Huawei’s tri-fold phone is making waves again.
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Author | Huang Yu
Editor | Wang Xiaojuan
After launching the world's first commercially available tri-fold smartphone – the Huawei Mate XT Extraordinary Master – one year ago, Huawei's “dominant” position in the foldable smartphone market has become increasingly stable. Now, Huawei has brought a new generation of the tri-fold smartphone and has unveiled the secret it has been hiding for the past few years.
On September 4th, at the launch event for the Huawei Mate XTs Extraordinary Master and its all-scenario new products, Richard Yu, Executive Director of Huawei and Chairman of Huawei Consumer BG, introduced the brand new tri-fold Huawei Mate XTs Extraordinary Master and announced that it is equipped with the Kirin 9020 processor.
This is the first time in four years that a Huawei launch event has officially showcased the Kirin chip. At the same time, it also means that after returning with 5G phones in 2023, Huawei's mobile business has now fully regained its momentum.
According to Richard Yu, by equipping the Kirin 9020 chip and HarmonyOS 5.1, the Huawei Mate XTs Extraordinary Master achieves software-hardware-cloud collaboration, system-level deep optimization, further performance breakthrough, and a 36% improvement in overall device performance.
In addition, thanks to the continued prosperity of HarmonyOS native app ecosystem, the Huawei Mate XTs Extraordinary Master has achieved an evolutionary upgrade from “form innovation” to “ecosystem breakthrough”, becoming the first to include PC versions of apps on a phone, covering office, finance, drawing, and other fields, and also bringing PC-level interactive experience to the phone for the first time, further enhancing the productivity of tri-fold smartphones.
Notably, as a result of improvements in the manufacturing process and assembly yield of Huawei's tri-fold phones, the starting price of the Huawei Mate XTs Extraordinary Master has dropped to 17,999 yuan, which is 2,000 yuan cheaper than last year's Huawei Mate XT Extraordinary Master.
Further performance improvement plus a price reduction will undoubtedly help Huawei's tri-fold smartphone to open up a broader market space, and further consolidate Huawei's leading position in the foldable phone market.
Unlike Apple, which has yet to enter the foldable phone segment, Huawei attaches great importance to foldable phones. From the earliest large foldable screens, to small foldable screens, to tri-fold screens, and to the wide foldable screen introduced earlier this year, Huawei's foldable phone family has launched over a dozen products, and is the first manufacturer whose product line covers all foldable forms: horizontal inward fold, horizontal outward fold, and vertical fold.
Meanwhile, several of Huawei’s foldable products are industry firsts. In addition to the tri-fold, the Huawei Pura X launched earlier this year is also the industry’s first wide-fold smartphone.
Huawei has already become the market leader in foldable phones. According to IDC data, in the first half of this year, Huawei accounted for 75% of the foldable screen phone market with 3.74 million units shipped, reaching a historic high. This means that for every 10 foldable phones sold in the market, 7 are from Huawei.
There are actually quite a few brands of foldable screen smartphones on the market. Especially in recent years, as innovation in smartphone hardware and software has reached a bottleneck, foldable screens have become a focus for major manufacturers. There are market rumors that Apple will release its first foldable phone next year, and Samsung is also about to launch its first tri-fold phone.
This means that by 2026, the foldable phone market will see even fiercer competition.
For Huawei, while consolidating its advantage in the high-end market, foldable phones are also a key driver in helping it regain lost market share.
Since launching its first foldable phone in 2019, Huawei became the first Chinese brand to break 10 million in cumulative shipments.
Meanwhile, IDC forecasts that the global shipment of foldable phones will reach about 19.83 million units in 2025, an increase of 6.0% year-on-year. By 2029, global foldable phone shipments are expected to reach nearly 27.29 million units, with a compound annual growth rate of 7.8% over five years.
Huawei phones also welcomed a milestone moment this year as a whole.
IDC’s report shows that in Q2 of 2025, Huawei’s market share of smartphone shipments in China reached 18.1%, ranking first.
This is the first time in over four years, since Q4 2020, that Huawei has regained the number one spot in China's smartphone market. Combining first-quarter data, Huawei’s shipments in the first half of the year reached 25.4 million units, with a market share of about 18.1%, ranking first, and the certainty of returning to number one for the entire year has further increased.
Huawei’s return to number one this year was expected within the industry, and some leading manufacturers internally see this as an inevitable outcome. However, even so, facing increasingly fierce market competition, Huawei must remain vigilant to climb even higher.
Risk disclosure and disclaimerThe market involves risks, and investment needs to be done cautiously. This article does not constitute personal investment advice, nor does it take into account the special investment objectives, financial status, or needs of individual users. Users should consider whether any opinions, views, or conclusions in this article fit their particular circumstances. Investment based on them is at your own risk. ```