Huawei honors its pledge to the smartphone mid-market

Despite all the pressures facing Huawei, it has still managed to pay attention to the often-overlooked mid-price smartphone market with the launch of the Honor 20 Series.

Launched in London, the Honor 20 Series promises much for half the price many consumers would expect to pay. €599 for the Honor 20 Pro, 8GB RAM and 256GB Storage, and €499 for the lesser Honor 20, 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, the series is swimming against the tides of market trends; as everyone else shuns the mid-price range, Huawei is embracing it.

“Honor will continue to grow and continue to grow with young people,” said George Zhoa, President of the Honor business unit.

This is perhaps the key for Huawei. Despite all the political turmoil, the anti-China rhetoric and the obsession with charging more for less, the firm is persevering with its Honor brand. It is a brand which is more accessible, more price-accommodating and a brand image more associated with the younger generations. Perhaps this is a lesson learned from the Apple playbook; capture them young and keep them.

There is not necessarily any reason consumers persist with the Apple brand aside from the idea of loyalty. Some might suggest the operating system is more in-tune with their lifestyle, though your correspondent came name countless colleagues, friends and acquaintances who have made the switch the Android and remained content.

The one consistent theme which has remained throughout the Apple journey has been a remarkable attention to crafting a fruitful culture and sense of loyalty. Perhaps this is the reason Huawei is persisting with the allegedly unprofitable mid-price segment.

Irrelevant to the rationale, Huawei has produced a worthy product. Your correspondent hasn’t had a chance to play with the device, but it all looks promising from afar.

A 4000mAh battery, which supposedly lasts all day and gives you 50% power after a 30-minute charge. A pro-grade quad camera to answer all the narcissistic needs which plague Generation Z. The Kirin 980 7nm chip promises 43% faster tap response, 59% faster app launch and 57% faster UI operation. Graphene cooling sheet technology which Huawei claims increases cooling efficiency by 27%. GPU Turbo 3.0, promising frame-per-second rates of 59.69 for the most hardened gamer.

It all sounds very glorious.

The mid-range market might not be the most commercially attractive from a P/L perspective, but it can act as a very effective stepping stone to the more lucrative customers of tomorrow. Many seem to be turned-off by this idea, choosing to break the bank accounts of tomorrow’s critical demographics, but Huawei seemingly believes there is some value in the mid-price range segment.