Huawei had no problems at all selling their phones in China. They were already 100% google-less before the ban, and after the ban it was the “patriot choice” to get their phones
iPhones are banned for people who are working for the Chinese government; there’s a fear campaign that says that the American government can hack them
The Chinese iPhone app store is now a restricted list of carefully whitelisted apps from the Chinese government, and in order to be whitelisted the app must be published by a developer that has a presence in China with a specific content license. So now the iPhone is a dumb phone that can run tencent/Alibaba/bytedance/pinduoduo apps. If you’re thinking of an iPhone app, it’s probably unavailable in China. At least with android you can sideload whatever you want (and often in the rom there’s a shim that allows to unofficially install the Google play store and services), but with the iPhone all you can get is those few apps.
You can get similar build quality for a quarter or a third of the price. There are no carrier discounts, you need to pay the full price, which in cities that are not Shanghai are several months of salary. And if you need to show that you’re worth, it’s much better to take a foldable. I saw many women with a zflip worn like a necklace or a zfold worn like a bag
Seen those four reasons, there’s no surprises iphone isn’t the “default” option like in the US