Huawei teases triple smartphone, ramping up competition with Apple in China By Reuters

By David Kirton

SHENZHEN, China (Reuters) – Chinese company Huawei Technologies unveiled a three-way folding phone on Tuesday, seeking to extend its lead over Apple (NASDAQ: ) in the world’s biggest smartphone market with a new form that has gained popularity in the Chinese market.

Just hours after Apple unveiled its latest iPhone model, Huawei is holding a launch event for the new Z Mate XT-shaped smartphone, which was displayed in its flagship e-commerce stores in mainland China with a day earlier.

Huawei’s website showed on Tuesday that it had collected more than 3.3 million pre-orders, for which no deposit is required, for the new smartphone.

By comparison, the entire global foldable phone market was about 4 million units in the second quarter, according to research firm IDC.

The latest release, which follows a string of successful smartphone debuts last year, underscores Huawei’s ability to navigate US sanctions and strengthens its position against Apple in China.

Huawei already has two-way foldable phones in its lineup, and their strong sales in China helped it overtake Samsung Electronics ( KS: ) this year as the biggest supplier of such phones globally.

But the high price and limited quantity could make the new model more of a symbol of Huawei’s technological prowess than a major sales driver, analysts said.

“Huawei’s future products are not expected to have a significant impact on Samsung and Apple’s business in terms of product volume,” said Jene Park, an analyst at research firm Counterpoint.

“There is a limit to the amount of products supplied. However, there may be some impact on sales in certain Chinese markets.”

The foldable smartphone market grew 57 percent year-on-year in the second quarter, with 3.9 million units shipped, largely as Chinese smartphone makers reached overseas markets, according to the company. IDC consultancy.

That’s still just 1.3 percent of the broader smartphone market, with 292.2 million smartphones shipped in the second quarter, IDC said.

“The average consumer still has limited knowledge about these, let alone the benefits and value of the products,” said Will Wong, senior researcher at IDC.

The high prices of such models remain another barrier. Although the price of the new model is unknown, last year’s Mate X5 still sells for more than 10,000 yuan ($1,406) domestically, almost twice as much as a new iPhone 15.

Overcoming issues such as screen wrinkling and reduced durability due to the use of multiple hinges will also be important to the growing use of foldable devices, Park said.

Huawei ranked as the world’s biggest seller of foldable smartphones in the second quarter with a 27.5 percent market share, ahead of South Korea’s Samsung with 16.4 percent, according to IDC.

That rises to 42% in China’s domestic market, ahead of Vivo and former Huawei unit Honor, which it spun off under pressure from US sanctions in 2020.

In the broader Chinese smartphone market, Apple’s ranking fell from third to sixth in the second quarter as Huawei became the third largest vendor due to strong sales of its latest smartphones.

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