Honor bids to extend winning streak in China with new Note 10 phone which has tablet-sized screen
Launch comes one week after research report said Huawei had extended its lead in China’s smartphone market, with strong contribution from budget Honor brand
Honor, Huawei’s budget smartphone maker, has unveiled a new mid-priced model which comes equipped with an extra-large screen and is aimed at building on the brand’s recent streak of success in China.
Honor’s latest flagship phone, the Note 10, uses Huawei Technologies’ own Kirin 970 AI chipset and has a 6.95-inch sized screen – the largest ever made by the company – and a 5,000 mAh battery.
The Honor Note 10, starting from 2,799 yuan (US$410), is smaller in overall size than the Honor Note 8 due to its bezel-less and notch-free screen design, which allows consumers to hold the phone more comfortably, Zhao Ming, Honor’s president, said during the launch ceremony in Beijing on Tuesday.
The Note 10 launch comes one week after global industry research firm Canalys said Huawei had extended its lead in China’s smartphone market, with more than half of its handset sales coming from the Honor brand. Huawei’s two smartphone brands expanded their combined market share to a record 27 per cent in the three months to June, up from 21 per cent during the same period a year ago, marking the biggest share of any smartphone vendor in China since the second quarter of 2011, according to Canalys.
Honor contributed 55 per cent of the group’s entire shipments in the past quarter, up from 33 per cent a year ago, according to the report. Honor, which tends to focus its marketing on the younger generation, competes with other Chinese brands such as Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi in the 1,000-3,000 yuan handset price segment.