Huawei makes a splash with the world's first triple-fold phone

Huawei launched its highly anticipated Z-shaped Mate XT, the world's first triple-fold smartphone, just hours after Apple unveiled its iPhone 16 series.

The Chinese maker's new phone will cost from 19,999 yuan (US$2,816) and both it and the iPhone 16 will be available in the domestic market from next Friday.

The Mate XT boasts a new kind of fold design and is both the largest and thinnest foldable phone on the market, said Richard Yu, chairman of Huawei's Consumer Business Group. He said five years of research and development had gone into creating the device.

For the new iPhone 16 series, which post a starting price of 5,999 yuan, the biggest selling point seemed to be its feature of artificial intelligence. Apple Intelligence, the company's AI software, will be used to improve Siri as well as enhancing functions such as understanding and identifying objects captured by the phone camera, Apple's executives said.

The higher-end iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max are made from titanium and have more AI capability, such as offering suggestions on how to set up a photo shoot more effectively and audio-editing capabilities aimed at professional-level video production.

Huawei is back on track in the smartphone market, with the release of the popular Mate 60 last September and now the Mate XT. Its smartphone business had been seriously hit by four rounds of US sanctions, Yu told a conference in Shenzhen on Tuesday.

In the second quarter, Apple fell out of the top-five rankings in China for the first time in recent years.

China's smartphone sales hit 70 million units in the quarter, with a 10-percent growth from a year ago. The top five brands were: Vivo, Oppo, Honor, Huawei and Xiaomi, according to researcher Canalys. Huawei is the leading vendor of foldable smartphones in China.

On Monday, Huawei's website showed it had more than 3 million pre-orders for the Mate XT.

To catch market demand, online retailers are gearing up for potential buyers of latest phone models.

Meituan said it's working with nearly 7,000 Apple authorized resellers in China, adding about 2,000 from a year ago. It will start to take pre-sale orders on Friday with extra coupons for its group buying, food delivery and entertainment service.

Tmall's Apple flagship store is offering interest-free 24-month installment payment plan for Alipay's consumer credit product Huabei as well as several credit card providers.

Huawei's challenge to Apple had almost disappeared since 2019 after US sanctions. But it has now become an obvious rival for the iPhone in the Chinese market, according to International Data Corp, the US-based research firm.

The new iPhones with Apple Intelligence lack multi-language support at present, as Apple is said to be releasing AI services in Chinese next year, so it will be hard for the new products to generate much growth, IDC said.