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Apple chief Tim Cook has said China is “critical” to its business in comments made during a visit to the country, where consumers are showing signs of souring on the company’s iPhones and US technology.
Amid rising geopolitical tensions, Cook has become a frequent visitor to China, a key market and huge manufacturing base for Apple products. His latest public relations offensive kicked off in Shanghai with an interview with local media, in which he delivered effusive praise and a promise to invest more in the country.
The state-owned Global Times, best known for its nationalist bashing of the US, reported the increased investment pledge and quoted Cook as saying: “There’s no supply chain in the world that’s more critical to us than China.”
Shanghai state-owned media noted Cook praised the “high level of modernisation in Chinese factories, with very advanced manufacturing capabilities and well-trained workers”.
Cook also told Chinese media that Apple would need the country’s help to make all its products carbon-neutral by 2030 and that the company was investing heavily in generative artificial intelligence.
Cook’s visit comes amid tumbling sales in China, which contributed $21bn to Apple’s top line in the fourth quarter, or 17 per cent of sales. The figure represented a 13 per cent year-on-year decline, and research group Counterpoint said iPhone sales in the first six weeks of this year were also down 24 per cent from a year earlier.
The US company has been hit by a top-down campaign to cut iPhone usage among Chinese state employees and the return of national champion Huawei, which last year overcame US sanctions to roll out a homegrown smartphone capable of near 5G speeds.
This month a dozen delegates to China’s top political gathering told the Financial Times they were using domestic brand phones, with several alleging iPhones could spy on them.
Cook and Apple have been keen to turn around the narrative. The Cupertino-based company last week announced it was upgrading its Shanghai research centre and opening a laboratory in Shenzhen to work on research and testing for its iPhone, iPad and Vision Pro product lines, while deepening co-operation with Chinese suppliers.
Apple said the projects would build on the more than Rmb1bn ($140mn) it had invested in applied research labs in China. Local head Isabel Ge Mahe said the company was “proud to deepen our roots in China and expand our world-class facilities here”.
Cook spent Wednesday meeting Apple’s Chinese suppliers, including the head of electric-car maker BYD and executives from Lens Technology and Changying Precision Technology.
He started the day strolling along Shanghai’s waterfront area with Chinese actor Zheng Kai and eating soup dumplings. “I’m always so happy to be back in this remarkable city,” he wrote in a post on Chinese social network Weibo.
He is expected to open Apple’s eighth retail store in Shanghai on Thursday and attend the China Development Forum, which starts over the weekend.
At lunchtime on Thursday in Shanghai, hours ahead of the opening, hundreds of people were already gathered in the area around the cordoned-off new store.
Zheng Wei, 61, was among the crowd and said he bought his first Apple product about a decade ago. “There haven’t been huge functionality advances over this past decade, but once you’re in this ecosystem it’s hard to leave,” he said.
“Apple’s development prospects in China don’t look good. The economy is bad and they are often made out to be the enemy in the media,” he added.
Additional reporting by Nian Liu in Beijing