Huawei's Honor series has huge twenty-fold leap in sales year-over-year

According to a report published on Tuesday, Huawei has seen sales of its Honor series soar from 1 million units to 20 million over the course of one year. Huawei copied the low-price online sales strategy employed by Xiaomi, the upstart Chinese manufacturer. In the third quarter of this year, Huawei sold 15.9 million handsets compared to the 15.8 million sold by Xiaomi. The year before, Huawei sold 11.7 million handsets compared to just 3.6 million for Xiaomi.

The Honor series no longer features the Huawei name and is marketed independently of Huawei's other handsets, including the highly regarded Huawei Ascend Mate7. The Honor brand of smartphones can be found offered in online stores such as India's Flipkart and JD.com in China. The downside to offering phones online for such low prices is razor thin margins. Xiaomi, for example, had an operating margin of just 1.8% last year. That compares with the 18.7% margin enjoyed by Samsung. Honor brand president Jeff Liu says that the Honor line "doesn't make money but doesn't lose money."

Last week, the Honor 6 Plus was unveiled. The device features a dual "Symmetrical dual camera technology" that is comprised of a pair of 8MP cameras and a large 1.85 micron pixel size. The two rear cameras allow for quality pictures to be snapped even under low-light conditions, and focusing time is said to be a zippy 0.1 second. The 5.5-inch phablet is priced at $323 for a 3G version and $403 for the 4G LTE model. Sounds like the Honor brand will be selling a lot more handsets online in the weeks ahead.


source: Reuters