Behind the price cut of all models of Huawei Mate 80

As the most important flagship model under Huawei, the Mate 80 series was finally launched yesterday. There was an episode during the launch. The originally planned offline press conference was suddenly changed to an online one, and the official didn't disclose the specific reason.

However, compared with the press conference itself, an external change that has caught people's attention is that the prices of all Mate 80 products have been reduced to varying degrees compared to the previous generation. Industry analysts believe that behind Huawei's decision to cut prices, on the one hand, it was affected by the mispricing and poor sales of the Pura 80, which was launched in June this year. Meanwhile, iPhone has been stimulating consumption by reducing prices. On the other hand, the application adaptation of the Hongmeng system is not yet perfect, and a lower price is needed to show sincerity to consumers.

01 Price Reduced by Up to 800 Yuan, Pro Version Gets the Least Allocation

The starting price of the standard version of the Mate 80 is 4,699 yuan, a reduction of 800 yuan compared to the Mate 70. The starting price of the Pro version has been reduced by 500 yuan compared to the previous generation, and the starting price of the Pro Max version has also been cut by 500 yuan from the previous generation.

Currently, the storage market is experiencing a super boom cycle. Data from Morgan Stanley shows that the spot price of DRAM has soared by more than 260% in just the past two months, putting huge pressure on downstream OEM manufacturers. Lu Weibing, the president of Xiaomi Group, once said, "The cost pressure from the upstream has truly been passed on to the pricing of our new products." Affected by the price increase in the upstream supply chain, the prices of new products from many mobile phone manufacturers this year have increased to varying degrees compared to the previous generation. For example, the price of the vivo X300 has increased by 100 yuan compared to the previous generation, the Honor 500 has gone up by 200 yuan, and the Redmi K90 has seen a price increase of 300 yuan.

Against this backdrop, why has Huawei lowered the prices of its most core flagship models across the board?

Several Huawei dealers told Digital Intelligence Frontline that one of the factors contributing to the across - the - board price cut of the Huawei Mate 80 is the mismanagement of the imaging flagship Pura 80, which was launched in June this year. The Pura 80's price dropped by 700 - 800 yuan just one month after its launch, which was widely criticized by consumers. "How can a high - end phone adjust its price just one month after its launch?" a Huawei dealer in North China told Digital Intelligence Frontline. "They were too overconfident in the initial pricing."

According to data released by RD Observation, the sales volume of the Huawei Pura 80 series exceeded 1.8 million units within 120 days of its launch, but it was only 40% of the sales volume of the previous generation during the same period.

Some dealers told Digital Intelligence Frontline that the profit - making period of the Pura 80 was too short, and its price started to decline. However, many people admitted that Huawei did not force the channels to take inventory but only required each store to stock a certain number of devices.

In addition to the poor sales of the Pura, external factors such as market competition are also seen as driving Huawei to actively choose to cut prices across the entire product line this time.

Huawei's most direct pressure comes from iPhone. The latest iPhone 17 series has been selling extremely well in China. Counterpoint data shows that the initial sales volume of the standard version of the iPhone 17 in the Chinese market is almost twice that of the iPhone 16 last year. And within less than two months of its launch, the total sales volume of the iPhone 17 series in China has exceeded 10 million units, and Apple's market share in China climbed to 25% in October this year.

In the eyes of the outside world, a large part of the market share that iPhone has captured comes from Huawei. And Apple achieved this turnaround not through product innovation but through more direct means such as price cuts or configuration upgrades.

One of the biggest highlights of the iPhone 17 this year is that, without increasing the price, it has significantly upgraded the memory configuration, increasing the entry - level capacity to 256GB while still keeping the price at 5,999 yuan. If calculated based on the price of the same configuration, the entry - level iPhone has effectively seen a price cut of 1,000 yuan.

The Mate is the ace product of Huawei's mobile phones and has been the main force in competing directly with iPhone over the years. The Mate 60, which was launched in 2023, set a record high with sales exceeding 14 million units. The total activation volume of the Mate 70 series also exceeded 8.85 million units. The market performance of the Mate 80 series is crucial to Huawei, and Huawei is trying to seize a larger market share by reducing prices.

However, there is also a strategic pricing strategy hidden in this Mate pricing. Compared with the relatively large price cuts of other models, the prices of the two models of the Mate 80 Pro (16GB + 512GB) and Mate 80 Pro (16GB + 1TB) remain the same as the previous - generation models, but the running memory (RAM) has been increased from 12GB to 16GB. And the high - memory Pro version has always been the model that Huawei least worries about in terms of sales.

As in previous years, Huawei will supply a large number of the standard version of the Mate 80, while the supply of the Pro and Pro Max versions will be restricted to maintain product popularity. A Huawei dealer in Southwest China told Digital Intelligence Frontline that the allocation of the Pro version is less than 10%, and the allocation of the Pro Max version is only about 10 - 15%, with most being the standard version.

02 The Hongmeng System Affects Users' Purchase Decisions

Several dealers mentioned that in addition to price, another important reason affecting the sales of the Pura 80 is the need to improve the operating system experience.

The Pura 80 is Huawei's first flagship model equipped with the pure - blooded Hongmeng system and does not support system rollback. Before this, although there were also models using the pure - blooded Hongmeng system, users could roll back to the dual - framework version compatible with Android applications.

The above - mentioned dealer in North China revealed that due to the use of the pure - blooded Hongmeng system, the initial user experience of the Pura 80 was not good, resulting in a relatively high return rate. A Huawei dealer in Southwest China also revealed that although the return rate of this generation of models is not exaggerated, it is indeed slightly higher than usual products.

On e - commerce platforms and social media, many users' complaints are concentrated on system and software adaptation issues, including the partial loss of functions of mainstream applications such as WeChat and the lack of coverage of many long - tail applications, which require the use of "Zhuoyitong" to run Android applications.

The experience at the operating system level has made many users hesitant about Huawei's new phones, especially heavy - duty office or gaming users, who will feel more obvious discomfort.

The Huawei Mate 80 series will also face this problem. During the painful period of the continuous maturation of the Hongmeng system, Huawei needs to set a lower price to target a more mass - market audience for its flagship products.

In addition, Digital Intelligence Frontline has learned that the Huawei Mate 80 can actually roll back the system, but the official has not publicized this, and users need to go to a Huawei - authorized store to complete this operation.

Good news is that with more and more models being launched, the Hongmeng system is accelerating its update frequency and is being recognized by more and more users. Many consumers mentioned that the Hongmeng system performs well in terms of fluency and security, such as having good shielding of junk software.

A Hongmeng developer told Digital Intelligence Frontline that the Hongmeng system has been updated very frequently in terms of security recently. On the Huawei official website, it can be seen that the Hongmeng 6.0 version has undergone a large number of updates, with different update contents every month. For example, WeChat releases 1 - 2 versions every month.

Developing an operating system has always been the most difficult task, and Huawei's determination to rebuild an operating system is unmatched by other manufacturers. However, this cannot rely solely on Huawei's efforts. Building a perfect application ecosystem is the most difficult part. Huawei will inevitably experience pain during the process of rebuilding an operating system, which will also affect sales. But in the view of a Huawei dealer, "The impact of the first - batch upgrade is relatively large. It is estimated that more users will accept it after the Hongmeng event."

This article is from the WeChat public account "Digital Intelligence Frontline" (ID: szqx1991), author: You Yong, editor: Shi Zhao, published by 36Kr with authorization.