Huawei, Apple hold duelling flagship smartphone launches in China as Huawei attracts interest with world’s first double-folding phone
Huawei’s double-folding Mate XT and Apple’s iPhone 16 launched in China on the same day on Friday, with both drawing crowds, as the iPhone maker faces increasingly stiff competition from domestic firms.
Huawei launched the Mate XT “trifold” device only a few hours after Apple’s iPhone 16 event earlier this month.
Pre-orders of the folding phone sold out on online outlets, including Huawei’s official Vmall platform, JD.com and Alibaba’s Tmall, shortly after sales began on Friday morning, according to local media reports.
Huawei’s flagship store in Shenzhen’s Nanshan district had a queue of dozens of people on Friday morning as people waited to pick up devices they had preordered, the South China Morning Post reported.
Double-folding phone
Only those who had placed pre-orders were able to collect devices, with walk-in customers unable to buy the new phone or place an order in person, reports said.
Huawei carried out product demonstrations of the 19,999 yuan ($2,800, £2,100) device for bustling crowds of users and provided demonstration units for customers.
The Mate XT pulled in more than 2.7 million pre-orders within hours of its launch on 10 September.
Scalpers have listed devices online for as much as 70,000 yuan, reports have said.
Huawei leads the worldwide market for foldable phones and is one of the top five smartphone vendors on the mainland, which is led by Vivo, Oppo and Huawei spin-off Honor, with Huawei in fourth place, followed by Xiaomi.
Domestic competitors pushed Apple out of the top five in the second quarter, as its China sales fell by 6.7 year-on-year for the quarter, according to Canalys.
iPhone 16
Apple’s new iPhone 16 also drew crowds at its official store in Shenzhen on launch day as people queued to pick up pre-orders.
But iPhone trade has been weak this year compared with previous launches, domestic media reported.
Ahead of the launch online sellers such as Pinduoduo were already offering discounts, the SCMP reported.
It is unclear how Apple plans to launch its mobile AI services in China, where foreign-based cloud services such as ChatGPT, which partially powers the so-called Apple Intelligence features, are not allowed to operate.
The iPhone 16 launched in China on Friday without AI features, which were touted at launch as key to the device’s appeal, and it is unclear when or how users might get access to them.
“iPhone will continue to see [market share] erosion in the premium segment by Huawei and other Chinese brands,” said Counterpoint’s Ivan Lam.
