Huawei says the Pura X Max has already become its best-selling foldable over the same launch window, a strong sign that the company’s bet on making a folding phone feel more like a mini-tablet is landing with buyers. In its first month, the device sold about 343,700 units by the end of May 2026, with the pricier Collector’s Edition doing an unexpectedly large share of the work.
That is a pretty blunt answer to a long-running foldable problem: for years, these devices often felt like regular phones with a party trick, rather than something people would actually want to use all day. Huawei’s pitch here is simpler and smarter – make the inside screen useful first, then worry about the folding gimmick.
Huawei Pura X Max sales are driven by the inner display
According to Yu Chengdong, Huawei’s executive director and chairman of the Terminal BG unit, the company shifted away from the old idea that a foldable should mainly mimic two flat screens joined together. Instead, it focused on making the large internal panel comfortable for real-world use, adjusting the bezel, tuning the aspect ratio for common content, and accounting for a typical viewing distance of around 30 cm.
That matters because foldables have spent years trying to justify themselves against both slab phones and tablets. Huawei seems to have decided that if people mostly use these devices while folded, the unfolded experience has to feel like a properly sized screen rather than a stretched phone UI with an identity crisis.
Collector’s Edition accounts for a big share of sales
The standout detail is not just the total sales figure but the mix. About 198,500 of those first-month units were the more expensive Collector’s Edition, which suggests Huawei has found demand at the premium end instead of forcing buyers to trade down for a cheaper variant.
Counterpoint Research also says the early sales pace beats the Mate X7 and earlier Pura X models. That puts Huawei in a stronger position than many rivals that still treat foldables as niche status symbols, even as the category slowly shifts from novelty to habit in China.
What Huawei’s sales could mean for foldables
If Huawei can keep selling the Pura X Max at this pace, it will reinforce a simple market lesson: consumers do not need foldables to be flashy, they need them to be useful enough to replace more than one device. The obvious question now is whether the rest of the foldable crowd will follow Huawei’s lead and design for the open screen first, or keep polishing the hinge while the software experience stays awkward.