Honor hopes for spot in the global top five

Honor, a smartphone brand of Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, aims to become one of the world's top five smartphone brands in three years, after it gained wide popularity among young Chinese consumers.

The move is part of Huawei's broad push to outcompete Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd in the global smartphone market.

Zhao Ming, president of Honor, said on Thursday: "We aim to increase the contribution of Honor's overseas revenue to total revenue from 15 percent in 2017 to 50 percent by 2020."

The Honor brand was created by Huawei four years ago to target young consumers chiefly via e-commerce retail channels. It is designed to complement the Huawei-branded smartphones which cater to business professionals.

According to Zhao, Honor sold 49.7 million smartphones in China from January to November this year. The market performance helped it post 71.6 billion yuan ($10.9 billion) in revenue, and outdo its arch-rival Xiaomi Corp.

"We will ramp up resources to target the United States and Europe," Zhao said, without disclosing the specific investment figures.

The ambitious plan came after Huawei said last year it aimed to beat Apple and Samsung in five years. The Shenzhen-based company is currently the world's third-largest smartphone vendor.

According to data from German market research company Gfk., Honor was already the third-largest smartphone brand in Russia and Finland by market share in the first 10 months of this year.

Last year, it also made its official debut in the US, a high-end market that Chinese smartphone brands have long sought but few have cracked, with its Honor 8 handset targeting local young consumers.

Xiang Ligang, a smartphone expert and CEO of the telecom industry website Cctime, said Honor has already secured its position as the most popular smartphone brand among young Chinese consumers who have grown up with the internet.

"Now it is high time for Honor to leverage such experience in overseas markets. But it will face competition from Chinese peer Xiaomi in both product quality, price and retail strategies," Xiang said.

In the third quarter of this year, Xiaomi caught up with Samsung to become the largest smartphone brand in India, the fastest-growing major smartphone market.