Asian Tech Press -- Chinese phone maker Honor, once a Huawei-owned brand, is committed to reclaiming from Apple the share of the premium smartphone market that belongs to it, Honor CEO George Zhao Ming said on Thursday.
Zhao revealed at the launch of the high-end smartphones Magic 3 series that Honor has jumped from an all-time low of 3% market share in three months to 14.6% at the end of July, making it the top three cell phone brand in China.
He disclosed that currently Honor's offline sales account for nearly 70%, and believed that with the launch of the Honor 50 series and Magic 3 series, Honor's construction of sales channels will be accelerated at an unprecedented rate.
After the absence of Huawei's premium phones, various phone manufacturers have launched high-end products to compete for the high-end market vacated by Huawei. Zhao said that in the Chinese high-end phone market, Huawei and Apple used to account for the biggest shares. When Huawei is absent, Apple is now on the rise.
Honor is to compete with Apple in the future, to make products that are comparable to Apple and beyond Apple, and to get back from Apple the high-end market share that belongs to the company, Zhao said.
The CEO said that the Honor 50 series is being prepared for overseas shipping and sales, and that the series which can support Google GMS services, could be available in more than 30 of over 50 countries around the world where the company has resumed operations.
It's worth noting that while Honor has now fully resumed supply chain cooperation, 14 Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives have asked the U.S. Department of Commerce to add former Huawei unit Honor Device Co on the U.S. government's economic blacklist, according to a Reuters report last week.
In response, Zhao said that Honor has become a new company in which Huawei no longer holds shares and will develop independently, and will work with global partners, uphold an open attitude, to cooperate with the global industry chain.
In addition, at a time when Huawei, Apple and other cell phone makers have ventured into electric vehicle sector, there have been concerns about whether Glory will build cars.
Zhao responded that he would consider other areas only if the company could achieve absolute leadership in consumer business such as cell phones. "In order to pursue the scale of revenue and overexpand as if making a big pie, consumers will abandon you," he stressed.
As for rumors that Honor plans to go public in the near future, Zhao denied it. He said that the company will certainly be more open and transparent in the future, and its financing channels will be diversified, not excluding the option of listing at the right opportunity in the future. But for now it is more important to build future-oriented core competencies, and the Honor team will not pursue overnight riches.
