After six straight quarters of sales declines in China, Apple is back. Due to a surge in orders for the new iPhone 8, Apple saw 40% annual growth in the third quarter of 2017 with 11 million shipments of smartphones, according to a new report from Canalys (h/t TechCrunch). Apple desperately needed the turnaround in China, where revenue is down more than 50% from two years ago.
But don’t expect that rebound to last. Due to its hefty $1,000 price and limited supply, “Apple is unlikely to sustain this growth in Q4,” said Canalys analyst Mo Jia. And the new phone’s sales aren’t expected to match that of the iPhone 6, when it was released in China a few years ago. And Apple is still lagging behind other brands, ranking fifth of all smartphone brands in sales in the country, behind Huawei, Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi.
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