Huawei Technologies Co. and Xiaomi Corp. are launching rival high-end foldable phones in China on Monday, timing their unveilings two days ahead of Apple Inc.'s first foray into the category with the folding iPhone 18.
Huawei will unveil the Mate XT 2, the successor to the tri-fold Mate XT launched in 2024, at a lunchtime event in China. The device uses two folding mechanisms to combine a conventional smartphone with a tablet-sized display, and Huawei says it will be the first phone to use its "LogicFolding" chip design.
Xiaomi follows with an evening launch of the Xiaomi 18 Fold, a book-style device it previously showed off at IFA in Berlin. It pairs a 5.38-inch cover screen with a 7.58-inch inner display and runs on Xiaomi's in-house XRING O3 chip, built on TSMC's 3-nanometre process.
Racing the clock on Apple
The near-simultaneous launches are designed to let the two Chinese manufacturers grab attention before Apple's September 9 event, where the company is expected to unveil its first folding iPhone alongside the iPhone 18 Pro line. Both Huawei and Xiaomi go on sale in China from September 10 — the day after Apple's keynote.
The premium push comes as the broader smartphone market is on course for its worst annual contraction on record, with shipments forecast to fall 14% this year, according to Counterpoint data cited by Bloomberg. Chinese vendors have been particularly exposed to weaker budget-phone demand, prompting a shift toward foldables and other premium devices to protect average selling prices.
Chip claims underpin Huawei's pitch
Huawei's chip claims for the Mate XT 2 draw on a research paper published on the pre-print platform ChinaXiv, authored by semiconductor division president He Tingbo, which argues that Huawei's "Tau Scaling Law" architecture can stack logic circuits vertically without the overheating problems analysts had flagged as a risk. The paper says the related Kirin 2026 chip runs cooler than its predecessor while carrying 55% more transistors per square millimetre and cutting power use by up to 66% on some tasks — claims that have not yet been independently peer-reviewed.
Apple, meanwhile, is projected to capture roughly a quarter of the global foldable market this year and take the top spot with 41% share in 2027, according to estimates from Smart Analytics Global cited by Bloomberg.
