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huawei was once apple's student, and now it is apple's tit-for-tat rival. after much hype, huawei and apple chose to release new products on the same day and start selling them on the same day.

the iphone 16 series is still a stable generation. there are no exciting hardware changes. more focus is placed on apple intelligence at the software level, and the price remains basically the same as the previous generation. huawei brings the three-fold screen mobile phone mate xt extraordinary master series, with a starting price of 19,999 yuan, focusing on the high-end market. within three days of its launch, it had more than 4 million pre-order purchases, making this product a "electronic moutai".

behind the excitement is the calm chinese market, with one side retreating and the other returning strongly. iphone sales have been declining for four consecutive quarters, while huawei's shipments in the second quarter of this year increased by 41% year-on-year. therefore, huawei has an advantage in market share, but apple has a better profit margin.

there is no surprise in apple's conservatism, and there is no accident in huawei's counterattack. apple represented by the iphone 16 and huawei represented by the mate xt are themselves innovative products of the technology giants facing the future. they also foreshadow the future trend of the fiercely competitive mobile phone market: in the mobile phone market dominated by the protagonists, there are always challengers who want to rewrite the script. when apple begins to seek stability in terms of innovation, huawei will surpass its competitors in the high-end market.

for a long time, the choice between buying huawei or apple has been a question that chinese consumers have to face. everyone’s answer will be different, but as the replacement rate continues to decline, the common trend in the future may be to wait a little longer.

will apple's ai strategy work?

long before apple released the iphone 16 series, foreign media had already revealed that apple and nvidia were negotiating with openai.

according to information disclosed by foreign media, although it is not clear how much apple and nvidia invested in openai in this round of financing, this round of financing was led by venture capital firm thrive capital and microsoft also participated. this investment will become a new part of openai's financing. openai's valuation has exceeded us$100 billion. this round of financing may help push openai's valuation to around us$150 billion.

this is a deeper level of binding, and the expansion of ai capabilities will be the competitiveness of apple phones for a long time in the future. the most core change is the chip capability. the a18 series chips equipped with the iphone 16 series are called "born for apple intelligence", and the computing power is more than 2 times that of the previous a16 chip.

in fact, compared with the innovation at the hardware level, the biggest highlight of the iphone 16 series this time is apple intelligence. but in fact, this part of the update has been revealed at the worldwide developers conference in june this year. whether it is a smarter language assistant or smoother writing tools and image generation, it is essentially the combination of the capabilities of apple and chatgpt.

but for chinese users, this part of apple's smart features may not be the biggest motivation for purchase.

because apple will not start pushing the test version until october, and the smart experience including chinese will not be launched until next year. in other words, even if you buy the latest iphone 16 series, the chinese region will have to wait until next year to experience apple’s innovative capabilities at the software level.

as for how the ai ​​capabilities of apple phones will be implemented within china's policy scope, it is still an open question. there have been reports that apple is looking for chinese partners for its artificial intelligence services to provide its artificial intelligence services in the chinese market. the three major model companies that have contacted apple are baidu, alibaba, and baichuan intelligence, but apple has never confirmed this information.

will artificial intelligence change everything? if chinese users cannot experience the most advanced large-scale model services on the iphone 16 series, the reason to buy apple may be greatly reduced. according to the second quarter data released by idc this year, apple's mobile phone shipments in the chinese market have fallen out of the top 5, and the domestic brands ahead of it are vivo, oppo, honor, huawei, and xiaomi.

china is one of the largest markets for apple mobile phones. whether the iphone 16 series can change the current stagnant sales of apple mobile phones in the chinese market remains an unresolved question.

"artificial intelligence has not yet resonated with the public", "although the iphone 16 launches ai features, the growth brought about will not be immediately apparent", the arguments of well-known american analysts are cautiously optimistic about apple's ai strategy, because apple is implementing its artificial intelligence strategy in a prudent manner. this strategy revolves around private, built-in device features, rather than looking for a killer, eye-catching application.

however, amid the pessimistic views on apple's innovation capabilities, well-known investor duan yongping is one of the few people who is optimistic about apple's ai strategy. apple has always been a company that duan yongping's funds have heavily invested in, and currently still maintains an 80% holding ratio.

