Huawei zielt höher und setzt Blockaden, der Mobiltelefonmarkt wird im Oktober aufregend werden.

Seeing Xiaomi frantically capturing traffic, Huawei quietly steps up its game.

Recently, some bloggers speculated from the pre - sale schedule of Huawei WATCH GT 6 Pro smartwatch that the Huawei Mate 80 series is likely to be released on October 21st.

Previously, it was rumored in the market that the Huawei Mate 80 series would be launched in mid - November.

In addition to speculations about the release time, some digital bloggers have exposed a lot of significant upgrade information about the Huawei Mate 80 series. In terms of the system and chips, the new models of the Huawei Mate 80 series will be the first to be equipped with HarmonyOS 6.0 and the Kirin 9030 chip.

In a situation where Apple and Xiaomi have almost divided up most of the traffic in the mobile phone circle, it's easy to imagine the difficulty if Huawei launches new phones in November.

Huawei, which suffered a setback in the release schedule last year, should learn a lesson this year.

01

September belongs to "Apple and Xiaomi"

The traffic in the mobile phone circle in September belongs to Apple and Xiaomi.

In the first half, Apple staged a comeback and reversed its decline.

From being "disliked" to "sold out in seconds", Apple turned its fortune around.

At 8 p.m. on September 12th, the iPhone 17 series was launched by Apple.

Almost all channels, including the Apple official website, App, web pages, JD.com, and Tmall, experienced varying degrees of "slow loading" at the same time.

The phrase "Can't grab the iPhone 17" quickly topped the Weibo hot search list. Tim Cook and his Apple won big this time.

Screenshot from Weibo

Recently, a digital blogger released the top 20 list of domestic mobile phone sales in the 38th week of 2025. The list shows that Apple was the biggest winner this week, with five models on the list. Three models of the newly launched iPhone 17 series even occupied the top three spots in sales.

When the iPhone 17 got a high - refresh rate screen, it will surely put pressure on a number of domestic brands.

In the second half, while competitors were thinking about how to break the deadlock, Xiaomi made a clever iteration and directly reversed the situation.

On September 15th, Lei Jun, the founder of Xiaomi, posted that the Xiaomi 17 series has a generational upgrade in product strength and is fully benchmarked against the iPhone, ready to face off directly.

Lei Jun is consciously creating a CP feeling between Xiaomi and Apple.

At the speech on September 25th, Lei Jun took the CP hype to the extreme.

The naming of the Xiaomi 17 directly corresponds to the iPhone 17 in the sequence. At the press conference, all core parameters, from the chip to the imaging system, were compared item by item with the iPhone.

The starting price of the standard version of the iPhone 17 remains at 5,999 yuan. Xiaomi's pricing strategy is extremely precise: the starting price of the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max is also 5,999 yuan, but it offers a larger 6.9 - inch screen and better imaging; the starting price of the Xiaomi 17 Pro is 4,999 yuan, and the standard version of the Xiaomi 17 is even as low as 4,499 yuan.

The on - site PPT showed that when the iPhone 17 with a 5000mAh magnetic power bank ran out of power, the Xiaomi 17 still had 26% of its battery left.

It can be said that although Apple was not directly mentioned throughout the speech, it was everywhere. Lei Jun had a good grasp of the atmosphere details.

Although a series of operations by Lei Jun and Xiaomi have sparked controversy among netizens, who think there is a suspicion of "rubbing off on Apple's popularity", Xiaomi achieved its strategic goal.

In the entire mobile phone circle's public opinion field in September, it was almost a two - horse race between Apple and Xiaomi. In terms of sales, Xiaomi was not inferior. On the first - sale day on September 27th, the Xiaomi 17 series sold out within 5 minutes, breaking the records of the full - day sales volume and sales amount of new mobile phone series in all price segments of domestic mobile phones in 2025. It is understood that the retail system of many Xiaomi stores crashed due to a large number of orders and returned to normal after an hour.

It should be noted that before Lei Jun's brilliant move, the entire mobile phone circle was waiting to see how Huawei would use the Mate 80 series to fight back after launching the latest triple - fold phone.

02

The lesson from last year

On this day last year, due to the delayed launch, the Huawei Mate 70 series missed the best opportunity to attract iPhone 16 users.

The "Golden September and Silver October" have always been the peak sales seasons for smartphones.

Normally, for industry benchmarks like Apple and Huawei, the party that launches products earlier and can attract more consumers' attention will gain a first - mover advantage in the market, leading in sales and market share.

In 2023, despite being restricted, Huawei's Mate 60 came out of nowhere.

On August 29th, 2023, Huawei Mall released a letter to Huawei users, stating that the Mate 60 Pro would be launched at 12:08 on that day, "allowing some consumers to experience the most powerful Mate phone in history in advance."

