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Huawei
Chinese smartphone manufacturer Huawei has high hopes for its Honor line of smartphones.
Huawei, the world’s fourth-largest smartphone vendor, on Tuesday unveiled the Honor 7, its latest flagship smartphone, at an event in Beijing. The company also unveiled two accessories: a smart wearable device called the Honor Band Zero and a Bluetooth headset called the Honor Whistle.
Huawei is in the midst of jockeying for position as a major player in the global smartphone market, and is attempting to fend off upstart Chinese vendor Xiaomi, which has leaped into the scene with more affordable products and a successful online sales tactic. But Huawei feels good about its Honor line; the company said it expects to sell 40 million units this year, twice as many as a year ago.
Sales from the Honor brand generated $2.6 billion in revenue from over 70 countries in the first half of 2015, the company said in a release on Tuesday.
The Shenzen, China-based company has been trying to expand its brand recognition in the American smartphone market, largely by taking on a direct sales tactic through its own online store. It’s a strategy that rival Xiaomi has employed in parts of Asia and India with great success.
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Xiaomi, meanwhile, is scheduled to hold its own launch event in Brazil later Tuesday as it looks to expand into the South American region.
Huawei’s Honor 7 boasts an all-metal body, a 5.2-inch display, an octa-core processor, 3 gigabytes of RAM, a 20-megapixel camera with a Sony sensor, a 8-megapixel front-facing camera, a rear sapphire camera lens and a 3,100 mAh battery. It will run Google’s Android 5.0 operating system, also known as Lollipop. Like Apple’s iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy S smartphones, it also comes with a fingerprint sensor.
The Honor 7 won’t likely make it to the US soon, where carriers have been reluctant to carry Huawei’s higher-end devices. Even its recently unveiled P8 Lite sells for $250 without a contract.
The Honor 7 starts at 1999 Chinese Yuan, or about $323.
