025) on January 29, a release that will offer the first public data on how phones launched in September — including the iPhone 17 range and the iPhone Air — actually sold in the crucial holiday quarter. The fresh promotional blitz will affect near‑term sales and margins in China, the world’s largest smartphone market and one of Apple’s most important revenue pools.
The broader picture is a market where premium smartphone demand is softening and domestic manufacturers continue to close the gap on hardware features and pricing. For consumers, deeper, earlier cuts on a newly launched device are good news; for Apple they raise questions about product momentum, inventory management and whether aggressive discounting will be needed more frequently to sustain sales in China. Analysts and rivals will be watching January’s earnings and subsequent sales data for a clearer read on whether these price moves are a temporary market manoeuvre or a sign of longer‑term pressure on Apple’s flagship pricing power.