China’s iPhone sales drop may mean bigger problems for Apple

A rapid fall in China’s weekly iPhone sales may signal bigger challenges ahead for Apple Inc, whose smartphone had mostly been resilient to the global economic downturn, according to Jefferies.

The Cupertino, California-based company’s sales of iPhones in China slumped by 27% in the week of October 24, a third successive week of increasingly steep drops. Even adjusting for the device’s earlier release this year, the negative trend holds and has been worse than the recent drops for Android rivals, Jefferies analysts including Edison Lee wrote in a note Sunday.