Apple Lures Customers In China With Interest-free Financing

(RTTNews) - Apple Inc. (AAPL) is making efforts to make it's iPhones more affordable to consumers in China.

According to Apple's China website, Apple is offering up to two years interest-free financing packages for iPhones in partnership with several Chinese banks and Huabei, a consumer credit company operated by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Limited's (BABA) Ant Financial unit.

Under the new financing option with Ant Financial, customers are required to make a minimum purchase of 4,000 yuan to qualify. Under the scheme, the installments can be paid over a period of three, six, twelve or twenty four months.

The new scheme would enable customers to buy the company's latest iPhone models, including the iPhone XR that is priced at 6,499 yuan, according to Apple's China website.

According to the website, customers can pay 271 yuan each month to buy an iPhone XR and 362 yuan each month for an iPhone XS. Customers can also exchange their older iPhone models for cheaper installments.

According to a recent report by research company International Data Corporation or IDC, Apple has lost further ground to local rival Huawei Technologies Co. in China, with the U.S.-based tech giant's sales of smartphones falling nearly 20 percent in the fourth quarter from last year.

About Apple, IDC noted that in addition to the regular performance upgrades in 2018, there has been no major innovation to support users to continue to change their machines at the greatly increased price.

At the same time, under the impact of China's severe macro environment and domestic brand innovation products, consumers' increasingly harsh eyes are also the reasons for Apple's continued decline in the domestic market, IDC added.

In late January, Apple had reported lower profit and revenue for the first quarter than the prior-year period, hurt largely by weak sales of iPhones. Apple's revenues from iPhones had dropped 15 percent from the year-ago period to $51.98 billion.