BEIJING – Many of Apple’s affluent iPhone users in China are also interested in Huawei’s triple-price phone, CNBC found during spot checks in stores on Friday, the day the iPhone 16 and Mate XT they launched in the country.
Out of 10 people CNBC spoke to on Friday, eight said they were interested in the new Huawei and Apple phones. CNBC spoke with five people at each of the company’s stores during a weekday morning.
The Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei sought to rebuild its smartphone business after the US sanctions in 2019. Huawei ranked fourth by smartphone market share in China in the second quarter, according to Canalys.
US-based Apple dropped out of the top five, giving domestic players the top five spots for the first time, the data showed.
The iPhone 16 Pro Max starts at $1,199, and the iPhone 16 at $799. Huawei’s trifold Mate XT starts at the equivalent of more than $2,800.
The price gap was even more apparent on online platforms that sell second-hand goods.
The Huawei Mate XT was sold for 50,000 yuan to 60,000 yuan ($7,100 to $8,520) on the second-hand shopping platform Xianyu as of 1 pm Friday afternoon (1 am ET). The Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max sold for 10,500 yuan to 16,300 yuan, the site showed.
Earlier in the day, the listed Mate XT resale price was 19,000 yuan, while the Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max sold for 9,999 yuan, the site showed.
No queues outside Huawei stores
People in Beijing lined up at 5:30 am to get the new iPhone when the doors opened at 8 am.
But there were no lines outside Huawei stores in Beijing and Hefei, a smaller city west of Shanghai. The Chinese company began to deliver the new phones at 10:08 am to people who had reserved the trifold device.
During the hour and 20 minutes that CNBC was in the Huawei store, a couple of dozen people went to the second floor to an area reserved for Mate XT buyers.
It was not clear if everyone purchased the device. Many people bought it for resale purposes.
Huawei’s website on Friday showed that it had stopped selling, and scheduled to resume at 10:08 am on Saturday. The page said the company plans to complete shipments by September 30.
The first person CNBC spoke to at the Huawei store arrived at 10 a.m. just to test the trifold phone. The individual, identified only as Yang, declined to share his name because of concerns about speaking to foreign media.
He said that if he buys the trifold Mate XT, he plans to try it for a few days before deciding to keep it, give it to a friend, or sell it. Yang predicted that the device could sell for 2,000 yuan more than the list price.
Yang also said that he uses an iPhone, and was interested in trying the new features of Huawei, because Apple does not offer much of what he felt new.
Even the first person in line at the Apple store, Wang, said he also wanted to buy the Huawei trifold phone, but had not yet received a text message saying his device was ready to pick up.
He said he bought the iPhone 16 because he heard its battery would last longer, but he was willing to wait for the iPhone 17 for any artificial intelligence features.