Apple CEO Tim Cook dinner attends the China Growth Discussion board in Beijing, China March 23, 2019.
Thomas Peter | Reuters
Apple CEO Tim Cook dinner is on a go to to Shanghai, in keeping with a submit on his official Weibo account on Wednesday, forward of the inauguration of a brand new retail retailer and declining iPhone gross sales within the nation.
A video connected to the submit confirmed Cook dinner taking a stroll alongside one of many metropolis’s widespread vacationer districts and having breakfast with Chinese language actor and tv character Zheng Kai.
In response to a press launch on Monday, the brand new retail retailer, positioned within the metropolis’s Jing’an district, will open Thursday.
Cook dinner typically visits China — a significant market and manufacturing base for Apple — to launch merchandise, open factories, and meet with native officers. Earlier this month, Apple additionally introduced plans to increase its analysis facilities in Shanghai and Shenzhen.
His newest journey additionally comes amid stories that iPhone gross sales in China declined 24% within the first six weeks of 2024 in contrast with the identical interval a yr earlier.
The decline in gross sales was partly resulting from abnormally excessive shipments by Apple at the beginning of 2023 but in addition elevated competitors from native manufacturers comparable to Huawei, in keeping with analysts.
Final yr, Cook dinner visited China in October following stories that iPhone 15 gross sales within the nation had been weaker in contrast with gross sales of the sooner mannequin.
That journey got here a month after stories on workers at China’s central authorities businesses being banned from utilizing iPhones for work. The Chinese language Overseas Ministry denied the stories.
On Friday, Apple reportedly agreed to pay $490 million to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging that Cook dinner misled traders a few steep downturn in iPhone gross sales in China again in November 2018, in keeping with a preliminary settlement filed in Oakland, California, federal court docket.
