GUANGZHOU, China – Honor, the Chinese smartphone brand previously owned by Huawei, launched its first device since it was sold.
Huawei sold Honor, its cheap smartphone brand, in November to a consortium of buyers in China, as a way to help the unit survive in the face of American sanctions.
In 2019, Huawei was placed on a U.S. export blacklist called the List of Entities, which restricted U.S. companies from selling certain components to the Chinese technology giant. This includes semiconductors and software.
Google was forced to cut ties with Huawei, which means that the US mobile giant’s Android mobile operating system could not be installed on the Chinese company’s devices. This severely hampered Huawei’s sales in international markets.
Last year, Huawei sold Honor to Shenzhen Zhixin New Information Technology, a consortium of 30 agents and resellers. At the time, Huawei said the sale was made so that Honor could “get through this difficult time”.
“Separating the Honor team should help you get the components you need, although it can take many months and is never guaranteed, especially due to geopolitical tension in the air,” said Bryan Ma, vice president of device research at IDC.
“Even so, the change helps to keep the team engaged with suppliers in the hope that they can continue with product development.”
Most of Honor’s sales come from China. In 2019, Honor sold 64 million smartphones globally, according to IDC. In the first nine months of 2020, the company shipped 42 million units. Complete data for 2020 are not yet available.
The V40
Honor’s new smartphone is called the V40. It features a 6.72 inch screen and comes in three colors: silver, black and rose gold.
Honor spoke about the phone’s touchscreen and graphics processing capabilities, which enhance games on the device, a popular use of smartphones in China.
It has the ability to connect to next generation 5G mobile networks, an important requirement in China, which is the world’s largest market for 5G phones.
The V40 uses a key 5G chip from Taiwan’s MediaTek, a company that became China’s number one smartphone semiconductor supplier in 2020.
Honor’s V40 starts at 3,599 yuan ($ 556) for the 128 GB storage option and 3,999 yuan for the 256 GB version. It will be released in China, but it is not clear whether it will be released internationally.
“The message they (Honor) want to convey is that they inherited a lot from Huawei, no matter if it’s the capabilities of the chipset, photography and R&D (research and development), all the things they got from Huawei devices, they have everything,” Nicole Peng, a mobile analyst at Canalys, said.
“They don’t want to show that they are losing the R&D capability that Huawei has. They want to show that they still have it and have a great team in R&D and that’s something that people asked when they split up, if they could keep that kind of innovation. ”