More than 100,000 people make an appointment! Who does Huawei want to sell the HarmonyOS folding computer with a price of 23,999 yuan？

　　HarmonyOS folded the computer and finally revealed himself.

　　On the afternoon of May 19th, Huawei held a new product launch conference of nova 14 series and HarmonyOS computer in Chengdu. At the meeting, Yu Chengdong, managing director of Huawei and chairman of terminal BG, issued two HarmonyOS computers in succession to fill Huawei’s ecological gap in computer operating system. So far, HarmonyOS has fully covered all scene terminal devices such as mobile phones, computers, watches, large screens, tablets and cockpits.

　　Among these two products, there are Huawei MateBook Pro with traditional notebook computer style and Huawei’s first HarmonyOS folding computer MateBook Fold. The latter, which is obviously different from the commercial products in form, has attracted more attention.

　　As the largest folding screen in Huawei’s history, Huawei MateBook Fold adopts a light folding design, which is expanded into an 18-inch large screen, as thin as 7.3mm, and a 13-inch small screen after folding. The secondary screen can be used as an electronic keyboard. Its weight is only 1.16kg, which is lighter than the 1.24kg of the MacBook Air and is easy to carry. "We finally solved the problem that computer portability and big screen are incompatible." Yu Chengdong said at the press conference.

　　But the price of solving this trouble is not cheap-the screen and hinge have pushed up the cost and the price. Huawei MateBook Fold is priced at 23,999 yuan with the standard 32GB+1TB version, and the price with the 32GB+2TB version is as high as 26,999 yuan. In contrast, the regular MateBook Pro starts at 7999 yuan.

　　At the same time, HarmonyOS is still a relatively immature operating system.

　　According to Yu Chengdong, at present, more than 1,000 HarmonyOS fusion applications have been adapted on the PC side, including more than 150 exclusive computer applications, such as WPS, Flying Book, Nail, () and () (300624.SZ)’ s editing software Meow Shadow, etc. At the HarmonyOS Computer Technology Communication Conference held on May 8th, the number of converged applications was only over 300.

　　"In ten days, the number of converged applications on the shelves has more than tripled, and the adaptation progress is very fast." Yu Chengdong said with emotion. According to its forecast, this number will exceed 2,000 by the end of the year, and applications such as Tencent Conference and Enterprise WeChat are being adapted.

　　But compared with Microsoft’s millions of software support, this figure seems a bit thin. Especially in the case of the ecological shortage of professional PC software such as Adobe Family Barrel, HarmonyOS computers can only be regarded as adequate, not easy to use.

　　Under this circumstance, what kind of users does Huawei want to sell this folding computer with a price of more than 20,000 yuan to, and how to use these two computers to tear the gap from the comprehensive encirclement of Windows and Mac OS has become the next concern of the market.

　　Remake the high-end route of mobile phones?

　　Although the starting price of Huawei MateBook Fold is as high as 23,999 yuan, many voices still think that this price is "acceptable" and even a bit "lower than expected".

　　Xu Qiang (pseudonym), a distributor of Huawei in Zhejiang, pointed out to the reporter of Time Weekly that the price of more than 20,000 yuan was almost the same as expected, even a little lower. According to his original expectation, the high-end version of MateBook Fold (that is, 32GB+2TB) will cost around 31,000 yuan.

　　Reflected in the market, it is the extremely high pre-sale heat of MateBook Fold.

　　At 18: 08 p.m. on May 19th, both MateBook Fold and MateBook Pro started pre-sale at the same time. As of 2: 00 p.m. on May 20th, 20 hours after the pre-sale, the number of reservations for MateBook Fold in Huawei Mall has exceeded 62,000. In Huawei’s self-operated flagship store in JD.COM, the number of reservations has exceeded 52,000.

　　Image source: screenshot of Huawei mall applet

　　On these two channels alone, the number of reservations for MateBook Fold has exceeded 100,000. There is no need to pay a deposit in advance for pre-sale, which may be difficult to reflect the final sales situation, but it is undoubtedly a success for such a PC product with a price of more than 20 thousand yuan.

　　According to Li Zegang, chief analyst of Omdia’s electronic consumption research, the pricing of MateBook Fold not only reflects the hardware cost, but also covers the brand premium, innovative attributes and consumer emotional value. In essence, Huawei is trying to establish a high-end image in the PC market through high-end design and brand positioning.

　　Similar strategies have been adopted by Huawei in the process of high-end mobile phones many times. Since Mate7, the flagship model of explosive explosions launched in 2014, Huawei has continuously increased its R&D investment to achieve technological breakthroughs, and then put these new technologies into its flagship model, so as to gradually establish a high-end brand image.

　　For example, in September last year, Huawei launched the world’s first three-fold mobile phone Mate XT. Among them, the 256GB version costs 19,999 yuan, the 512GB version costs 21,999 yuan, and the 1TB version costs 23,999 yuan. The extremely high pricing failed to stop the enthusiasm of consumers. Before the launch, the number of reservations for this model exceeded 6 million, and it was once fired at a "sky-high price" of 40,000 yuan.

　　But behind the craze, the shipment of Mate XT is not as big as expected. After the launch, Guo Ming, an analyst with Tianfeng International Securities, predicted that the shipment of Mate XT would increase from 500,000 units to 1 million units in 2024 according to the supply chain survey. In contrast, Canalys data shows that Huawei’s overall shipments in 2024 exceeded 46 million units.

