Apple Tries To Build China Enthusiasm Pre-Earnings Release

The magic of the power of the Chinese middle class – with its rapid growth, enthusiasm for commerce and future looking ideas about payments – has scarcely needed to be sold to anyone anywhere for the last decade.

But these days, with the Chinese stock market playing a daily game of three-bullet Russian roulette with the international economy day in and day out, that enthusiasm has cooled and been replaced by deep concerns that perhaps the Chinese middle class will not be nearly so excited for expensive American consumer goods in the near future.

Consumers like Wang Tian, a waitress near the southwestern city of Chongqing, who Nasdaq recently wrote about. Her 1000 yuan a month just doesn’t justify the purchase of a 5000+yuan smartphone.

“It’s just not worth the money,” she said.

And if a lot of Chinese consumers have the same attitude, well it might just be a tough day for Apple. Tim Cook’s job during that earnings call will be to cool China’s worries as it relates to what has probably been history’s most successful product: the iPhone.

“People will be paying attention to what Tim Cook has to say about China,” said Mizuho Securities analyst Abhey Lamba, “and whether they can buck the trend of what’s happening in the macro economy.”