MOSCOW, September 9 (RIA Novosti) – The new iPhone has the potential to be a major stimulus for the economy of China, which is the world’s largest market for smartphones, The Market Watch reported Tuesday.
The iPhone 6, by itself, “could add about 1 percent per month to China export growth for the rest of 2014,” Bank of America-Merrill Lynch economists Ting Lu and Marcella Chow said as quoted by The Market Watch.
“Export growth of China and Taiwan was only 4.9 percent and 4.4 percent year-on-year in the second quarter of 2014, respectively, so a boost of 1 to 2 percentage points to headline export growth is no small matter, especially for the currency market which closely tracks export-growth numbers,” Lu and Chow note.
According to the economists, Taiwan would enjoy an even bigger iPhone lift to its trade account than China: a 2-percentage-point-per-month bonus to export growth in August-October, followed by a 1-point monthly boost through January 2015.
The experts’ prognosis assumes that 17 percent of the new iPhones won’t leave China and that the assemblers will receive above half the average sale price, which Merrill Lynch estimates at $607.50.
