A frenzy for an experimental AI helper is turning China’s secondhand Mac market into a seller’s paradise. ATRenew, the country’s largest used-electronics reseller, is keeping Apple product prices pinned at fall-season peaks this spring after demand for secondhand Macs surged following the launch of OpenClaw.
Jeremy Ji, chief strategy officer and general manager of international business at ATRenew, said:
"We do see the growing demand for laptops, PCs as a whole, but the Mac devices benefit from that trend to try OpenClaw above all."
OpenClaw, released in November by Austrian developer Peter Steinberger, lets users run autonomous tasks such as sending emails and shopping online. SecurityScorecard data show usage in China now exceeds that in the United States.
Consumers prefer running the agent on separate hardware because it could autonomously alter private banking data or open paths for hackers; Apple’s power-efficient M-series chips make Mac Mini and newer MacBooks the favored sandbox.
ATRenew is paying higher buy-back prices to secure more used Mac inventory. Ji expects Mac and laptop share of the firm’s volume to rise to 20% from 15% and the rally to last "throughout the whole year." New MacBooks normally cost about 15% more than ATRenew’s used units; the firm processed about 100,000 devices a day last year.
Broader AI-driven memory-chip price increases are also pushing Chinese buyers toward used iPhones instead of flagship Android handsets, Ji noted. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told CNBC’s Jim Cramer that OpenClaw is "definitely the next ChatGPT" and "now the largest, most popular, the most successful open-sourced project in the history of humanity."
When an AI sidekick can shop, bank, and email on its own, buyers would rather quarantine it on M1 Mac Mini than risk their main rig—and ATRenew’s pricing power shows no sign of cracking.
Source: Cnbc