Chinese smartphone brands Xiaomi, Huawei in rare public spat over foldable patent as competition heats up
- Huawei’s chief executive of consumer products, Richard Yu, said ‘some competitors took our intellectual property and renamed it as their own’
- Xiaomi refuted the Huawei executive’s comments, saying they were ‘completely out of line with facts’ and were ‘misleading the public’
Xiaomi and Huawei Technologies have become embroiled in a rare public spat over a foldable phone patent, a sign of intensified competition in China’s smartphone market.
The dispute originated last Saturday when Huawei’s chief executive of consumer products, Richard Yu Chengdong, said “some competitors took our intellectual property and renamed it as their own”, without naming any company.
Yu, who was speaking to a group of Huawei users at an event in Dongguan, Guangdong province, specifically mentioned Xiaomi’s refined “keel hinge” design, used in its foldable phone, saying that the design was a copy of Huawei’s dual-track, wing-shaped hinge used on the Mate X3, X4 and X5 models.
Xiaomi refuted Yu’s comments on Tuesday, issuing a statement saying they were “completely out of line with facts”.
Yu’s statements amounted to “defaming a rival and misleading the public”, according to a statement published on one of Xiaomi’s official Weibo accounts.
Xiaomi said its three-element hinge was patented in January 2021, five months before Huawei’s two-track design was approved by the China National Intellectual Property Administration. Huawei applied for a patent on a hinge with three tracks in October 2021.