Why Huawei and Xiaomi Just Stole Apple's Foldable Thunder

The Chinese Side of the Fold

Huawei and Xiaomi went public on the same September morning with new foldable phones. That alone is not remarkable — Chinese phone makers coordinate launches all the time. What matters is what these devices carry inside them and what their simultaneous arrival says about a market that was supposed to be Apple’s next big conquest.

The Mate XT2, Huawei’s third-generation trifold phone, unfolded into a tablet-sized screen and carried a Kirin 9050 Pro chip built around something called Tau-law logic folding. Its price ran from 19,999 yuan to 24,999 yuan — roughly $2,800 to $3,500. Pre-orders sold out on September 31st, the day before official sales began on the 12th.

Xiaomi’s answer, the 18 Fold, packed a self-developed Xring O3 processor and LPDDR6 memory from Changxin Memory Technologies (CXMT), one of China’s few domestic chip makers. Its design was reportedly similar to what analysts expect Apple to choose for its first foldable iPhone — the clamshell, book-style form factor.

Both companies moved first. Apple is still preparing to enter.

Who Wins When Apple Finally Shows Up

Counterpoint Research’s Ivan Lam told Bloomberg that Apple’s foldable will quickly capture market share because of its installed base of premium users. That is a reasonable claim. But Lam also said Apple’s entry will pull demand toward competing products, not away from them. In other words, the tide lifts all boats.

For Huawei and Xiaomi, that is an opportunity. They have spent months or years building foldable ecosystems, software adjustments, and brand presence in a segment Apple has avoided. When the iPhone maker arrives with its own version, it will validate the category for consumers who were still on the fence. Chinese makers get a bigger market to sell into — not a smaller one.

The reverse logic also holds. If Apple’s foldable underperforms, or if it arrives later than expected, Huawei and Xiaomi get to solidify their positions before any serious premium competition materializes. Either outcome helps the Chinese companies.

The Real Story Is Inside the Box

The chip details matter more than the phone designs. Huawei’s Kirin 9050 Pro and Xiaomi’s Xring O3 are both domestically designed processors. More importantly, Xiaomi’s device uses LPDDR6 memory from CXMT, a Chinese memory company that has been trying to break into the high-end market for years.

This is a visible sign that China’s semiconductor push is moving past slogans and into consumer products. Two years ago, a Chinese foldable phone using homegrown memory and a custom processor would have been a novelty. Today it is simply what happens when you ship a premium device from Shenzhen or Beijing.

Huawei’s commercial executive Wei Qingdong admitted the pricing was a struggle. Memory costs rose sharply, he said, and the company absorbed significant cost pressure to include new technologies. That admission matters. It shows the industry is still grappling with the economics of domestic supply chains, even as it proves they can function at scale.

The domestic supply chain story runs deeper than individual chips. CXMT’s inclusion in Xiaomi’s supply chain signals something larger: Chinese memory manufacturers have reached a threshold where they can produce LPDDR6, the latest generation of mobile RAM, at volumes meaningful enough for flagship devices. This did not happen in isolation. It followed years of state-directed investment, export controls from Washington that ironically accelerated China’s self-reliance goals, and the slow accumulation of process knowledge at factories that previously could only produce older-generation memory. For Western suppliers like Samsung Memory and SK Hynix, the implication is that a customer segment they assumed would remain locked for decades is now genuinely contestable.

Samsung’s Problem Is Real

Samsung invented the modern foldable phone category and has held it for years. Its Galaxy Z series was the benchmark. Now three forces are closing in: Apple, entering with massive marketing power; Huawei, iterating faster on form factors like the trifold; and Xiaomi, building an entire domestic supply chain around its devices.

Samsung’s foldable business has already shown signs of margin pressure. Chinese competitors undercut on price while matching or exceeding hardware specs. The arrival of Apple’s foldable adds a third pricing tier above Samsung’s — and Apple’s ecosystem lock-in makes it difficult for Samsung to defend its premium position through hardware alone.

The company has responded by pushing harder on durability and software integration, but the window where Samsung could sit back and lead the category is narrowing. Analysts at TrendForce estimate Samsung’s global foldable market share has slipped below 45 percent for the first time, as Chinese brands collectively approach a combined 35 to 40 percent depending on the quarter. Samsung still leads in absolute shipments, but the structural advantage that defined the category since 2019 is eroding. The Korean company’s hinge mechanism patents, once an impenetrable moat, are being worked around by Chinese firms filing their own design variations. The technology is no longer proprietary; it is commoditized.

The Second-Order Effects

Beyond the phone market itself, this shift has ripple effects that reach far beyond any single product category. The domestic semiconductor ecosystem that produced the Xring O3 and the CXMT LPDDR6 is now a demonstration project. Every Chinese supplier that proved it could deliver a working component for a premium foldable gains credibility with customers who previously defaulted to foreign suppliers. That credibility translates into orders for components in other product lines — laptops, tablets, even automotive electronics, where China’s electric vehicle industry is hungry for capable memory suppliers.

There is also a subtle reputational effect. When a consumer in Shanghai or Jakarta picks up a foldable phone made with entirely Chinese components and it works without complaint, the implicit narrative that foreign technology is superior begins to fracture. That narrative has underwritten premium pricing power for Apple, Samsung, and the rest of the established order. Undermining it does not happen overnight, but each shipped product chips away at it.

For Apple specifically, the timing is increasingly awkward. The company has long benefited from being the last mover in major smartphone categories — the notch, the camera bump, the dynamic island all arrived after competitors had already normalized them. That strategy assumed Apple would enter a category after the rough work was done. But the foldable market is maturing so quickly that by the time Apple ships, Chinese manufacturers may have already pushed past the clamshell form factor into tri-folds and rollables that Apple’s design philosophy may not accommodate. The company risks arriving late to a market that has already moved on.

What Happens Next

The immediate question is whether Apple’s foldable will arrive before Chinese manufacturers fill the entire premium segment with devices consumers no longer need to upgrade past. The Mate XT2 and Xiaomi 18 Fold are both high-end statements. Huawei already proved that a 25,000-yuan foldable can sell out on pre-order. Xiaomi is testing the clamshell market that Apple is expected to target.

If Apple enters late, it enters into a crowded room. If it enters early, it still faces products that are more experimentally ambitious — the trifold, in particular, has no Apple equivalent and may define a segment Apple will have to choose to ignore or match.

The longer-term shift is structural. Chinese phone makers are no longer reacting to Apple’s moves. They are making their own moves first, building domestic supply chains that reduce reliance on foreign components, and creating products that force Apple to play catch-up in at least one category.

That reversal happened faster than most analysts predicted. The foldable market, once Samsung’s private garden, is now a contest with rules written in Shenzhen.

What makes this moment historically notable is not just the technology. It is the speed. When Samsung introduced the original Galaxy Fold in 2019, the prevailing assumption was that Chinese manufacturers would spend a decade catching up to whatever form factor Samsung chose. Instead, within seven years, a Chinese trifold has become the most ambitious foldable on the market, and a Chinese clamshell uses fully domestic memory — a combination that would have been unthinkable at the time Samsung’s device shipped. The company that invented the category no longer defines its trajectory. Apple is expected to follow. And the entire industry is watching to see whether the Cupertino-based company can adapt fast enough.