Apple's iPhone 16 to put AI features in focus, Huawei's new phone racks up pre-orders

San Francisco (Reuters): Apple on Monday is set to unveil its iPhone 16, focusing on how its flagship device's features are infused with artificial intelligence, but it could be upstaged by a triple-folding smartphone released by China's Huawei hours earlier.

Apple's event at the tech giant's Apple Park headquarters starts at 10 a.m. PDT (1700 GMT). Huawei (HWT.UL) has scheduled an announcement of its Mate XT phone just hours after the Apple presentation.

The Chinese company's website showed on Monday that it had garnered more than 3 million pre-orders for its Z-shaped tri-fold phone. This underscores Huawei's ability to navigate U.S. sanctions and solidifies its position against Apple in China, where consumers are hankering for more AI features and are willing to pay for them.

Apple shares were down 1.25% in morning trading.

"The Chinese market is hungrier for AI features than the U.S. market," said Ben Bajarin, CEO and principal analyst at Creative Strategies. For Apple, "it will be very difficult to bring it to China immediately, so they'll be going off the merits of the hardware."

Apple unveiled Apple Intelligence at its developer conference in June, its take on generative AI that can conjure text, images and other content on command.

But these upgrades will take time to reach consumers.

Apple Intelligence features are expected to launch in a software update to the iPhone and iPad operating system likely in October and a full upgrade of Apple's voice assistant Siri is likely to come only early next year, according to media reports.