Huawei is revamping its retail strategy and aggressively opening flagship stores in China, with some just a stone’s throw away from Apple shops, as it seeks to retake the premium electronics throne in the world’s biggest smartphone market.
Situated directly across from Apple’s Shanghai flagship store, Huawei’s recently renovated shop spans three floors of a famous heritage architecture building in the financial hub’s busy shopping district and includes a coffee shop and a gym.
Huawei opened four such stores in major Chinese cities between December and February, an aggressive marketing blitz by a company that had largely relied on licenced distributors and is rebounding from USA sanctions imposed in 2019 that had crippled its smartphone business for four years until it could source domestic replacement parts.
Apple has 47 stores in mainland China. Huawei, which did not open a flagship store until 2019, now has 11 of them. “I think they will open more than 20 of them. Then it will eventually catch up to Apple,” said Ethan Qi, associate director at research firm Counterpoint. It marks a stark contrast to 2021 when the company’s licenced stores were shuttered across China due to product shortages caused by the USA sanctions.
