Huawei’s 16,999 yuan (US$2,450) foldable Mate Xs went on sale in China on Thursday morning and immediately sold out across multiple ecommerce platforms. Huawei declined to disclose how many units were made available for purchase, but nearly half a million people had signed up on JD.com and Huawei’s Vmall to be notified about the phone a day after the pre-listing went up last week.
By Thursday afternoon, second-hand Mate Xs phones were already popping up on sites like Alibaba’s Xianyu, a trading platform for used goods. Devices were selling for as much as 2.5 times the original price. To convince customers that they actually have the phone, some vendors even posted screenshots of their order receipts.
Samsung’s rival device -- the Galaxy Z Flip -- has already sold out twice in China in two rounds of sales that began a week ago. It costs 5,000 yuan (US$720) less than the Huawei Mate Xs.
(Abacus is a unit of the South China Morning Post, which is owned by Alibaba.)