Amid China's COVID-19-related slowdown, Huawei partners with Meituan to increase phone delivery speed, JD.com launches home trade-in service for Apple products
Arjun Kharpal / CNBC :
Context & Ripple Effects
This story sits inside a long arc of Chinese e-commerce platforms competing for Apple and Android phone sales through whatever lever demand conditions allow. JD.com built the logistics backbone years earlier with its parcel delivery service offering app-based sending and WeChat pickups in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, so a home trade-in service for Apple products is an extension of existing infrastructure rather than a new capability.
Price has been the recurring weapon — JD.com and Suning discounted the iPhone 8 by up to 15% back in 2017, and the pattern repeated with steep iPhone 14 cuts in 2023 and deep iPhone 16 discounts in 2025. What changes here is the shift from price to service: Huawei teaming with Meituan brings an on-demand delivery network into phone retail just as COVID-19 keeps Chinese consumers out of stores.
First-order effects
- Huawei gains access to Meituan's delivery fleet for phone sales, letting buyers in locked-down cities receive handsets without visiting a retail outlet.
- Apple customers in China can now trade in old devices at their doorstep through JD.com, removing the store visit that the pandemic made impractical.
Second-order effects
- Rival platforms are pushed to match service-level competition alongside the discounting they already practice — JD.com's own history of iPhone price cuts shows price alone was the previous playbook, and delivery speed plus trade-in convenience becomes the new differentiator.
- Meituan extends its logistics role beyond food and local services into consumer electronics, putting it in indirect competition with JD.com's delivery arm for the same last-mile volume.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Chinese phone retail consolidates around platforms that bundle delivery, trade-in, and financing rather than around brand stores — a structure later reinforced by moves like Chinese makers promoting apps to help users switch from iOS in the fight for share.
- Apple's China business faces persistent structural pressure: the corpus shows discounting recurring across 2017, 2023, and 2025 whenever shipments soften, suggesting service innovation by rivals compounds rather than replaces price erosion.
The trend: Chinese smartphone retail is shifting from discount-led promotion to service-led competition — delivery speed, doorstep trade-in, and switching tools — as platforms fight for volume against softening demand.