72-hour showdown between Apple, Huawei and Xiaomi: Flagship models priced at 10,000 yuan are launched in droves, and the smartphone market ushers in the inflection point of a price surge.
In the past 72 hours, Huawei, Xiaomi and Apple have successively held new product conferences, bringing a rare head-to-head confrontation to the smartphone track.
At 1 a.m. Beijing time on September 10, the annual Apple autumn new product conference was held. It is worth mentioning that this is the first iPhone conference in the past 15 years that was not hosted by Tim Cook as CEO, and it is also the first major annual test after Apple's new CEO John Ternus took over.
The biggest highlight of this conference is that Apple finally unveiled the foldable screen phone iPhone Duo, which has been rumored for several years. Launched alongside it are the routinely iterated iPhone 18 Pro/Pro Max, new-generation Apple Watch and AirPods and other products. The 256GB version of iPhone Duo for the Chinese mainland market is priced at 15,999 yuan, and the top 2TB version is priced at 26,499 yuan, making it the most expensive model in Apple's current iPhone product line. In addition, the price of the iPhone 18 Pro series has also been significantly increased, with the starting price rising by 1,000 yuan compared with the previous generation model.
Just two days before Apple's conference, Huawei launched the Mate XT 2 Ultimate Design triple-foldable and the wide-foldable Pura X Max, as well as the Pura X View; Xiaomi released the brand-new foldable flagship Xiaomi 18 Fold.
At the three conferences, price has become the core topic of the whole event.
The starting price of Xiaomi 18 Fold is 10,999 yuan, officially crossing the 10,000-yuan threshold; the starting price of Huawei Mate XT 2 is 19,999 yuan, 2,000 yuan higher than the previous generation, and the top configuration reaches 24,999 yuan, only the Pura X View remains at the price below 10,000 yuan of 5,999 yuan.
Apple raised the prices of all its product lines even more. The starting price of iPhone 18 Pro is close to the 10,000-yuan threshold, set at 9,999 yuan, and the top-spec iPhone 18 Pro Max is priced at 21,499 yuan, crossing the 20,000-yuan mark. The first foldable-screen iPhone Duo starts at 15,999 yuan.
Behind the collective price increase of flagship models is the epitome of the price surge across the entire industry.
A number of consumers told Tech Planet that the price of mobile phones is already unaffordable. Some users sighed: "Even Redmi has models priced above 5,000 yuan." The price ceiling of high-end flagships is constantly being refreshed, and mid-to-low-end models are also quietly raising their prices.
The threshold for consumers to buy mobile phones continues to rise. Counterpoint data shows that the average starting price of new mobile phones worldwide in 2026 has increased by 25% year-on-year, and more than 40% of models have raised their prices.
Against the background of the continuous shrinking of the smartphone market, where will this price surge go behind the collective high pricing of Huawei, Xiaomi and Apple?
01
Head-to-head confrontation of foldable screens: Three giants rush to the track, new 10,000-yuan models appear in clusters
The three conferences were held at almost the same time, and the foldable screen track ushered in the most intense head-to-head confrontation in history. Three heavyweight flagships from Huawei, Xiaomi and Apple all stood firmly in the 10,000-yuan price range.
Faced with external doubts about high prices, the three manufacturers gave highly consistent reasons: the cost has risen sharply.
Lei Jun said that "due to the expensive memory, the Xiaomi 18 Fold is indeed not cheap", while Richard Yu of Huawei said that "on the basis of the storage price increasing by more than 2,000 yuan, this price is a very sincere price".
Former Apple CEO Cook once described the rise in storage prices as a "once-in-a-century flood" at the earnings call in July. In the end, Apple's price increase expanded with the increase in storage capacity. The basic version generally increased by 1,000 yuan, and the top-spec model increased by up to 3,500 yuan.
The news that the production capacity of Apple's new products is limited has also heated up the second-hand market in advance, becoming a part of pushing up prices.
