Pictured here is an Apple flagship store in Beijing, China, on the day of the iPhone 16 launch on September 20, 2024.
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BEIJING — Lots of it AppleChina’s affluent iPhone users are just as interested in Huawei’s pricier tri-fold phone, CNBC found during spot checks at stores Friday, the day the iPhone 16 and Mate XT launched in the country.
Of the 10 people CNBC spoke to on Friday, eight said they were interested in both the new Huawei and Apple phones. CNBC spoke to five people at each company’s store on a workday morning.
Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei has been trying to rebuild its smartphone business after US sanctions in 2019. Huawei ranked fourth in China’s smartphone market share in the second quarter. according to Canalys.
US-based Apple dropped out of the top five, pushing domestic players into the top five for the first time, the data showed.
The iPhone 16 Pro Max starts at $1,199, and the iPhone 16 at $799. Huawei’s tri-blade Mate XT starts at the equivalent of more than $2,800.
The price difference was even more apparent on online platforms selling second-hand goods.
The Huawei Mate XT was selling for 50,000 yuan to 60,000 yuan ($7,100 to $8,520) on second-hand shopping platform Xianyu as of 1 p.m. Friday. The Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max was sold for 10,500 yuan to 16,300 yuan, the site showed.
Earlier in the day, the listed resale price of the Mate XT was 19,000 yuan, while the Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max sold for 9,999 yuan, the site showed.
No lines outside Huawei stores
People in Beijing were already queuing at 5:30 am to get their hands on 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 started delivering the new phones to people who had pre-ordered the tri-fold device at 10:08 am.
During the 1 hour and 20 minutes that CNBC was in the Huawei store, a few dozen people went to the second floor, to an area reserved for Mate XT buyers.
It was not clear whether all of them had purchased the device. Many were people buying for resale purposes.
Huawei’s website showed on Friday that it had halted sales scheduled to resume them Saturday at 10:08 a.m. The page stated that the company planned to complete deliveries by September 30.
The first person CNBC spoke to at the Huawei store arrived at 10 a.m. to try out the trifold phone. The person, surnamed Yang, declined to share his first name due to concerns about speaking to foreign media.
He said that if he buys the three-blade Mate XT, he plans to try it out for a few days before deciding whether to keep it, give it to a friend or sell it. Yang expected the device could fetch 2,000 yuan more than its list price.
Yang also said he uses an iPhone and was interested in trying out Huawei’s new trifold features because Apple didn’t have much to offer that he thought was new.
Even the first person in line at the Apple Store, Wang, said he also wanted the trifold Huawei phone, but had not yet received a text message saying his device was ready for pickup.
He said he bought the iPhone 16 because he heard the battery lasted longer, but was willing to wait for the iPhone 17 for any artificial intelligence features.
-CNBCs Sonja Heng contributed to this report.