　　"To some extent, this is a strategic product. Huawei may not expect these high-end products to create much direct income in sales or hardware gross profit, but the invisible added value it brings, such as brand image enhancement and market positioning optimization, is more important. " Li Zegang told the Times Weekly reporter.

　　To B Xin Chuang basic disk

　　Based on this expectation, Li Zegang thinks that in the C-end consumer market, HarmonyOS’s computer shipments will not be too large in the short term, and the first users are mainly geeks and early adopters. For practical reasons, mainstream users will still prefer a more mature and secure Windows ecosystem. In contrast, the ToB market purchased by enterprises or governments is the main battlefield of computers in HarmonyOS.

　　There are not a few similar views. Li Jingyun, a senior analyst at Counterpoint, also pointed out to Time Weekly that HarmonyOS’s greatest advantage is China’s vast domestic demand and policy support, especially in the fields of government, state-owned enterprises and education. Huawei’s brand image in hardware also helps to promote HarmonyOS OS and Huawei PC in such an environment.

　　This is a rapidly rising market. According to the forecast of CCID (a subsidiary of China Electronic Information Industry Development Research Institute), the total PC shipments of Xinchuang will reach 4.8 million units in 2023 and 9.5 million units in 2026.

　　The HarmonyOS operating system, which emphasizes full-stack self-research, also has considerable advantages in this market. In the past, domestic self-developed systems such as Galaxy Kirin and Tongxin UOS were widely used in government affairs, finance, energy and other fields, but these systems were generally patched on the basis of open source Linux systems, and were relatively weak in security, application ecology and interactive UI design experience. In contrast, HarmonyOS, who reconstructs code logic from the bottom, is smoother in all aspects.

　　On this basis, Huawei naturally regards Xinchuang market as an important breakthrough of HarmonyOS computer, and makes sufficient preparations for it.

　　At the previous technical communication meeting, Huawei used a lot of space to describe the security features of HarmonyOS computers: for example, by default, HarmonyOS computers implement hardware-level one-document-one-secret protection, and require application developers to carry out real-name authentication, and the applications are subject to security audit and signature authentication before running.

　　At the press conference on May 19th, Huawei further released Huawei Qingyun HM940, the first commercial laptop in HarmonyOS. This product pays more attention to the customized needs of industries such as security, and is equipped with enterprise-level security capability solutions. For example, HM940 has built-in system and special functions such as searching and answering, real-time transcription and summarization of voice in the meeting, and stable assistant.

　　In addition, Yu Chengdong also announced at the same time that in order to encourage government and enterprise users to jointly build industrial and ecological development in HarmonyOS, Huawei will launch the "Qingyun Xinghe Plan" with industry pioneer customers, and jointly carry out joint innovation and application in HarmonyOS around the three major directions of enterprise management, enterprise safety and organizational productivity.

　　Ecological construction protracted war

　　Grasping the basic market of Xinchuang is only the first step. In order to really push the market to a wider range of consumer users, the market generally believes that the ecological shortcomings of HarmonyOS computers must be filled.

　　With the adaptation of thousands of HarmonyOS converged applications on the PC side, thanks to this, HarmonyOS Computer has now covered the user’s core use scenarios such as general office, design and creation, practical tools, financial management, audio-visual entertainment, education and learning, and games.

　　However, there are still obvious gaps in some key productivity software in HarmonyOS.

　　Judging from the current situation, Huawei mainly complements this in two ways. On the one hand, in order to reduce the difficulty of adaptation, Huawei has previously revealed that HarmonyOS computer adopts the same ARM architecture as mobile phones and tablet platforms, so its operating system can be seamlessly compatible with mobile phones and tablet applications, and developers can realize three-terminal deployment in one development. Applications such as WPS can be easily migrated from previous mobile phones and tablet platforms to HarmonyOS computers.

　　On the other hand, Huawei allows Windows 11 to run through a virtual machine, so as to achieve compatibility with some professional software. However, when using virtual machines to run some large-scale software, the computer performance will be affected to some extent.

　　At the same time, the native software of HarmonyOS computer is also under slow construction. For example, Wanxing Miaoying, a video editing software of Wanxing Technology, has developed the depth function of dual-screen full-touch intelligent editing for the unique dual-screen form of MateBook Fold. Users only need to pinch and zoom, slide and drag to complete the video editing.

　　However, in order to achieve such a deep adaptation, its difficulty and cost have been significantly improved. According to Zhu Jiamin, assistant president and general manager of Wanxing Technology, told the reporter of Time Weekly that in order to move from "compatibility and adaptation" to "capacity creation and co-construction", Wanxing Technology teamed up with HarmonyOS to set up a special attack team and fought a hundred-person conference. It took more than six months to finally deliver the products.

　　According to Xu Ying, an analyst at Omdia, different from the application ecology of mobile phones, the application ecology of computers involves many commercial productivity software. How to attract more partners to build a software ecosystem based on HarmonyOS system and reach a certain scale is still the primary problem that Huawei needs to overcome.

　　This is a doomed road. The solid barriers that Windows and MacOS have built for decades are by no means something that Huawei can break through overnight. Some analysts predicted to Time Weekly that it will take at least 5 to 10 years and tens of billions of dollars of continuous investment before the huge gap in domestic software ecology can be gradually leveled.

　　In order to attract more developers to join in, at the press conference, Yu Chengdong shouted, HarmonyOS computer has just started, and it needs to keep growing. "We firmly believe that with your full support, HarmonyOS will become a vigorous force to change the world. Every line of your code is rewriting the future of the computer industry in China. "