Why has Huawei launched this new brand Honor, and what does it mean for the wider phone industry?
The simple answer is that with Honor being sold only online, savings can be made for Huawei that can be passed on to the customer.
Honor also offers a more direct customer approach where users can feedback what they want a building, and Honor will, allegedly, plan its future kit based on those requests. But could not Huawei have just done this with the same name and brand?
With the tagline “for the brave,” Honor is aimed at a specific customer who, perhaps, the Huawei brand would not appeal. The company calls them digital natives.
These are the younger generation who have grown up using gadgets and have never known before the internet and smartphones. Judging from the promotional videos, Huawei wants to aim at hipster sorts who are proud to be different. While it might feel a bit forced in its attempts to be cool, Honor is doing the right thing by offering top-end specs in an affordable handset, ideal for the student and young worker crowds.
Huawei knows this is a difficult time to launch a new smartphone brand with fierce competition. But it claims this move will not impact Huawei, and the company should flourish as a result. Honor phones are developed and manufactured at different places to Huawei handsets, but it still has the expertise and experience of the parent company. Plus lots and lots of money.
It’s an area where a change could have been a smart business move, allowing the two brands to be distinctly different and less in competition. Huawei could have opted for stock Android which has worked so well for Motorola, perhaps saving itself the development costs of a new UI. The daily interaction on both Honor and Huawei devices will look and feel pretty much the same, and that is likely to be one of the defining experiences.
There will be people who never buy a phone from a brand like Huawei. Some feel the quality is not as good as more established brands like Taiwan-based HTC or budget disrupters like Motorola, now owned by Lenovo, another Chinese super brand.
What Motorola has, though, is an established brand. It has a long visible history in consumer devices, and with devices like the Moto G, Motorola has caused a lot of disruption in affordable instruments. Honor might have devised something of the right formula loading the specs and aggressively pricing, but establishing a new brand needs more.
It’s an interesting time for Chinese manufacturers who can afford to offer top specs for cheaper. Perhaps a new brand that is cool and can be trusted is just what Chinese smartphones need to go mainstream. But establishing the cool factor is the real challenge. It might win fans within tight geeky circles, but wider adoption will need a lot of smart marketing and a lot of time.