Apple Takes a (Small) Bite Off Its High China Prices
After opening its first (and still only) China store last year, Apple Inc. has started extending its offering of refurbished products to the world’s second largest PC market. But refurbished doesn’t mean cheap in China.
The Chinese site , which Apple unveiled to customers last month, offers Chinese consumers iPods and Macs that have been previously owned, retooled, and Apple-certified, at prices “you’ll remember for your whole life,” the site says.
Well, everything is relative. The new China site offers refurbished iMac desktop computers for a 12% discount, while iPod shuffles and older generations of iPod Nanos are selling for a 22% discount. The discounted options aren’t exactly deep enough to open the brand up to a new category of customers, as prices in China are already marked up significantly from those in the U.S. After getting 12% off a 2.8GHz iMac, the computer still costs 14,078 yuan, or about $2,059, compared to the U.S. price of $1,799 (before sales tax).
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