In the seven years since its launch, Nintendo has not once cut the price of its rabidly popular Switch gaming console.
Nor should it: the Switch has sold over 132 million units, making it the Japanese gaming giant’s second-best-selling device behind the Nintendo DS.
Killer apps like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Super Mario Bros Wonder and Metroid Prime Remastered ensured Switch sales kept ticking along well into 2023.
If not cutting prices is a surefire sign of a product’s enduring popularity, then what does that say of Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL, ETR:APC)’s iPhone 15?
Merely four months after its launch, Apple has already cut the iPhone 15’s retail price in China by as much as 500 yuan, or $70 (£55).
Apple has framed this as a time-limited Lunar New Year event, so it must be a simple coincidence that Chinese iPhone sales declined 30% year on year in the first week of 2024 (per investment bank Jefferies’ data).
Though it could be put down to a small blip, Jefferies also noted that full-year sales in China fell by a total of 3% in 2023.
It was at this point that Barclays and Piper Sandley & Co slapped a downgrade on Apple stock as question marks began to spring up above consumer demand in the world’s joint-largest company’s third-largest market.
The ominous air around the iPhone 15’s price cut gets thicker when you realise that its launch price was actually cheaper than the iPhone 14. Typically, newer, fancier devices come with newer, fancier price tags.
Is it shaping up to be a not-good year for Apple?
For the first time in years, it feels like Apple is on the back foot, while AI-supercharged competitor Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) pulls ahead.
The two megacaps are currently neck-to-neck as the joint largest companies in the world for the first time in three years.
2024 is shaping up to be another pivotal year for the bitter tech rivalry.