Look who's buying iPhones

Talk about an aspirational brand!

According to the latest Kantar Worldpanel report, Apple didn’t just consolidate its smartphone leadership in urban China last quarter, growing its share to 26.1% from 17.9%.

It also reached beyond the growing middle class that represents the bulk of Apple’s sales in China.

In the first quarter of 2015, according to Kantar’s Tamsin Timpson, “Apple represented 25% of smartphone sales in urban China’s 2,000 to 4,000 RMBs income bracket — a 10.1 percentage point increase from the same period in 2014.”

I had to do the currency conversion and double check the stat with Kantar before its import sank in. A 2,000 to 4,000 RMBs income bracket works out, in U.S. dollars, to somewhere between $322 and $644.

Note: That’s a monthly salary, not annual, as Kantar originally had it. (According to Carolina Milanesi, China is the only country of the 14 Kantar tracks that shows revenue per month.)

But still.

If you or I made less than $650 a month I’m not sure we’d be spending it on an iPhone.

Further evidence of Apple’s brand appeal in the world’s largest market for mobile phones comes from a China Reality Research report issued earlier this week. Asked what they would do if they had more spending money, 54% of respondents said they’d buy electronic appliances. Asked which brand they’d buy, 68% named Apple, with Samsung a distant second at 16%.