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Apple’s rivals in China pounce on the new iPhones
Huawei and Xiaomi take pot-shots at the iPhone XS and XR
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This article originally appeared on ABACUS
Apple showed off three new phones on Wednesday -- and in China, everyone from potential customers to the country’s smartphone giants have something to say.
Netizens are mostly complaining about the toll it’s going to take on their wallet.
The iPhone XR, iPhone XS, and iPhone XS Max will sell in China at the starting prices of around US$948, US$1270, and US$1400 respectively -- around US$200 to US$300 more expensive than in the US. It doesn’t help that the XS Max is going to be Apple’s most pricey iPhone to date.
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“The pricing is getting more and more presumptuous,” says the top-voted comment under a new Weibo post from Apple’s managing director in China.
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“I spent my two kidneys on the iPhone 7 and 8 already,” writes one Weibo user with a darker sense of humor. (In a well-known and pretty sad case in 2012, a Chinese teen reportedly sold his kidney in the black market for around US$3500 to buy an iPad.)
“The lowest price [of the iPhone] is enough to buy two Android flagships. Apple hasn’t made much of a breakthrough in the post-Jobs era. The only breakthrough is the price,” says another person.
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