Fold a phone twice and you get a screen the size of a small tablet. That is the trick behind Huawei’s Mate XT2 series, shown off in China on Monday, September 7, 2026. Xiaomi launched its own flagship foldable the same day. Both companies picked their moment carefully: Apple’s iPhone event was due two days later, on Wednesday.
Huawei: a new chip layout and a high price
The Mate XT2 runs on the Kirin 9050 Pro chip. Huawei also redesigned the hinge, improved the water resistance and added a privacy screen, which stops people sitting nearby from reading what is on the display. Reuters reported that sales begin on September 12.
The phones start at 19,999 yuan ($2,980). The top version costs 24,999 yuan ($3,725). Huawei Executive Director Richard Yu did not pretend otherwise at the launch. “Pricing right now is a real challenge, because memory costs have risen sharply,” he said. “We adopted a lot of new technology, and the cost pressure has been enormous.”
The new technology includes a chip design called LogicFolding. Huawei says it gives more computing power for less electricity. It sits under what the company calls the “Tau Scaling Law”, a principle announced in May as Huawei works around U.S. limits on its access to advanced technology. The firm cannot sell in the U.S. at all, because Washington regards it as a national security risk.
Xiaomi’s passport-sized answer
Xiaomi chose a different shape. Its Xiaomi 18 Fold, the most premium phone the company has made, uses what it describes as a “medium-fold solution”. Closed, it is about the size of a passport. Opened, it can run three apps side by side.
CEO Lei Jun argued that the phone beats Apple’s on several counts. He said it weighs under 8 ounces and, opened flat, is thinner than a quarter-inch, which makes it lighter than the iPhone Pro Max. Its XRing O3 processor, he claimed, responds faster than Apple’s A19 Pro. The memory chips come from the Chinese supplier CXMT.
The range starts at 10,999 yuan ($1,540) and tops out at 14,999 yuan ($2,100). Lei was frank about the memory market too: “Nowadays, memory is very, very expensive. We don’t say it is cheap, but it is value for money.”
The market behind the launches
IDC data for the second quarter has Huawei in front in China with a 22.6% share. Apple held 18.1% and Xiaomi 12.4%. In folding phones the gap is wider: Smart Analytics Global put Huawei at 68% of Chinese shipments in the same quarter.
No other big name sells a tri-fold at the moment. Samsung brought one out in December, but sales reportedly ended three months on. A passport-sized foldable followed from Samsung in July.
Bloomberg’s account of the week, carried by CNBC-TV18, points to money as the pressure behind all this. Counterpoint data shows worldwide smartphone shipments on track to fall 14% this year, which would be the steepest drop on record. Xiaomi has reported lower profit three quarters running. Huawei kept growing shipments but still saw its profit fall in the first half, partly because it stockpiled components against rising memory prices. Foldables, with their higher prices, are one way to protect margins.
Apple’s foldable is expected to cost above $2,000. Counterpoint analyst Ivan Lam said that “Apple has the world’s biggest premium device installed base. Its foldable will sell well and rapidly grab market share.” Smart Analytics Global forecasts that Apple may win roughly 25% of global foldable sales in year one, then 41% the year after.
Sources
- Huawei, Xiaomi launch new foldable smartphones ahead of Apple event (Reuters)
- Huawei launches Mate XT 2 tri-fold two days before Apple's foldable iPhone
- Huawei, Xiaomi launch new foldable smartphones days before Apple's iPhone Fold debut
