Huawei spin-off Honor to launch new smartphones outside China with Google Mobile Services
- The international edition of Honor’s new flagship smartphones will come with Google’s software for the first time since the brand was diverted by Huawei
- US trade sanctions have forced Huawei to release its latest flagship smartphones without 5G support
Honor, previously the budget smartphone unit of Huawei Technologies Co, will soon launch new flagship handsets outside China with Google apps, breathing new life to the brand since US sanctions barred its former parent from selling phones pre-installed with the American giant’s software.
“Honor has succeeded in confirming cooperation with a number of supplier partners in the early stage. #HONOR50 series will be equipped with Google Mobile Services, which will provide a more comprehensive application environment and extraordinary mobile experience to our customers,” the Shenzhen-based company tweeted on Monday.
The resumed partnership will give Honor access to Google’s software bundle, which includes widely used apps such as Google Maps, Gmail, YouTube and, most critically, the Google Play store, which houses hundreds of thousands of apps for users to download. The Honor 50 series, which opened for pre-orders in China in June, is expected to arrive in some European markets this month, followed by other countries at a later date.
Honor had stopped launching smartphones with Google apps and services after the previous Trump administration denied Huawei access to American technology two years ago.
To shield Honor from the impact of US restrictions, Huawei sold the brand last November to a consortium of more than 30 dealers and agents, which includes appliance and electronics retailer Suning and several state-owned investment firms in the southern Chinese tech hub of Shenzhen.
Honor has also shied away from endorsing Huawei’s home-grown operating system HarmonyOS. In June, Zhao said during the Honor 50 launch event in China that the company will continue to use Google’s Android on its new phones, citing consumer preference for the US operating system.
While the separation from Huawei has helped Honor break free of sanctions, momentum has been building in the US to block the spin-off brand from accessing American technologies.
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US sanctions have crippled Huawei’s smartphone business, whose global market share dropped to 26 per cent in the second quarter this year from 57 per cent a year ago, according to research firm Canalys. In China, Huawei fell out of the country’s top five smartphone vendor shipment rankings for the first time in over seven years.
Meanwhile, Honor has been gaining ground in China, having shipped 6.9 million smartphones in the second quarter – a 40 per cent growth from the previous three months – propelling it to No 5 among the country’s most popular smartphone brands.
