Apple’s iPhone Shipments to China Plunge 60% in February
- Shipments fell from a Lunar New Year-shortened February 2019
- The epidemic could delay Apple’s 5G phone if it persists
An employee wearing a protective mask takes the temperature of a customer at an entrance to an Apple store in Shanghai.
Photographer: Qilai Shen/BloombergApple Inc.’s iPhone shipments in China plunged more than 60% in February, when the coronavirus outbreak shut down scores of its stores and hampered key manufacturing partners across its largest international market.
Shipments of Apple’s marquee device dropped to about 494,600 units from a year earlier, according to Bloomberg calculations based on monthly data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, a government think-tank. Overall mobile phone shipments, including Android devices, slid 56% to 6.4 million units, the academy said. Those year-earlier comparisons were skewed by the fact that the Lunar New Year holidays fell in February of 2019, versus January this year.