Apple’s iPhone 17 Air sells out as CEO Tim Cook makes high-profile Beijing visit in launch week

Apple’s slimmest smartphone, the iPhone 17 Air, sold out within minutes of its launch in China on Friday, during a week-long visit by Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook, who met top Chinese officials and promised to deepen cooperation with the ￰0￱ to the South China Morning Post, pre-orders for the iPhone 17 Air began at 9 AM local time on Friday, more than a month after its global ￰1￱ model, which supports only e-SIM connectivity, had received regulatory approval to launch in China just days ￰2￱ new phone was unavailable at all major retail outlets in Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin, within minutes of the market’s opening, according to Apple’s ￰3￱ online orders had to be backlogged, and their delivery dates were extended by one to two ￰4￱ markets still fond of Apple amid US trade tensions Apple products are status symbols for affluent consumers in China, despite the surge in demand for homegrown brands such as Huawei, Vivo, and Oppo.

Cook’s visit this week was meant to reinforce the American tech giant’s commitment to China, where it also manufactures most of its ￰5￱ chairman of the advisory board at Tsinghua University’s School of Economics and Management, Cook met Vice Premier He Lifeng and Commerce Minister Wang Wentao in Beijing on ￰6￱ personally promoted the iPhone 17 Air during a visit to Apple’s flagship store in Beijing’s Wangfujing shopping district this week, where crowds gathered to see the CEO and test the new ￰7￱ CEO promised to increase Apple’s investments in the Chinese market in meetings with top tech representatives. China’s Ministry of Commerce, through an announcement made on state media, welcomed Apple’s cooperation and the promise to continue iPhone production ￰8￱ had met US President Donald Trump at the White House weeks earlier, where he pledged a $100 billion investment in the United ￰9￱ week, he announced Apple’s donation to expand environmental education programs at China’s Tsinghua University.

Apple’s top representative did not disclose the value of the donation or specify how much investment it planned to inject into China, as he did in ￰10￱ was also slated to meet with video game designers and creatives using Apple ￰11￱ visited the set of a music video filmed entirely with the iPhone 17 ￰12￱ met Kasing Lung, the designer behind Pop Mart’s popular Labubu dolls, who gave him a custom doll modeled after ￰13￱ fights to top China’s technology company rankings Apple’s latest sales success comes as it fights to retain its position among the top five smartphone brands in ￰14￱ company is competing with chip and smartphone manufacturer Huawei, which resurged after years of US ￰15￱ launched a nationwide subsidy program earlier this year to stimulate consumer spending on electronics after spending cooled due to economic strain ￰16￱ program excludes smartphones priced above approximately $840, which leaves out most iPhone ￰17￱ US government has pressured Apple to diversify some of its manufacturing to countries like Vietnam, Thailand, and India, but China still hosts most of its production ￰18￱ iPhones are assembled by Foxconn in Zhengzhou, known locally as “iPhone City.” Apple unveils new M5 Chip with leap in AI and performance On Thursday, Apple also introduced its next-generation M5 chip, built using third-generation 3-nanometer ￰19￱ to an insight shared on the tech firm’s website, the M5 features a new 10-core GPU architecture and Neural Accelerators in every core for faster AI workloads.

Apple’s Senior Vice President of Hardware Technologies, Johny Srouji, said the chip delivers up to four times the GPU compute performance of its predecessor, the ￰20￱ M5’s CPU includes up to 10 cores, six efficiency cores, and four performance cores, with a 15% boost in multithreaded ￰21￱ said the M5 chip also improves memory bandwidth by nearly 30%, reaching 153GB per second, and integrates a powerful 16-core Neural Engine and an upgraded media ￰22￱ chip will power the upcoming MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and Apple Vision Pro, all of which are now available for ￰23￱ you're reading this, you’re already ￰24￱ there with our newsletter .