Apple Discounts Some Hardware in China in Four-Day Sale

26 JULY 2022 - News of a sale on Apple products in China, being run by Apple. A piece from Bloomberg (via Taipei Times) says the company announced the move on Monday, “offering four days of discounts” on iPhone 13 Pro, as well as “[c]ertain AirPods and Apple Watch models.”

Bloomberg’s assumption is that Apple is sitting on inventory the company would like to be rid of ahead of new product coming this fall. While iPhone did better than domestic smartphones in China last month, the piece says “the discounts suggest even it has surplus inventory heading into the latter half of the year.”

It sounds like a safe assumption, though there’s one thing that makes me wonder. According to the report, buyers are required to use “one of a select number of payment platforms, such as (…) Alipay” to be eligible for the discounts. If Apple simply wanted to move product, would Apple care what payment method people used? I’m not inside so I don’t know, but couldn’t this be some sort of promotion for those payment methods? It doesn’t seem like Alipay needs promotion. Then again you could say the same for Apple, which does keep spending on advertising and PR. Really all we know for sure is Apple’s discounted some of it’s products in China for four days. So - you know - if you’re in the neighborhood…