Apple's latest smartphone, the iPhone X, officially went on sale in China Friday. Despite the iPhone 8's gloomy sales in the country, analysts are pretty optimistic about the new model's performance here. Mi Jiayi finds out why.

 

iPhone X sales opened for pre-orders online here a few days ago, and starting today, buyers can go to Apple Stores to pick up their new phone. But if you're thinking about going to the Apple Store with cash, forget it, you still can't buy one. Staff tell us that they only have a limited number of iPhone Xs to distribute each day, and you still have to order online to book one. Plenty of people have come to check out the new model, however, overshadowing other models on the other tables.

 

"I've already ordered an iPhone X online for home delivery, but it won't be delivered for four or five weeks. I came here to get a feel for the new phone and see if I could get it today, but they told me they only are filling pickup orders. I'll try making a pickup order, and if that works and I can pick one up tomorrow, I'll cancel my previous order."

 

Resellers in the city are also excited about the iPhone Xs release. It's estimated that fewer than 10,000 new iPhone Xs have so far arrived at various other retailers in Shanghai. The orders are so much in excess of supply that some retailers are adding 800 or 1,000 yuan on top of the original price.

 

JIANG PAN, DEPUTY MANAGER SUNING SHANGHAI Everyone's adding to the price, and if supplies gets tighter and tighter, the price will go up again. If we sell the phone at the same price or even less, it would be attracting scalpers.

 

The price for a 64 Gigabite iPhone X is around 8300 yuan, and the 256 Gigabites model is almost 10,000 RMB. By comparison, the price of the iPhone 8, which was released at the same time as the X, went down by between 400 and 800 yuan after the Ten hit the market. In fact, the sales performance of the iPhone 8 hasn't been nearly as good as that of the previous models 6 and and 7. Some media report of iPhone 8's exploding have also dimmed its market prospects in China. One analyst says, there are other reasons for its lower-than-expected sales figures.

 

LI HUAIBIN, SR. ANALYST IHS MARKIT Sales of the iPhone 8 are worse in China than in other markets like the US, northern Europe and Southeast Asia. The main reason is that China's highly competitive mobile phone market has raised people's expectations for new models, and the iPhone 8 just doesn't have what people want. Also, it's not that different from the iPhone 7, so that's why the sales of the iPhone 7, which are cheaper than the 8, have gone up again after the release.

 

Li says many view the iPhone 8 as a transition product for Apple, needed because the production cycle for the iPhone X is longer because of its OLED screens. He expects, however, that the iPhone X's sales performance would go up, and even possible to beat the iPhone 6's record sales, in the first quarter next year, after production capacity catches up to market demand.