Previous supply chain sources said that the first batch of iPhone Duo stockpiles is only about 500,000 to 1 million units. On the eve of the conference, scalpers had already posted purchasing agency services on second-hand platforms, and the fee for a single purchasing order reached 500 yuan.
Another scalper told Tech Planet that if he can grab the new product, he will add more than 2,000 yuan on the basis of the starting price, and the final premium range will fluctuate with the market conditions.
However, the market popularity is not one-sided. A scalper who has long been engaged in the second-hand iPhone business chose to wait and see, as new products occupy a large amount of capital and the shipment uncertainty is high. In his opinion, the risk and return are not worthwhile.
He told Tech Planet that in 2024, Huawei's first triple-foldable Mate XT Ultimate Design was once speculated to 100,000 yuan, but the popularity quickly dropped afterwards, the premium shrank significantly, and the price finally fell back to near the official guide price. The huge price fluctuation made him cautious about the speculation space of Apple's foldable screen this time.
Manufacturers are betting heavily on high-end foldable phones, which is rooted in industry data. In July this year, Counterpoint predicted that the global foldable phone shipment in 2026 will increase by 21% year-on-year, and foldable screens are already one of the few tracks in the mobile phone industry that are expected to maintain growth.
In order to seize the initiative of high-end price comparison, domestic manufacturers have even broken the industry tacit understanding that has lasted for many years. In the past few years, Huawei and Xiaomi would take the initiative to avoid Apple's September conference, unwilling to be compared under the same pricing scale. This year, the two brands uniformly scheduled their conferences on September 7, taking the lead in unveiling two and a half days before Apple.
The day after the Huawei and Xiaomi conferences, Tech Planet visited JD MALL in Shuangjing, Beijing and found that the Huawei store had completed the exhibition layout of the Mate XT 2; the Xiaomi store next door was hasty in preparation, the 18 Fold was not open for experience at that time, and there was only one new phone in the store for internal training of staff, and the staff had not completed the demonstration training of the folding function.
Under the rhythm of rushing to the market, the three new products were released in clusters as scheduled, and this head-to-head fight for 10,000-yuan foldable screens has already begun.
02
Price increase reshapes the mobile phone market: Huawei and Apple strengthen, mid-end market faces pressure
Price increase is a double-edged sword, which has an impact on mobile phone manufacturers, but the pressure each bears and the results obtained are completely different, and the market share is also accelerating restructuring accordingly.
Counterpoint data shows that in the second quarter of 2026, Huawei's share in China's smartphone market reached 23%. Apple ranked second with 18%, followed by vivo, OPPO, Xiaomi and Honor with 16%, 15%, 12% and 11% respectively.
Compared with a year ago, Huawei's share was 18% and Apple's was 15%. The combined market share of the two leading brands expanded from 33% to 41%.
Brands such as Xiaomi are facing greater pressure. Their mobile phone shipment in the second quarter fell by more than 20%, the highest decline among the six mainstream manufacturers. The market share dropped from 15.1% in the same period last year to 12.4%, while the year-on-year shipment decline of OPPO, vivo and Honor was around 10%.
The concentration of share to Huawei and Apple is a very prominent phenomenon in the price increase cycle.
During an earlier visit to JD MALL, a store salesperson admitted to Tech Planet that the biggest competitiveness of Android models in the past was the price advantage. With the collective price increase of the whole industry, the price difference advantage between Android and Apple has been greatly compressed. When consumers choose products, they only need to judge whether they are willing to switch the mobile phone ecosystem.
However, although Huawei and Apple rely on their brand power and high-end products to undertake price increases and gain more market share, they also need to face the test of consumers' acceptance of high-priced products.
After all, the starting version of iPhone 18 Pro is priced close to the 10,000-yuan mark. How to make the experience of new phones support the high price and promote consumers to replace their phones has become a problem for the brands next.
