The warehouses at Huaxing were humming before dawn, pallets sliding past in neat lines as staff staged inventory for the company's first synchronized online–offline sale. Online chatter had been building for days, and that pressure was crushing rival sales: models from Honor and Huawei that had been moving steadily now looked frostbitten. People weren't merely curious; they were waiting to pounce.
By the 10th, the official site was straining again. Monitoring showed more than ten million users camped on the product page, refreshing in rhythm as if counting down together. Outside Huaxing's experience stores, snaking queues formed in the chill morning air. Reporters roamed the lines with microphones. One caught a young man near the front. When did you arrive? "Six." Which model? "Hongmeng S3 Pro." Why this phone? "Flagship guts for less money—why wouldn't I line up?"
Clips like that flooded social platforms, amplifying the sense that Huaxing's phones were the only game in town. Even people who'd never touched a Huaxing product pulled up specs and, after a glance at the performance‑per‑yuan, hurried to register accounts, fingers hovering over the buy button.
Yang Qiang, head of the Hongmeng S series, watched the data stream roll in—traffic curves, reservation counts, sentiment heat maps—and felt the adrenaline you don't get twice. If enthusiasm translated cleanly to orders, today would set a benchmark.
Ten o'clock struck. The buy button lit. Millions clicked. A queue prompt flashed, then froze. With over ten million hands reaching for 1.5 million online units, the math was merciless. Within a minute, the counter hit zero. Online stock: cleared. The senior team stared at the giant screen in wordless awe in the conference room. Then applause broke out, crisp and layered. Heifeng led the clapping, satisfaction plain in his eyes—one minute. Whatever the competitors claimed, the market had just delivered its verdict. The others joined in, the data too brilliant to hide their grins. This was career-defining forYang Qiang, whose team had shepherded S3 from drawings to production ramps. People would still be introducing him by this win years from now.
Brick‑and‑mortar told the same story. In under ninety minutes, every unit slated for stores was gone. Supply and demand were no longer tug-of-war; demand had yanked the rope away. Across Huaxing's Weibo, the mood turned from feverish to feral. Three million phones total—1.5 million online and 1.5 million offline—had vanished, yet the crowd swelled.
"Out of stock already? Did Huaxing learn this trick from Rice?" someone jeered. A reply snapped back: "Rice learned it from Huaxing. Did you forget S1?" A chorus of near‑miss tales followed—alarms set for 9:55, families triple‑teaming the checkout page, all shut out in sixty seconds. Pride and frustration shared a bloodstream: "Haha, I got one!" next to "We tried with three accounts and still failed. Can't you release more?"
Yang Qiang scrolled the comments, half tense, half elated. "President Heifeng, the dissatisfaction is loud. The demand is—" He didn't finish. Heifeng cocked his head toward the far end of the table. "Old Yang," he teased, "learn from Vice President Liu. Don't get rattled. Look how calm he is."
Liu Jianyu set his teacup down. "If they're dissatisfied, let them be. What you can't get, you want more." He didn't raise his voice; he didn't need to. "The harsher they scold us now, the hotter our halo burns. Don't chase every comment. If we flood the channel to soothe them, the heat drops, and the tail gets harder to sell. Batch releases look like hunger marketing, but they protect momentum and margins."
Yang nodded. He knew the logic; hearing it with this poise settled his pulse. Outside the room, competitors exhaled for different reasons. The sell‑out proved Huaxing's pull—but also hinted at a constrained ramp. If Huaxing couldn't meet demand, Huawei and Honor could still skim the overflowing demand.
Secondary markets lit up within hours. Listings for the Hongmeng S3 proliferated, most tacking on an immediate premium.
Early mark‑ups clustered around ¥200–300 over official pricing.
By evening, asking prices crept up to ¥500–600 every day.
Once the premium hit roughly ¥500, buyers balked, and the rush cooled.
It wasn't just scalpers speculating; even with a surcharge, the S3 still offered more performance per yuan than many competitors at sticker. But every market has a line. Past five hundred, the cost‑effectiveness story began to wobble, and ordinary users decided to wait for the next batch rather than feed the arbitrage. Inside Huaxing, that signal was as clear as a bell: the product had headroom, the brand had heat, and the cadence of the next drop would decide how long both could be sustained at a boil.