Huawei has kicked off a widespread price-cutting campaign on its official website running through February 28, offering discounts across its smartphone range and other hardware as it chases sales during the Lunar New Year shopping period. The promotion includes model-specific reductions — up to ¥1,500 on the Pura 80 series, ¥1,800 on selected Mate 70 models and ¥2,000 on Mate X6 foldables — together with trade-in incentives of up to ¥1,000 and up to 12 interest-free instalments. Huawei lists a broad swathe of products in the sale, from flagship Mate and Pura lines to nova phones, tablets, PCs, routers, smart screens, watches and earphones, signalling an attempt to stimulate demand across its device ecosystem rather than just a single product line.
Timing and scale make clear this is more than routine seasonal promotion. Chinese consumer electronics firms typically concentrate discounts around the Spring Festival, but publicising a headline figure of “up to ¥4,000” — combining model discounts, trade-ins and finance offers — points to an aggressive push to convert hesitant buyers and clear inventory ahead of the key retail window. The inclusion of premium foldable models such as the Mate X6 at substantive markdowns is notable: Huawei is using price to nudge adoption of higher-margin but slower-selling categories.
The move should be read against the wider backdrop of China’s smartphone market, which has experienced cyclical slowdowns, longer upgrade cycles and fierce competition from domestic rivals including Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo and Honor. Huawei, once the undisputed domestic leader, has been navigating lingering pressure from U.S. export controls on advanced chips and continued restrictions in some overseas markets, even as it rebuilds around in-house software (HarmonyOS) and an increasingly broad hardware ecosystem.
For consumers the campaign is immediately favourable: lower effective prices, trade-in credit and interest-free instalments reduce the friction to upgrade. For Huawei, the promotion serves several strategic purposes at once — preserving market share, accelerating sales of ecosystem products that reinforce user lock-in, and managing channel inventory and component throughput for suppliers. It is also a visible signal to competitors that Huawei remains willing to use pricing as a lever to defend momentum in China.
There are risks embedded in such a broad discounting strategy. Sustained price competition can erode margins, compress perceived product differentiation and create an expectation of future discounts among consumers, complicating launches for higher-end models. Moreover, heavy promotion of older flagships or foldables could indicate that demand for the newest hardware is softer than the company expected, increasing pressure on Huawei’s supply-chain partners and dealers to move units.
In short, the Lunar New Year discounts underline Huawei’s dual priorities: shore up short-term sales and sustain the longer-term ecosystem play that keeps customers inside its hardware-software loop. How competitors respond — with matching discounts, new features, or alternative financing — will determine whether this becomes a one-off seasonal spike or the start of a deeper price war in China’s smartphone market.