Apple CEO Tim Cook makes surprise visit to China post sluggish iPhone 15 sales

Apple CEO Tim Cook made a surprise visit to China on Tuesday as challenges for the iPhone manufacturer mount in its most significant overseas market.

Cook was seen cheering on gamers at an Apple store event in Chengdu in Southwestern China to play "Honor of Kings," a game developed by TiMi Studio, which is owned by Tencent.

“The action-packed Honor of Kings started here in Chengdu and is now a global phenomenon on the App Store,” Cook said in a post on Chinese social media service Weibo.

Cook's visit to Apple's third-largest market comes after a lukewarm response to the recently launched iPhone 15. The iPhone also no longer commands the highest market share in the Chinese smartphone market, having been toppled by Huawei, according to a Jefferies note on Monday.

A research note on Tuesday said that sales of the iPhone 15 during the first 17 days of launch are down 4.5% compared to the iPhone 14 version.

The note attributed Apple’s challenges to poor consumer sentiment, the iPhone 15′s poorer performance than the iPhone 14 and increasing competition in the high-end smartphone market.

“All of these things are working together to take some of the shine away from Apple’s lustre during the first few weeks of iPhone 15 sales,” Ethan Qi, associate director at Counterpoint Research, said.

Last month, Huawei launched a smartphone containing a high-end semiconductor and 5G connectivity, despite the US sanctions that have sought to stop that from happening.

Huawei was once the biggest smartphone maker in China, and Apple’s biggest challenger, before U.S. sanctions cut it off from key technology it needed to compete, causing it to fall to the No. 6 spot.

Apple's shares ended nearly a percent lower on Tuesday.