(Yicai) Sept. 27 -- China's Huawei Technologies has launched the CNY20,000 (USD2,738) Huawei Watch Ultimate Design, its most expensive smartwatch ever, to snatch a larger market share from Apple.

Some netizens said that they are willing to bid as much as CNY100,000 (USD13,680) to buy the novel product with 18K gold inlays.

Huawei is one of the most recognized brands in China to represent homegrown high-tech for rich people, and a watch of CNY20,000 is far from expensive, Liu Jiansen, a wearables analyst at research institute Canalys, told Yicai.

The status symbols of smartwatches offer higher margins to phone manufacturers. Apple dominates the high-end segment of smartwatches priced above USD500 in China, occupying more than 60 percent of the market share, while Huawei’s share is about 30 percent, according to Canalys. However, Huawei has been growing faster as its share used to be only 2.3 percent a year ago.

In terms of numbers, Apple’s smartwatch shipments reached 16.3 million units globally in the first half of this year and in comparison, Huawei's corresponding figure was 5.2 million.

The Huawei Watch Ultimate Design is not in the same price range as Apple products. The iPhone maker debuted its high-end Apple Watch Ultra a year ago with an upgraded price of up to USD800. The second generation of Apple Watch Ultra was released this year, costing over CNY6,500 (USD889).

However, the demand for Apple Watch 9 series and Ultra 2 has been unimpressive. Online reviewers say that the Ultra 2 features only minor improvements to the first generation.

One of the new directions in the field is that smartwatch makers are increasingly targeting women with their light and sleek designs and even Huawei has launched many designs for women in particular.

Editors: Shi Yi, Emmi Laine