China’s Singles’ Day shopping festival fuels smartphone price war as major vendors seek to stimulate demand in weak market

Some of the world’s biggest smartphone vendors, including Apple and Xiaomi Corp, are waging a price war in China on the back of the annual Singles’ Day shopping extravaganza, hoping to revive a market that has posted double-digit declines in shipments during the past three quarters.

This year’s promotions are offering steeper price cuts than before, according to Will Wong, a Singapore-based analyst at tech research firm IDC. He said campaigns during Singles’ Day and the midyear 618 shopping bonanza help smartphone vendors stimulate local demand and clear excess channel inventory nationwide.

Prices of some smartphone models touted online and offline, as part of promotions in the world’s largest shopping festival, are already at their “historically lowest” levels, according to a saleswoman at Huawei Technologies Co’s flagship bricks-and-mortar store in Shenzhen. This person declined to be identified because she was not authorised to speak to the press.

Huawei’s P50 flagship smartphone, for example, now costs 730 yuan (US$100.73) less than its original sticker price of 4,488 yuan, when it was released in July last year as the first model to run the company’s own mobile operating system, HarmonyOS 2.

Honor, formerly the budget smartphone brand of Huawei, is offering the same levels of price reductions at its online and offline stores. The company was China’s second-largest smartphone vendor in the third quarter, according to IDC.