The current pressure is concentrated on Xiaomi, Honor, OPPO and vivo. The basic market of these brands is concentrated in the mid-end price range of 2,000-6,000 yuan, where users are extremely sensitive to prices.
Nowadays, the cost of core components such as memory continues to rise, and manufacturers are in a dilemma: if they continue to raise prices, it will easily dissuade existing users; if they keep the original price, they have to absorb the rising material costs by themselves, squeezing the profit margin.
Xiaomi is facing this pressure. The gross profit margin of its smartphone business in the second quarter dropped from 11.5% to 8.5%, while the shipment volume shrank, paying a price in both sales volume and profit.
Another change brought about by the price increase is that the price system for consumers to buy mobile phones has become more and more complex, and the actual price of mobile phones can no longer be directly referenced to the official price tag.
In the past, consumers could roughly judge the budget for buying a mobile phone by referring to the official website price, but now for the same model, three sets of prices coexist in the official mall, e-commerce platforms and offline stores, and the price difference between different channels of popular models can even exceed 1,000 yuan.
In addition, Tech Planet learned that the application rules for national subsidy qualifications vary from region to region. In some regions, consumers need to grab the subsidy qualifications at a specified time, and online verification and offline store use of subsidies belong to two independent systems respectively.
The complex rules mean that consumers not only need to compare prices, but also spend extra time studying the subsidy qualifications and verification thresholds, so the time cost and capital cost of mobile phone purchase decision have risen simultaneously.
03
Phone replacement cycle extended to 42 months, interest-free installment supports transactions?
In April this year, Lu Weibing, President of Xiaomi Group, posted on Weibo that the intensity of this round of memory price increase is indeed far beyond expectations, and the price of the same version of memory has soared nearly 4 times compared with Q1 of last year.
Specifically, for a mobile phone with 12GB+512GB configuration, the cost of memory components alone has increased by about 1,500 yuan.
The upstream cost rises rigidly, and manufacturers cannot absorb it alone, so they can only pass the bill to mobile phone buyers by raising the selling price.
Faced with the rising price of new phones, consumers begin to actively reduce the demand for replacement, and mobile phones have changed from fast-consuming electronic products in the past to durable household appliances.
IDC data shows that in 2026, the average mobile phone replacement cycle of domestic users will exceed 42 months, while this figure was only 25 months five years ago, and the replacement cycle has increased by nearly 70%. Statistics from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology also show that the current domestic user mobile phone replacement cycle has reached 40.2 months.
The willingness to buy mobile phones continues to cool down, and offline stores first feel the change. Non-essential people would rather spend money repairing their old phones than pay for high-priced new phones.
Before the release of Apple's new phones, in the JD MALL store, compared with the new foldable screens and new iPhones, the salesperson said that more users consulted the discount of iPhone 17.
In addition, a salesperson at an Apple retail store in Beijing told Tech Planet that compared with last year, more people came to consult about battery replacement this year.
Many consumers admitted that in addition to the rising price, the experience improvement brought by the iteration of new phones is not obvious. Looking back at the three intensive conferences of Apple, Huawei and Xiaomi, the biggest highlight of the products is still focused on the innovation of folding form, and the actual use perception brought by the upgrade of hardware parameters has been difficult to impress ordinary users.
As the transaction speed of new phones continues to slow down, manufacturers and channels are also finding ways to deliver goods.
In addition to the new phone interest-free installment activities, which split the high mobile phone purchase cost into long-term small expenditures for consumers, a salesperson told Tech Planet that now in offline mobile phone malls, staff from many banks are stationed in the stores, promoting credit card opening discounts. "The superposition of three or four cards can sometimes reach five or six hundred yuan."
However, various interest-free installments and bank subsidies can only temporarily lower the purchase threshold and delay the decline in sales. To break the dilemma of "rising prices and falling volume", manufacturers ultimately have to rely on real experience innovation to match sufficient product value for high pricing.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Tech Planet" (ID: tech618), written by Ren Xueyun, published with authorization from 36Kr.