iPhone 18 Pro sales rose 12 per cent in their first days in China and put Apple top, Counterpoint saysiPhone 18 Pro sales rose 12 per cent in their first days in China and put Apple top, Counterpoint says

Apple was the best-selling smartphone brand in China in the week the iPhone 18 Pro went on sale, according to the research firm Counterpoint.

Counterpoint published the figures on 30 September from its China Weekly Smartphone Sell-Out Tracker, which counts phones sold to customers rather than shipped to shops. Its week 38 ran from 14 to 20 September. The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max went on sale on 18 September, so only three of those seven days included them. In those three days, Counterpoint says, the series recorded 12 per cent growth year on year, and Apple finished the week first in China with a 33 per cent share of smartphone sales.

The backdrop is a weak market. Counterpoint says China's weekly smartphone sales have been falling by double digits year on year since July, which it puts down to soft demand and rising memory costs. 9to5Mac gives the decline as 17 per cent; we could not find that number in Counterpoint's published text, which may carry it only in a chart.

Why are iPhone 18 Pro sales up in China?

Counterpoint gives three reasons. The first is timing: the base iPhone 18 is launching later than the Pro models this year, and its senior analyst Ivan Lam suggests some buyers traded up rather than wait. The second is price. Lam says many Chinese flagship phones have gone up by more than 200 dollars, which raised the price anchor against which the iPhone is judged. The third is what Counterpoint calls aggressive channel support, which usually means retailer and carrier promotions.

Counterpoint expects those price rises to hold back the Chinese flagships through the fourth quarter. It also notes that Huawei's wide foldable, the Pura X Max, has picked up sales again since the iPhone Duo was announced, months after its own launch.

What the 12 per cent compares

The firm's sentence on this is loose. It says the series grew 12 per cent year on year over its first three days, without spelling out the period it was measured against. MacRumors reads it as three days of iPhone 18 Pro beating the iPhone 17 Pro's entire first week. That is one plausible reading, and a more flattering one than a like-for-like three days. Counterpoint's text does not settle it.

Our take

Two of Counterpoint's three reasons are not really about the iPhone 18 Pro. A delayed base model funnels buyers who want a new iPhone now towards the only new iPhone there is. And a market where rivals raised prices by 200 dollars makes Apple's price look better by comparison without Apple doing anything. Both effects are real, and both say more about the calendar and about memory prices than about demand for the Pro itself. A week in which the Pro had the new-iPhone field to itself is not a guide to the quarter.

It is also three days of data inside a single week, from one firm. Counterpoint's tracker is well regarded, but weekly sell-out figures in China swing hard around launches and holidays, and the National Day holiday that starts on 1 October is the next big one. APPDOOK would treat the 33 per cent share as a launch-week peak rather than a new level, and look for the Q4 numbers before calling it a recovery.

The more interesting test is three weeks away. The iPhone Duo goes on sale on 23 October into a market Counterpoint describes as unusually keen on foldables, against a Huawei wide foldable that has already been riding the Duo's publicity. Whether Apple can build enough is the open question, given an unconfirmed Chinese report putting Duo assembly yields near 60 per cent. A strong Pro launch buys Apple goodwill in China. The Duo is where it finds out whether that goodwill extends to a new kind of phone.