Resellers are hiking prices on Huawei’s ‘trifold’ smartphone before it’s even out

Huawei is preparing to release its new ‘trifold’ smartphone on Friday — the same day as Apple’s (AAPL) latest iPhone comes out — but it’s already being listed in China for up to three times its price.

The Chinese tech giant’s new Mate XT smartphone starts at 19,999 yuan, or $2,800, but scalpers are listing the smartphone on resale sites for between 60,000 and 70,000 yuan, or about $8,500 to $9,900, amid high demand, Lin Shen, a second-hand smartphone dealer, told the South China Morning Post (BABA).

“The prices at Huaqiangbei [, a Shenzhen-based electronics wholesale marketplace,] are still very unstable,” Lin told the SCMP. “Most of the interest is from scalpers who are looking to resell [the Mate XT] and make a profit from the price difference.”

Huawei did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Huawei’s trifold smartphone received over 3 million preorders before its debut just hours after Apple’s iPhone 16 unveiling. Pre-orders for the smartphone started on September 7, and did not require a deposit. And as Apple touted artificial intelligence features for its upcoming iPhone models, Huawei said its Mate XT, which uses the company’s Kylin chip, features an AI-powered assistant for text summarization, translation, and editing.

Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo wrote in a note that a recent supply chain survey shows 2024 shipments for the tri-fold smartphone have been revised up to 1 million units from 500,000, but noted previous instances of a drop in demand for Huawei’s flagship products after release.

Since releasing its Mate 60 Pro smartphone series last August, Huawei has outpaced Apple in the Chinese smartphone market. In April, the company reported a rise in profit for the fourth consecutive quarter, also showing resilience against U.S. sanctions aimed at curbing China’s advanced chip efforts.

Meanwhile, Apple’s iPhone sales fell 19% over the same period — its worst performance in China since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Apple’s share of China’s smartphone market also fell year-over-year in the first quarter of 2024 from 19.7% to 15.7%. The company has had to cut prices on some iPhone models in the Chinese market as competition grows with Huawei and other homegrown smartphone-makers.

Meanwhile, Chinese online retailers are cutting prices of the iPhone 16 ahead of its official release in the country, as they wait for Apple’s AI features to roll out, the SCMP reported.

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