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scalpers selling iphone 16 on the roadside, source: times finance

author | xie silin

editor | qiu yueye

on september 20, the first day of the sales competition between huawei and apple's new phones, huaqiangbei, a well-known electronic product trading center in china and even the world, was extremely lively.

on the roadside, scalpers selling iphone 16s to pedestrians can be seen everywhere. they enthusiastically solicit every passerby and try to sell their new phones. in comparison, huawei's new product mate xt is more scarce, but there is no shortage of stock.

from the quotes given by these scalpers, the outside world can get a glimpse of the market feedback on the latest products of these two mobile phone giants.

the iphone 16, which is generally considered by the outside world to be "squeezed toothpaste" and whose biggest highlight is the newly added physical camera button, has not seen the crazy rush of previous years. according to the quotation sheet obtained by times finance from a dealer, except for some models of iphone 16 promax, which can increase the price by more than 1,000 yuan, the spot prices of most models remain stable, with a small price increase.

the scalper price of the 128g version of iphone16 and iphone16 plus is basically the same as the official website price, and the price increase of the 256g version is only about 50 yuan. as for the pro series, which is the most popular every year, the price increase of the 128g and 256g versions is only about 300 to 400 yuan.

among them, the prices of some models have even fallen below the launch price. for example, the 512g version of the iphone 16, all colors are priced at 8,950 yuan, which is 49 yuan lower than the official website price of 8,999 yuan; the same is true for the 512g version of the iphone 16 plus, all colors are priced at 9,950 yuan, which is 49 yuan lower than the official website price of 9,999 yuan.

price list of iphone 16 series mobile phones in huaqiangbei on september 20, source: provided by the interviewee

and this is the current situation. if consumers are willing to wait, the price will be even lower after a round of subsidy wars launched by multiple e-commerce platforms. especially on pinduoduo, the subsidized price of iphone 16 on pinduoduo is 5,399 yuan, a direct reduction of 600 yuan compared to the official website price; the subsidized price of iphone 16 plus 512g version on pinduoduo is 8,999 yuan, a direct reduction of 1,000 yuan compared to the official website.

tianfeng international analyst ming-chi kuo wrote an article analyzing that the key reason why the demand for the iphone 16 series was lower than expected may be that apple intelligence, which should have been the biggest selling point of this series of mobile phones, could not be launched together with the product. at the same time, fierce competition in the chinese market continues to affect consumers' demand for iphones.

this has been clearly reflected in the pre-sale stage before the release. according to guo mingchi's calculations, the pre-order sales of the iphone 16 series in the first weekend are estimated to be about 37 million units, a year-on-year decrease of about 12.7% compared with the first weekend sales of the iphone 15 series last year.

compared with the weak market demand for the new iphone 16 series, scalpers marked up the price of huawei's three-fold phone mate xt significantly higher on the first day of its release.

the product has attracted more than 6.85 million reservations online. within less than a minute of the online rush to buy it at 10:08 a.m. on september 20, all the huawei mate xt on jd.com, taobao, douyin and other platforms were sold out.

even in huaqiangbei, huawei mate xt is not common. compared with iphone, which can be seen everywhere on the roadside, it is difficult for consumers to directly see scalpers selling huawei mate xt on the roadside. even in huawei's authorized stores, it is impossible to directly see or buy the product in stock.

times finance only saw three huawei mate xts lined up at the entrance of huaqiangbei yuanwang digital city. since the products have been unpacked, the price of these three black 512g huawei mate xts has been reduced compared to new products, but it is still as high as 41,000 yuan per unit, 19,000 yuan higher than the launch price of 22,000 yuan.

image source: times finance

a scalper told times finance that he did not have a brand new huawei mate xt product and needed to transfer the goods. in terms of price, on the afternoon of september 20, the spot price of the black 512g model was 46,000 yuan per unit, 24,000 yuan higher than the launch price; the more popular red 512g model was 2,000 yuan more expensive, reaching a staggering 48,000 yuan.

the extremely high popularity of mate xt even exceeded huawei's expectations. early in the morning of september 20, richard yu, chairman of huawei's terminal bg, appeared at the huawei flagship store on nanjing east road in shanghai to participate in the new phone delivery ceremony. he said on the spot that the sales of the 70%-off mobile phone were far beyond expectations, and the team was working overtime to expand production capacity.

due to the high market demand, guo mingchi also raised his forecast for the shipment of huawei's mate xt tri-fold screen phone from 500,000 units to 1 million units. but at the same time, guo mingchi emphasized that considering that the global shipment forecast of foldable screen phones in 2024 has been reduced from 30 million units to 15 million units, and huawei's flagship models have also experienced a rapid decline in demand after release in the past, the market still needs to pay attention to whether its demand can continue.