On January 23, Apple’s Tmall official flagship store launched a new promotional campaign, offering a discount of 2500 yuan (RMB) on the ultra-thin iPhone Air model, which has only been on the market in China for three months.
According to the promotional information, the original price of the iPhone Air 256GB version is 7999 yuan. With the official discount of 2000 yuan during this campaign, the reduced price falls within the range of government subsidies. After an additional 500 yuan subsidy, the final price comes to just 5499 yuan.
Reported by The Paper on January 24, the iPhone Air was officially launched in China on October 22, 2025, exactly three months ago. The substantial discount on the iPhone Air this time breaks the record for the largest price drop on a new iPhone in China.
The official announcement from Apple’s Tmall flagship store indicates that this promotional sale is limited in quantity, with only 13,000 units of the iPhone Air available. “Limited stock, while supplies last.”
In addition to the iPhone Air, the products included in this promotion also feature 11 models such as the iPhone 17 Pro/17 Pro Max, iPhone 16 Pro/16 Pro/16e.
The Paper revealed that in China, users who purchase the iPhone Air must go to the offline business hall of the carrier to activate eSIM. Currently, China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom all provide eSIM support for this device.
This marks the third large-scale promotion that Apple has launched in China within a little over a month. Earlier, the Chinese official website of Apple launched a limited-time promotion. Users who purchased designated products such as iPhone, Mac, iPad, and Apple Watch using specified payment methods from January 24 to 27, 2026, could enjoy discounts of up to 1000 yuan. The discounted products cover more than ten models from seven major categories. For instance, buying an iPhone 16 or iPhone 16 Plus can save 300 yuan, and the price of the iPhone 16e is reduced by 200 yuan.
Additionally, according to Jiemian News on January 24, in late December 2025, Apple offered a limited-time price reduction promotion for the two high-end models, iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max.
As for the reason behind the discounted sale of the iPhone Air this time, external speculations suggest that it might be related to lower-than-expected sales performance. Bloomberg referred to Counterpoint analyst Ivan Lam’s opinion from January 19 in “iPhone Air’s Performance Below Expectations,” stating that “the delayed release, along with trade-offs made between the thickness of the body and feature configurations, led to slow sales at the beginning.”
eSIM, or embedded SIM card, is a new generation SIM card standard formulated by the GSM Association, which directly embeds the functions of a traditional SIM card into the device chip in electronic form, without the need for a physical card slot. Users can switch and manage operator networks through remote configuration.