Picture from Huawei Mall

Without any warning, it caught everyone off guard. Even scalpers were not prepared. It was not until after the Spring Festival of the following year that the price - gouging behavior subsided.

For a while, the Huawei Mate 60 series replaced the iPhone as a hot commodity in the hands of scalpers.

It is estimated that in the first two months after the launch of the Huawei Mate 60 series, it directly helped Huawei relieve the pressure in its mobile phone business.

By the end of June 2024, the total sales of all versions of the Huawei Mate 60 series had exceeded 10 million units.

A year later, just when Huawei was showing signs of a comeback, Apple made a series of blunders. The Apple Intelligence function that Apple vigorously promoted at last year's press conference has not been implemented yet and is still in the PPT stage.

Guo Mingji, an analyst at Tianfeng International, said that the pre - order sales of the iPhone 16 series in the first weekend were about 37 million units, a year - on - year decrease of about 12.7% compared with the iPhone 15 series in 2023, lower than expected.

The subsequent market performance further confirmed this statement, basically confirming the claims of lack of innovation. In the past one or two years, most Apple fans have habitually witnessed an annual mediocre iteration.

According to relevant financial report data, Apple's revenue in the Greater China region declined by 2% year - on - year in the second fiscal quarter of the 2025 fiscal year.

With such a golden opportunity, Huawei could only use the Mate XT Ultimate Master to attract iPhone 16 users. After all, the high price of the Huawei Mate XT Ultimate Master means it is not in the same price range as the iPhone 16 series and cannot directly impact the iPhone 16 series' sales.

Looking back from now, if Huawei had launched the Mate 70 series to fight back at that time, it would have further expanded its advantage.

In addition, the Huawei Mate 70 series was originally planned to be launched earlier, but due to the progress of the adaptation of the pure HarmonyOS system, it had to be postponed to a time close to the launch of the Honor Magic 7 series. This delay not only made consumers look forward to the Huawei Mate 70 series but also unexpectedly caused the two phones to "look alike" in the market.

This may be one of the few cases in Huawei's history where a flagship phone "looked alike" with Honor. Previously, it was mostly Honor that "looked alike" with Huawei.

03

Huawei can't wait any longer

Last year, Huawei still had objective problems such as waiting for the maturity of HarmonyOS and the adaptation of WeChat.

Huawei's HarmonyOS, as a self - developed operating system of strategic significance, aims to build a complete mobile terminal ecosystem. Since its birth, it has carried Huawei's ambition to break free from external constraints and lead the future of technology.

The Huawei Mate 70, as Huawei's flagship model, was highly anticipated and should have been launched as planned to support the newly born pure HarmonyOS system.

However, since the pure HarmonyOS system is no longer compatible with Android applications, WeChat needs to carry out special adaptation and development work.

Now, after several efforts in products and technologies, the HarmonyOS has begun to show its edge.

The full - scale push of HarmonyOS 5.1 brings a seamless experience of cross - device file transfer in only 15 milliseconds. The number of terminals using HarmonyOS 5 has exceeded 20 million, and 83% of the top 300 mobile applications in China have completed the native adaptation to HarmonyOS.

Even in the previously weak game field, it has received the support of many big - name games. Popular mobile games like "Arena of Valor" and "Peacekeeper Elite" have been launched. "Teamfight Tactics: Wild Rift" was launched on September 25th. Popular games such as "League of Legends: Wild Rift", "Delta Force: Operators", "Call of Duty", and "Dark Zone Breakout" have also launched experience servers or beta versions, and the official versions will soon meet players.

Screenshot from the Huawei App Gallery

Apparently, Huawei doesn't need to keep delaying like last year.

Moreover, the current external pressure is greater than last year. In addition to Apple and Xiaomi, which occupy the traffic high - ground, competitors such as vivo and OPPO have also announced that they will launch new phones in October.

With Xiaomi's example in front, no one can predict whether competitors like vivo and OPPO are hiding any big moves or what ingenious operations they will make. Whether it is at the product level or the marketing level, they cannot be underestimated.

According to past practices, the mobile phone circle will not tolerate Xiaomi's solo show. Once other brands come to their senses, there will surely be a new round of crazy involution and a war of words.

The newly launched triple - fold phone, which was highly anticipated, failed to create a traffic frenzy like last year and failed to buy enough time for the Mate 70 series. In the face of Apple's sudden surge and Lei Jun's upgrade of the Xiaomi 17 series, it has little voice.

Huawei must speed up the progress and can't delay any longer.

Some pictures are from the Internet. Please inform us if there is any infringement and we will delete them.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Source Byte", author: Keji's Ke. It is published by 36Kr with authorization.