--FILE--A Chinese customer tries out iPhone 5c smartphones of Apple at an Apple store in Shanghai, China, 20 September 2013. Apple's iPhone 5C, the lower-priced model introduced last year - by many accounts to boost sales in countries like China - has, in fact, done poorly in the People's Republic, according to an industry analyst. The 5C is not doing well in China, said Ben Bajarin of Creative Strategies in an email reply to questions. The audience that has been buying iPhones there to date is higher-end and can afford the premium device. A $US550 5C was not attractive to them because they could afford and wanted the premium 5S. Bajarin based his iPhone 5C take on smartphone usage data he collected from Alibaba, the massive China-based e-commerce conglomerate. Bajarin's data was thus a combination of smartphone access of Alibaba's websites as well as Umeng's app usage metrics, broken down by iPhone model. In July, the iPhone 5S became the most-used Apple smartphone in China, accounting for about 25% of all Apple's models in use, said Bajarin in a piece posted Friday to Tech.pinions ( subscription required). Until then, 2011's 4S had been the most-used iPhone.
