Apple loses its shine in China

Due to the limited improvements seen in successive iPhone models and a wider range of alternatives from domestic smartphone makers, Chinese consumers are less enthusiastic about the upcoming iPhone, which will be unveiled on Thursday Beijing Time, experts said.

Sina Weibo, the Chinese counterpart of Twitter, shows that in the month before this year's launch, the new iPhone has only attracted one fifteenth as many comments as the iPhone 6 managed to generate during the same period last year.

This is echoed by the latest data from China's biggest search engine Baidu Inc. In July, there were only 96.8 million iPhone-related searches, marking a 27 percent drop from last year's figure.