Honor, Huawei’s former low-tier brand, finds a way of dealing with the American sanctions and launches a new mobile device with Qualcomm, Intel and AMD
Honor has now set themselves free from Huawei Technologies Company, the former parental company, in the bid to win over the imposed US restrictions. In order to highlight the big separation news, Honor announced the release of a brand-new 5G smartphone called the View40 alongside partnerships with global semiconductor corporations, such as Intel and Qualcomm.
The presentation of View40 took place on Friday and has drawn a lot of attention as it is the first mobile device since the moment of transfer of parental company rights from Huawei, which has been denied access to Google services in 2019 after the sanctions came into power. Even though Honor has not yet confirmed whether an international variant of the device will have Google Mobile Services, some experts do believe it shall be present in the View40. The company has unveiled that it will be collaborating with chip designing and manufacturing companies from the US, including Intel, Microsoft, Qualcomm, South Korean Samsung and SK Hynix, Taiwan-based MediaTek and Japanese company Sony. Honor is partnering with Qualcomm needs to be considered very promising, as it is the world’s leading smartphone chip vendor and is deemed critical for a successful mobile device launch.
On top of that, the list of partner companies clearly indicates a possibility to eliminate Chinese producers from the US technology and could potentially be utilized in future, if the relationship between the two countries will not achieve an agreement under the rule of the new US president, Joe Biden. Honor’s CEO, Zhao Ming, also mentioned the difficulties which the company has faced during the past five months period.
Under Huawei's parenting, Honor was launched as a budget brand, however, after being sold, the company is undertaking a turnaround strategy and aims to expand into mid-tier and high-end devices. Therefore, the View40 is going to be a medium-tier device, containing several premium features, yet, the price will be held at around 3,599 yuan (US$557). This is a common pricing strategy among its competitors, including Xiaomi, OnePlus and other Chinese brands. The presented Honor’s new mobile device will have a 4,000mAh battery that can be fully charged in 35 minutes using its 66W charging. Another significant difference from budget devices is the curved display has a resolution of 2676x1236 pixels and a 120Hz refresh rate, which is usually installed in more expensive models. As the Honor company has broken its ties with Huawei, the new View40’s will no longer be powered by its former parent’s company Kirin chips; instead, their 5G feature will be supplied by the MediaTek Dimensity 1000+ system-on-a-chip.
Although there has not been a notice about Honor’s international ambitions, the company started selling the View40 mobile device in China this Friday. In August 2020, the US government imposed sanctions, making it challenging for Huawei to acquire the US-made chips. Having faced the difficulties, Huawei was almost forced to sell Honor to a consortium of over 30 agents and dealers, which was perceived by many as if the company was cutting off its arm to ensure the survival of Honor. Initially launched in 2013 by Huawei as a budget brand, Honor managed to rapidly gain popularity among the Chinese consumers and expanded internationally as well. In 2020, the brand obtained more than 200 million users across the world. A year earlier, Honor’s devices experienced a tremendous increase in sales of 16 per cent compared to the previous year. Honor and Huawei mobile devices managed to take over 17.6 of the global smartphone shipments in 2019. However, the experts predict that as the two brands have now become two separate companies, it is doubtful for each to obtain such a large market share in the nearest future. Moreover, Huawei is expected to experience a dramatic fallback and take the seventh place in the ranking, as the company will continue to suffer from the US restrictions.
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