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A $2,800 smartphone from Huawei with a 10-inch folding screen has passed 5mn in pre-orders during its launch week, as the Chinese technology giant takes on Apple in its home market with increasingly sophisticated devices.
The Shenzhen-based group debuted the Mate XT on Tuesday at an event held hours after its US rival unveiled the iPhone 16. Huawei’s handset is the first commercially available smartphone with a display that folds out into three segments.
Richard Yu, Huawei executive director, said the company had been “struggling for five years” to bring the trifold model into production. “We have overcome the technological constraints of the screen and hinge, resolved issues with its reliability and turned science fiction into a reality,” he said.
Apple highlighted the new iPhone’s artificial intelligence capabilities, but its Apple Intelligence service is not available on the Chinese mainland, reducing its appeal to consumers. Revenues for the iPhone fell 10 per cent year on year in the first three months of 2024, with competitive pressures in China seen as largely to blame.
Both companies’ phones are due to hit the shelves on September 20, but while the basic iPhone 16 will retail at Rmb5,999 ($843), the Mate XT will cost almost $2,000 more in a basic configuration at Rmb19,999.
Nevertheless, Huawei’s website showed 5mn reservations on Wednesday for models including the top-priced Rmb23,999 version of the handset. That would equate to more than $13bn in sales, save for the fact that customers could cancel and analysts doubt Huawei’s ability to produce that many phones.
The Mate XT is the group’s latest high-end offering as the company recovers from US sanctions imposed in 2019 that cut it off from the most advanced imported semiconductors. The group was forced to temporarily suspend production of its 5G phones and spin off its Honor smartphone brand.
Last year, Huawei surprised the industry with the release of its Mate 60 flagship smartphone with a sophisticated homegrown chip, the Kirin 9000S, in a breakthrough that helped the company reduce its reliance on foreign technology.
Huawei did not specify which chipset was powering its new phone, but smartphone analyst Lori Chang from Isaiah Research said “our channels indicate that Huawei’s trifold may be using Kirin 9010 5G processor”, a successor to the 9000S.
Analysts said Huawei still faced production challenges because its partner, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, was less efficient at manufacturing chips due to its reliance on outdated equipment as a result of the US chip export restrictions. Customers have complained about long wait times and low stocks in stores.
To add to production challenges, Huawei has to mass produce the trifold screen, which Yu acknowledged was “very difficult”.
Martin Yang, executive director at brokerage Oppenheimer & Co, estimated that “only a fraction of the 4mn-plus reservations will end up in actual shipment”.
“This is not a mass-market smartphone due to its price and weight . . . and I expect trifold supply to be very limited due to manufacturing difficulty,” he said. At 298 grammes, the Mate XT is more than a third heavier than the iPhone 15 Pro Max.
Andy Tsay, professor of information systems and analytics at the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University, said the Mate XT was “not really a direct competitor” to Apple’s iPhone 16, noting that its large size when unfolded made it unwieldy to use with one hand.
He said it was too early to judge whether the phone was a success from the pre-order volume, noting that the rate of product return and resale value was a truer test of “staying power”. But he added: “There is no denying that this phone adds to Huawei’s momentum and positions the company as a scrappy innovator with swagger.”
Huawei has also been experimenting with new features across its smartphone line to appeal to Chinese consumers, including a camera function that allows users to identify if they have evenly applied their sunscreen.
The company has revitalised its smartphone business through the release of its foldable phones, stealing market share from early-mover Samsung.
According to Counterpoint Research, the global foldable smartphone market grew by 49 per cent in the first quarter, led by a surge in shipments from Huawei and other Chinese brands.
In that period, Huawei displaced Samsung as the biggest vendor globally for the first time, leading the race with its Mate X5 phone.
Experts said Huawei had tapped into the so-called guochao, or “national trend”, movement in which companies incorporate nationalistic branding to celebrate Chinese culture.
“If a Chinese brand can become a means to lift morale and express pride in one’s nation, culture and distinct aesthetic sensibilities, Huawei is smart to lean into this,” said Tsay.