Xiaomi, Huawei and Apple all launch foldables in one week

Xiaomi on Sunday launched the 18 Fold, a flagship foldable smartphone powered by the company's proprietary Xring O3 system-on-chip, as Chinese tech giants race to stake out the premium foldable market days before Apple ↘ 0.28% entered the arena with its first foldable iPhone.

A Homegrown Chip Play

CEO Lei Jun unveiled the device at a Beijing event on September 7, highlighting the Xring O3 as an AI processor packed with 24 billion transistors — a 26% increase over its predecessor, the Xring O1, which debuted last year. Lei said the new chip delivers 60% higher CPU performance than the O1 while cutting power consumption in certain tasks by 25%.thestar+1

The 18 Fold features a 7.58-inch inner display and a 5.38-inch outer screen, measures just 5.02mm thick when unfolded, and carries a 6,000mAh battery with 67W wired charging. A Leica-tuned triple camera system includes a 200-megapixel main sensor. The phone also uses LPDDR6 memory chips from ChangXin Memory Technologies, a Chinese chipmaker. Prices start at 10,999 yuan (roughly $1,639), with sales beginning on September 10.gizmochina+1

Lei said Xiaomi had earmarked 50 billion yuan for its long-term chip initiative and planned to invest 200 billion yuan in overall research and development over the next five years.thestar

A Crowded Week for Foldables

The 18 Fold arrived on the same day Huawei unveiled the Mate XT 2, a trifold handset powered by its in-house Kirin 9050 Pro processor and priced from 19,999 yuan. Richard Yu, chairman of Huawei's consumer business group, said the company's trifold series had surpassed one million units sold globally.ground+1

Two days later, Apple debuted the iPhone Duo — its long-awaited first foldable — at a September 9 event in Cupertino, California, priced from $1,999. The convergence of launches from three major players within a single week underscored how central the foldable form factor has become to the smartphone industry's premium tier.cnbc+1

Foldables as a Bright Spot

The competitive push comes against a difficult backdrop for the broader smartphone market. Counterpoint Research said in February that global smartphone shipments would decline 12.4% this year, the sharpest annual contraction on record, as a memory chip shortage drives up component costs. Foldables, however, remain a growth category. Counterpoint said the segment would reach 100 million cumulative shipments by year-end and forecast global foldable shipments to rise 37% year on year in 2027.thestar

"Foldables are still a very small part of the overall smartphone market, so there is room for the category to grow well beyond current volumes," said Tarun Pathak, a research director at Counterpoint.thestar