On September 4, Huawei held the "Mate XTs Extraordinary Master and Full-Scene New Product Launch Conference" in Shenzhen, officially releasing the second-generation three-fold mobile phone Mate XTs Extraordinary Master. The starting price is 17999 yuan, corresponding to the 16GB +256GB version. The 512GB and 1TB versions are 19999 yuan and 21999 yuan respectively; pre-sales will be opened on the same day and will be on sale on September 12.This is Huawei's annual iteration of the three-fold format. The price has been lowered by about 2000 yuan compared with the previous generation's listing price. Strategically, it has obviously "lowered the threshold and expanded the circle", but the product is still in the ultra-high-end price band.

At the hardware level, Mate XTs adopts the latest Kirin 9020 chip and Hongmeng operating system's soft and soft cloud collaboration solution. The official claims that the comprehensive performance of the whole machine has been improved by about 36%, and emphasizes the multitasking and PC-like interactive experience of "putting the computer in your pocket".Kirin chips have been "rolled out" again on the stage of the press conference four years later, which means that Huawei is becoming more proactive in the return of its self-developed SoC brand.

In terms of screen and form, Mate XTs continues the "three-stage double hinge" Z-shaped folding scheme: when fully unfolded, it has a large screen of about 10.2 inches, half folded and unfolded about 7.9 inches, and folded and closed into a regular mobile phone form of about 6.4 inches. The three forms are freely switched to adapt to different scenes of reading, creation and mobile office.Compared with the previous generation, this iteration continues to subtract in terms of weight control and structural strength. At the same time, it also uses large-capacity silicon-carbon negative batteries and flagship imaging configurations. The overall orientation is to exchange more robust stacking and mature structures for reliability and durability. Improvement in sex.

In terms of operating system and ecology, Yu Chengdong disclosed at the press conference that the number of terminal devices equipped with HarmonyOS 5 has exceeded 14 million; according to previously disclosed data, the overall ecological device scale of HarmonyOS (including mobile phones, vehicles, home appliances, etc.) has exceeded 1.19 billion units, and the number of developers and native applications continues to grow.Looking at the pace of the recent stage, users of Mate 70, Mate X6 and other models can upgrade to HarmonyOS 5.1. Huawei is sinking its "multi-terminal interconnection" capabilities to more models through the collaboration of the system layer and hardware layer.

From a macro perspective, the folding screen track will pick up significantly in 2025.Counterpoint data shows that global folding phone shipments in the second quarter of 2025 increased by approximately 45% year-on-year. Huawei occupied a leading position in the folding market in that quarter, benefiting from the strength of China market and intensive iteration of product lines; At the domestic market level, many research institutions pointed out that Huawei was in an absolute lead in the folding market share in China in the first half of the year.On the other hand, Samsung has been targeted by multiple sources that it will soon release its first triple-fold product. The entry of competitors will accelerate the education and popularization of this segment, but the short-term supply scale is still limited by hinge yields, folding panels and module costs.

From the perspective of commercial pricing and product strategy, the starting price of 17999 yuan this time has released two signals: First, the improvement of the maturity of the supply chain has loosened the cost curves of structural parts, folding panels and complete machine yields, giving pricing room for optimization; Second, the three-fold is no longer just a "technical model room", but serves as the dual starting point of the brand's "image and high gross profit", undertaking high-end users of Hongmeng Ecology, and at the same time extending to high-frequency content consumption, mobile creation and light office.Considering the material and manufacturing complexity of the three-fold form, its magnitude is still impossible to pursue popularization, but a downward price review will significantly increase attention and store experience, driving high-end store traffic and ecological transformation.

For Huawei, the more far-reaching variable is the pace of chip availability and process progress.Several third-party disassembly and analysis show that the Kirin 9020 follows the SMIC 7nm (N+2) process, which is an iterative optimization of the 9010 rather than an intergenerational leap. This means that Huawei still needs to adopt architecture in terms of energy efficiency and peak performance. Tuning, storage/scheduling and system collaboration to "squeeze" experience space rather than relying on process transitions.This path is consistent with the direction of "soft and hard core cloud collaboration" emphasized at the press conference: when process advancement is limited, systems engineering is used to "seek dividends."From an industry comparison, Samsung and Qualcomm are still opening up the gap in 3/4nm multi-generation iterations, but this has not stopped Huawei from increasing its share of the domestic high-end.