China Mobile reportedly won’t sell iPhone 15 amid local government ban

September 8, 2023

2 min read

A WSJ report earlier this week revealed that China’s government was aiming to ban the iPhone from Chinese government agencies. However, Bloomberg later reported that the ban may extend beyond that. And based on a new report, China Mobile – the country’s wireless carrier – won’t have the iPhone 15 available to its customers.

Anti-Apple movement could affect iPhone sales in China

According to Mark Gurman, Apple is trying to avoid a crisis just a few days before the global launch of the iPhone 15. The company has not only been dealing with an iPhone ban among Chinese government workers, but also competition with smartphones from local brands and a “resurgence in Chinese nationalism” leading customers to avoid foreign devices.

This is not the first time that iPhone sales in China have been affected by political issues. Back in 2019, Apple saw iPhone XR and XS sales plummet in the country amid the trade war between the US and China. The company was able to recover from this scenario in 2021 and 2022, but it seems that things got worse this year.

As the US government still insists on scrutiny of Huawei, one of the biggest Chinese tech companies, as well as ByteDance’s TikTok (another Chinese company), anti-Apple sentiment “has spread on Chinese social media.”

To make the situation worse, rumors suggest that China Mobile won’t have iPhone 15 units available for sale, which could become a major concern for Apple, since China is currently one of the most important markets for the company. However, in real life, there’s still no strong evidence that customers are actually switching from the iPhone to local smartphones in China.

Bloomberg notes that despite the disputes between the US and Chinese governments, the Asian country has no incentive to ban the iPhone permanently in the country, since Apple still provides millions of jobs in the country, and this would end up affecting the local economy.

While China Mobile denies that the company has plans to stop selling iPhones, Apple declined a request for comment.