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Rose Gold iPhone makes its debut

Apple has recently launched the new phone with much cacophony with a built-in new camera and pressure-sensitive display.  The only thing which is new to the eye is its very pink rose gold colour and tiny "S" on the back, as reported by the Independent news.

The new phone with a rose gold tint is the second new colour being introduced to the iPhone series in a year.  With the introduction of iPhone 6, Apple released its gold colour at the same time which was the first new colour iPhone to be offered in years.

The pink hued metal gets its color from the mixture of gold and copper and was popular in Russia in the late 19th century as explained to Quartz by the arts newsletter Blouin Artinfo.  It later enjoyed the flash-in-pan-fame when the French jeweler Cartier released the trinity band in 1920.  It is an intertwined ring that comes in yellow, white, and rose gold and was flaunted by the poet Jean Cocteau.

The iPhone 6 in gold has now been phased out, and both the classic gold and rose gold are now exclusive to the iPhone 6s.  It means that iPhone 6 is will now be available in its original colors which are silver with a white front and space grey with a black front.

The tint's latest comeback started after the 2008 global recession and since then was used by interior designers and jewelry designers incorporating the glamorous color with their work.

With its rose gold iPhone, it is providing to users that are less high-profile than those celebrities, but no less aspirational.  Those are the newly-wealthy, bling-loving Chinese who are sometimes called tuhao.  Greater China provides about 25% of Apple's revenue, amounting to $13 billion last quarter and at recent keynote CEO Tim Cook said the iPhone market on the mainland increased to 75% in the past year.

"A big reason for why we released the gold iPhone is because many Chinese consumers like the color gold," Cook told the Hong Kong branch of Bloomberg Businessweek in an interview published in June. "To be clear, sales for the gold iPhones in China have far, far exceeded other markets."  

A rose gold iPhone's release might be evidence to the original gold iPhone's success, and that success has been driven largely by the color's warm welcome from China.  Prospects look good for rose gold's future in China.

"Rose gold iPhone" is currently the seventh top trending term on Weibo, China's Twitter-esque social network. And in a widely circulated picture, Wang Xicong, son of property tycoon Wang Jianlin, gifted his dog two rose gold Apple Watch Editions earlier this year.


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