T/N[1]
Sales dashboards rarely rattled Pu Xingcai, but the S6 Pro launch numbers did the job. Forty-three minutes after midnight, his screen updated: Day-1 units, mainland China—39,412. He blinked, refreshed—no missing digit. Before last year's battery-fire fiasco, the figure was barely a third of Samsung's weakest flagship debut in the past five years.
The regional sales chief tried to sound calm. "Maybe it's lingering fear after the explosions—and local brands have closed the performance gap."
Pu's glare cut him short. "Then buy exposure. Billboards, livestream shout-outs, whatever the influencers charge—double it. Every tech blogger who touches that phone must call it a comeback." Money was still plentiful; prestige was bleeding out by the hour.
In Huaxing's tower, thousands of kilometers north, Heifeng read the same data satisfactorily. "Thirty-nine thousand day-one is… underwhelming," he murmured, rolling his chair back from the screen. "Samsung's falling off the altar, at least in Greater China."
He would have toasted the moment if it hadn't signaled a brawl. The vacuum Samsung created would pull every domestic brand into a knife fight for share, and Huawei had loaded the first round.
7 p.m., Beijing time. Stage lights burst inside Huawei's packed hall. After two dormant years, the company was spinning Honor back into a quasi-independent sub-brand and revealing a trio of aggressively priced models. One was a direct Snapdragon-powered swing at Samsung's wounded flank, the other two sat squarely on Xiaomi's turf. The "Huawei press conference" began trending on social feeds before the host reached the features slide, draining what little buzz Samsung's advertising blitz had generated.
Pu Xingcai watched the broadcast from his Shanghai office, jaw clenched. Behind him, a poster still read Reclaim Glory in hangul; under the fluorescent light, the slogan looked like satire. Overnight, digital reviewers began posting side-by-side charts showing Huawei's new Honor phone matching the S6 Pro in display resolution, trailing slightly in camera megapixels, but crushing it in battery capacity and, worst of all, undercutting its price by nearly two thousand yuan.
Sales the next morning confirmed the blow:
Day 2: 30,087 units
Day 3: 19,844 units
Pu should have been pleased at forty-eight thousand yuan per unit average turnover; only the raw volume was abysmal. Store managers reported shoppers walking in for a demo, snapping a photo for social proof, then ordering a cheaper domestic flagship on JD.com before they reached the exit.
By Day 5, the number dipped below fifteen thousand. The headquarters in Seoul called at dawn. The voice held no anger, only resignation. "Greater-China division will fold back into global operations. Reassign staff, close the books." Pu felt the line go hollow even before the click.
An hour later, Samsung's Chinese PR account dropped a bomb on Weibo:
"Due to strategic restructuring, Samsung Greater China Region will dissolve and integrate directly with headquarters."
The statement was spare—two sentences, no spin—yet the shockwave raced across local tech circles. Comment threads split between schadenfreude and nostalgia, but one point was universal: a throne had just been vacated.
Executives at Xiaomi, Oppo-Vivo, Meizu, and even struggling ZTE called emergency meetings. A single chart circulated like contraband: Samsung had relinquished roughly 12 % of the mainland premium-phone pie overnight, equal to billions of yuan per quarter. Whoever moved fastest would dine first.
Huawei had already taken the stage. Its launch stream hit ten million viewers live; JD.com's preorder page for the new Honor phone crashed twice under traffic. Oppo plastered subway corridors with teaser posters promising "The Beauty King Returns"; Xiaomi leaked an Antutu score that looked suspiciously padded. A feeding frenzy, just as Heifeng predicted.
For Huaxing, the opportunity was enormous but dangerous. He convened a midnight war room.
"Samsung's retreat signals two things," he began. "One: premium buyers no longer trust high prices by default. Two: perception of domestic equals second-rate died tonight." Heads nodded; the room smelled of instant coffee and ambition.
He outlined marching orders:
Camera edge: Dove's low-light algorithm must pair with Sony's 28-megapixel sensor by May. If megapixels lag Samsung, color science must beat them.
Battery bragging rights: X-series stays at 35-watt SuperCharge. S-series pushes endurance marketing—five percent left at midnight becomes the meme.
Display race: extra ¥120 million reallocated to the in-house OLED line; pilot production must slip from October to August.
He ended with one blunt metric: "If Huawei sells one Honor every second, we must sell one S3 every three. Non-negotiable."
Teams dispersed at 2 a.m., but no one complained. Competition was the oxygen Huaxing's culture inhaled.
Samsung, desperate, flipped on the money taps. Digital celebrities received five-figure offers for unboxing videos; outdoor LED walls in Shenzhen looped S6 Pro ads twenty-four hours a day. Yet every impression backfired against the price tag. Viewers shrugged, pasted the screenshot into group chats, and replied: Same money buys me an Honor, earbuds, and a case.
By week's end, Pu oversaw a building where half the desks were empty. When the courier arrived to collect the regional server drives, he signed the handover slip with shaking fingers. The brand that had ruled Chinese sidewalks for a decade was now an import—exotic, expensive, and suddenly irrelevant.
Heifeng's reaction was neither glee nor pity; it was calculation. Samsung's fall proved that reputations, like batteries, could swell and burst if the chemistry turned unstable. His ascent depended on staying lighter, cooler, faster.
He opened his calendar: in forty-eight hours, the first full-color Lavender-Dream rear shells would arrive from the coating line; in seventy-two, Jay Chou would preview his debut single at the studio; in one week, Huawei's flash sale numbers would leak, and analysts would ask which rival could answer. He intended the response to be unmistakable.
Outside the office window, Jiangcheng's skyline shimmered, each billboard a slice of the market waiting to be claimed. He tapped the glass once—an unspoken promise—and turned back to the glow of his monitor. Dawn would start the next battle, and Huaxing was already sprinting.
[1] Not proofread yet