Over the past few years, whenever Apple releases a new phone, a flood of netizens complain that it lacks innovation and novelty, swearing they will never buy it and will definitely support domestic phones—after all, domestic phones are cheaper, more innovative, feature-packed, and already capable of crushing Apple.

Yet when it comes to actual sales, they are almost always proven wrong. In September and October—Apple's release window—and even throughout the entire fourth quarter, it is basically Apple's world, with no domestic phone able to challenge its position.

And in 2026, history repeated itself once again.

This year Apple released three phones: the iPhone 18 Pro, the iPhone 18 Pro Max, and the iPhone 18 Duo.

When these three phones launched, people complained in every way imaginable: no innovation, too expensive—the cheapest iPhone 18 Pro starts at 9,999 yuan, so only a fool would buy it.

As for the foldable iPhone 18 Duo, the complaints were even louder: it is completely copying Huawei, relying on mature domestic supply chains, reaping where it has not sown—it will definitely not sell well.

But the result proved them wrong once again. Previous data showed that the total domestic sales of the current iPhone 18 Pro series are more than three times the combined total of all domestic flagship phones, let alone any single domestic brand being able to compete with Apple.

And after the iPhone Duo went on sale, the Apple foldable phone that was written off by critics sold out, with everyone scrambling to get their hands on one.

Recently, a blogger released data on the domestic phone market for W43 (October 19–25), and we found that the top 5 were all Apple phones, with no domestic phone making the list.

As shown in the figure above, the iPhone 18 Pro Max ranked first in sales, moving 724,000 units in a single week, followed by the iPhone 18 Pro, then the iPhone 17, the iPhone 17 Pro, and finally the iPhone Duo.

Among them, the iPhone Duo sold 125,000 units in just 3 days on sale. Such a result would probably make many domestic phone makers die of shame.

So many people say they will not buy Apple and want to support domestic phones, but in the end their actual actions all point to buying Apple. They say one thing and do another.

Previously, an institution made a prediction that in 2026, although the Apple iPhone Duo will have been on sale for less than 3 months, it will capture 24.8% of the global share—basically the same as Huawei's share for the whole year—and in 2027 it will even surpass Huawei to become the world's second largest.

From this point of view, it is not far-fetched. It can only be said that Apple's appeal is simply too strong.