The flagship phone market had turned into a bloodbath, with Samsung, Apple, and Xiaomi locked in a messy mix of rivalry and mutual obsession. As two of the most prominent players in China's phone market, Huawei and Huaxing Technology started moving as well, ready to jump into the fight.
Heifeng Lu looked at Jianyu Liu and said, "It's time to show the highlights."
"If we don't, people won't wait. They'll buy from someone else, and that's not what we want."
Heifeng took the current market tempo seriously. In his view, Samsung, Apple, and Xiaomi were burning through consumer attention fast. If Huaxing stayed silent too long, buyers would spend their budget elsewhere before Huaxing even stepped on stage.
Jianyu understood immediately. "All right. I'll handle it."
The Harmony X series was Huaxing's crown jewel. It concentrated nearly every resource Huaxing could bring to bear, and the company had spent a whole year building a true high-end flagship. A strong product was the foundation, but in this kind of market, publicity still mattered.
On October 14, Huaxing Technology posted the first official promotional poster for the third-generation Harmony X on its verified Weibo account.
The post drew a wave of attention. What surprised people most was that, unlike the first two generations, Huaxing had finally brought in a celebrity spokesperson.
And it wasn't just any celebrity. Huaxing had hired Hu Ge, arguably the hottest name in entertainment at the moment, to endorse the third-generation Harmony X.
Hu Ge had ridden out years of ups and downs, but this year marked a clear turning point. Starting early in the year, one project after another landed in front of the public, and the reception kept rising. His reputation had always been strong, and his fanbase was unusually loyal, with broad appeal across both men and women. More importantly, audiences weren't just calling him "good-looking" anymore. They were praising his acting, his work ethic, and his results, which helped push him from "idol actor" to a serious, respected performer.
For Huaxing, that meant one thing: reach. Hu Ge pulled attention, and attention was precisely what the Harmony X launch needed.
In the poster, Hu Ge held a red third-generation Harmony X and wore a calm, confident smile. For his fans, that image did the job. People poured into Huaxing's comment section, and within half an hour the post had already racked up thousands of comments. Likes quickly crossed 100,000. The topic climbed into Weibo's trending list that day, dragging even more eyes toward the upcoming Harmony X release.
Once the poster spread, anticipation only intensified. Fans wanted the phone because Hu Ge was holding it. Tech watchers wanted the phone because the poster quietly revealed more than a pure "face shot."
Even though Hu Ge's hand covered part of the back, people still picked out the rear camera layout. The surprise was immediate. The Harmony X line was moving to a dual-camera setup this time.
Then the greater detail hit. The primary camera was labeled as 48 MP.
A 48 MP primary camera startled a lot of viewers, not because the number was inherently magical, but because the pace of change had been relentless. It felt like yesterday when phones were fighting over 8 MP, then 13 MP, then jumping to 40 MP. Many people had assumed 40 MP was already the ceiling for the year. Huaxing showing 48 MP in a single poster flipped that assumption on its head.
The message landed. If the third-generation Harmony X kept the baseline quality of the first two generations and paired it with an aggressive camera system, then this phone probably wouldn't going to be weak.
With the endorsement and the poster reveal feeding each other, the third-generation Harmony X gained a massive amount of exposure. More consumers began waiting specifically for Huaxing's launch.
At Xiaomi, Jun Lei looked at the day's sales numbers and shook his head.
The Xiaomi MIX was a strong phone, and its early sales had been good. But after Huaxing dropped the Harmony X endorsement poster, MIX sales fell sharply, down 40%.
Jun looked across the room at Wen Lin. "Huaxing's playbook, especially their marketing, is something every phone maker should study."
He'd been watching Huaxing's strategy for years, and it kept proving effective.
First, Huaxing ran a multi-series strategy, flooding the market with enough models to cover more segments and build constant visibility. That was obvious from the Harmony S series and the Stellar series released this year. Their combined sales had already surpassed Xiaomi's total from the previous year.
Second, Huaxing didn't let online hype be the only engine. Even after attention naturally cooled for newer iterations like the third-generation Harmony S and the second-generation Stellar line, Huaxing extended the products' life by building a serious offline footprint.
In recent years, Huaxing has expanded aggressively into retail, opening more than 500 direct-run stores. Jun could see the results clearly through industry data sites. Huaxing had stabilized around 15% offline market share, a number Xiaomi could only envy. And Jun believed that as Huaxing kept increasing the number of products it shipped, its offline share would keep climbing.
In short, Huaxing was operating as a company that could win both online and offline, instead of living and dying by internet buzz.
Third, Huaxing understood endorsements. It didn't just hire celebrities; it picked the kind of faces that converted attention into trust.
Jun pointed to the Harmony S spokesperson, Jay Chou. Back when Jay was still an unknown newcomer, the Harmony S campaign helped more people notice him. Later, once Jay's popularity exploded on the strength of his talent, that attention flowed back toward the Harmony S line.
And Hu Ge was even more obvious. A widely recognized actor with a strong public image, fully transitioned and fully validated. Put him on a poster holding a phone, and the market listened.
Jun leaned back. "All of that is learnable."
To him, Huaxing's phones weren't succeeding by luck. The products were strong, but the strategy behind them was just as deliberate.