"i think apple's ai phone is just getting started, and apple will have many more years of growth." duan yongping commented on apple's press conference. he was at the apple press conference and felt very excited after watching it. he felt that he should take good care of his body and live a few more years in good health. he revealed that he had already placed an order for apple's new headphones and ultra watch, but the new phone could not be ordered until friday.

buffett and duan yongping have different views on apple's future potential. in august this year, buffett's berkshire hathaway disclosed that the company's apple position was significantly reduced from 789 million shares in the first quarter to about 400 million shares in the second quarter, a decrease of nearly 50%, and the proportion of holdings dropped to 30.52%.

huawei's comeback

the current period is a bottleneck for smartphone innovation. compared with apple's conservatism in hardware, foreign media are hotly discussing huawei's triple-fold breakthrough in its latest mate xt phone, but it also points out that huawei's chip capabilities may still be a weakness, lagging behind cutting-edge technology by two to three years. in addition, due to consumers' concerns about price and functionality, foldable phones are still a niche market.

huawei's goal of seizing the minds of the high-end market has been achieved. "apple's chinese competitor huawei has just stolen the limelight from the iphone 16." after huawei's release, foreign media have expressed the view that apple is at a disadvantage in the competition in the chinese mobile phone market. the ai ​​selling point released by apple mobile phones has little to do with china for the time being, and this situation may continue.

huawei in 2024 has returned strongly. according to huawei's first-half performance this year, its net profit increased by 18%, from 46.6 billion yuan last year to 55.1 billion yuan, while revenue increased by 34% to 417.5 billion yuan, exceeding the performance of about 401.3 billion yuan in the same period of 2019.

although huawei did not disclose the specific situation of each business segment, it undoubtedly benefited from strong sales of mobile phones and strong growth in the automotive business. according to data from market research firm idc, in the second quarter of this year, huawei ranked second in china, the world's largest smartphone market, second only to vivo, with a market share of 18.1%.

in the first half of 2024, huawei ranked first in china's smartphone market in terms of shipments, accounting for 17.5% of the market share. so when huawei's mate xt, which was released on the same day as apple, was announced, the pre-order volume of over 4 million in 3 days became the best proof of huawei's strong return. not surprisingly, the strong huawei once again demonstrated its attitude to impact the high-end market with the mate xt.

the biggest selling point of the three-fold screen mate xt is, of course, the screen can reach 10.2 inches when fully unfolded. it can be folded in a z shape, or it can become a laptop computer the same size as an ipad. judging from yu chengdong's demonstration, it can be paired with a foldable keyboard to become a tablet that can be put in your pocket.

in fact, the concept of a three-fold screen is not new. samsung has already demonstrated this technology in its concept phone at the mwc in spain. the challenge is how to implement this technology. the mate xt released by huawei not only achieves three-folding, but also controls the thickness and weight of the entire phone within the acceptable range for users, challenging the yield of the screen module in a smaller space, which requires breaking through a large manufacturing bottleneck.

"ordinary consumers may balk at the price, but this product showcases huawei's technology." canalys analysts believe that huawei is making a strong comeback by relying on domestically produced chips after emerging from us sanctions.

at present, huawei's mobile phone strategy is more targeted at consumers in the chinese market. in the foldable smartphone market, huawei and samsung are both leading players, but according to counterpoint statistics, in the first quarter of this year, huawei surpassed samsung to become the world's largest foldable smartphone manufacturer in terms of shipments, and china accounts for more than half of the global foldable screen mobile phone market. since its launch in september last year, huawei's book-shaped foldable screen mobile phone mate x5 has been the best-selling product in china.

what will the next generation of mobile phones look like? apple and huawei have different answers at present, but they may converge in the future.

just as ai is apple's future-oriented thinking for the iphone 16 series of mobile phones, how much growth can the foldable screen mobile phone market contribute to huawei in the future? the answer is likely to be in the near future.

earlier news said that apple will launch a foldable screen mobile phone in 2025 or 2026. apple has been making relevant technical reserves. according to idc's forecast, china's foldable screen mobile phone market shipments this year will be about 10.68 million units, a year-on-year increase of 52.4%; by 2028, china's foldable screen mobile phone shipments will exceed 17 million units, with a five-year compound growth rate of 19.8%.

ai is also an important and indispensable part of huawei. huawei's three-fold screen mate xt does not mention much about ai. the few functions it has are ai photo editing and intelligent body xiaoyi. the hongmeng native intelligent ecosystem was announced at the huawei developer conference in june this year. the pangu big model 5.0 behind it has deeply integrated ai capabilities with hongmeng's subsystems, opening up image intelligence, call intelligence, document intelligence, cross-application collaboration and other capabilities to applications.

in fact, the outside world is more concerned about huawei's next generation flagship product.

in august last year, huawei quietly released the mate 60 pro. this flagship product equipped with the kirin 9000s chip truly shocked the industry. for the smartphone industry, what is more anticipated is huawei’s next-generation mate 70 flagship phone for the mainstream market in the fourth quarter of this year, not the current mate xt for the niche high-end market.

therefore, the competition between huawei and apple still depends on whether the gap between the two will gradually widen or narrow by the end of this year or even next year. the answer to this continuous evolution will determine the heights that smartphones can reach in terms of technology and application.