Huawei is seeing declining consumer enthusiasm in China for its new Mate 70 smartphone, which could impact the Chinese tech giant’s overall shipments for the year, benefiting Apple and other Chinese brands. brokerage Jefferies said.
Jefferies said in a note released Thursday that its observation of online discussions after the Mate 70 launch on Tuesday showed there was “significantly less enthusiasm”, based on the frequency of online reviews and comments. .
The broker estimates that Huawei risks reducing its initial forecast of 48 million phones this year, as an earlier product, the Pura 70, has only shipped 5 million units since its launch in April this year, according to Jefferies.
The Mate 70’s predecessor, the Mate 60, which marked Huawei’s return to the premium smartphone market when it was launched last year, has shipped 12-13 million units to date , which is lower than initial estimates of 15 to 16 million.
“We believe the final sales volume of Mate 70 may be lower than that of Mate 60,” the analysts said.
“It appears that our forecast of 48 million units shipped by Huawei this year is down, which is positive for iPhone and other brands.
Huawei did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Huawei touted the Mate 70 as the most powerful Mate phone, but analysts and consumers said improvements over its predecessor appeared limited.
While the Mate 60 made a splash by revealing that Huawei was able to overcome years of US sanctions and manufacture an advanced chip locally, it has been difficult to make improvements in terms of performance and production yield, had reported Reuters.
This led to a shortage of the Mate 60 in the first months of its launch and Jefferies said it expected supply bottlenecks related to chip production for the Mate 70 as well.
Toby Zhu, an analyst at Canalys, said consumer reaction to Huawei’s new phone was inevitable, as industry and consumer excitement would naturally fade after Huawei’s initial comeback.
On the other hand, he added that he expects the sales volume of the Mate 70 to show slight growth compared to the Mate 60 series, partly due to sufficient production capacity of the flagship.
The patriotic sentiment surrounding Huawei’s technological breakthrough has contributed to the market recovery and intensified competition with other players.
Huawei was ranked as the second-largest smartphone seller in China in the third quarter of 2024, with shipments exceeding 10 million units for the fourth consecutive quarter, according to research firm Canalys.
This is a significant rebound from the second quarter of 2022, during which Huawei only shipped 4.1 million units.
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