Dubai
Huawei’s sub-brand Honor is aiming to more than double its smartphone sales in the Middle East to more than two million units after selling one million devices last year.
“Globally, Honor has earned more than $5 billion in revenue and sold more than 26 million devices in the first half,” Chris Sun Baigong, vice-president of Huawei Honor Middle East, told Gulf News after launching its flagship phone — Honor 9 — in Dubai on Thursday.
The 5.15-inch device has a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels resolution and is powered by a Kirin 960 2.4GHz processor, the same powerful one as in Huawei P10 and Mate 9.
The rear has a 12MP colour and 20MP monochrome and 8MP front-facing cameras.
It comes in two versions, one with 4GB of RAM and 64GB ROM for Dh1,599 and 6GB RAM and 128GB ROM for Dh1,999. It comes in two colours — glacier grey and sapphire blue.
As far as the cameras are concerned, the Honor 9 packs a 20MP primary camera on the rear and a 8MP front shooter for selfies.
Baigong said that when the phone was launched globally, the company sold more than one million units in just 28 days.
In the first half, he said that Huawei and Honor sales are equal in China. In this region, “we only have a few flagship models like Honor 6X and Honor 8 as of this year but we will bring more models, from mid-to high-end devices, to boost sales.”
Huawei sold 139 million units worldwide in 2016 and targets 150 million units for this year, according to Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei’s consumer business group. When Huawei sold 139 million units globally in 2016, Honor contributed 60 million devices.
He said that Honor contributes around 40 per cent to Huawei’s sales and this is expected to grow to around 50 per cent this year.
He said that Honor will achieve more than 50 per cent growth globally this year compared to last year.
Honor, which was part of Huawei’s brand, has been hived off and will act as a stand-alone brand from now.
When asked why, Baigong said that the brand has got a very good reputation from the region not only from the end users but also from distributor channels.
“We are looking at breaking norms and showing our users that premium quality is now within their reach. This is particularly so due to the predominance of digital natives and high incidence of early adopters that impact the way in which we approach this highly sophisticated market.
“We are not going to sell devices at the lower end and will focus on mid-range devices between $200 and $350 (Dh1,285). We found out that our target audience is looking at not just a competitively priced phone but one that demonstrates best in class quality and a premium experience,” Baigong said.
He said that mid-range devices had more market share.
“Our focus is to change the smartphone game. We know the market much better than other vendors and we localise it,” he said.
