Honor smartphone brand targets younger customers

Honor, one of Huawei Technologies Co Ltd's twin signature smartphone brands, is looking to develop more high-tech products at affordable prices to lure more young consumers.

The brand aims to create products that offer fashionable technology and design to attract more younger consumers worldwide, said Zhao Ming, president of Honor, on Wednesday.

"It is the current trend that consumers are willing to pay out for superior products. That's why we insist on bolstering our technologies while controlling the price," he said.

Zhao's comments came just as Honor unveiled its latest smartphones in China. Analysts saw the move as the brand's accelerated effort to meet rising demand from a large customer group pursuing personalized products.

"Honor is increasingly subdividing more consumer niches in a bid to suit increasingly diversified demand," said Li Junhui, senior research fellow of the Center for Intellectual Property Rights Studies at the China University of Political Science and Law.

"The newly unveiled series, for example, is very likely to target incoming university freshmen, especially those keen to watch videos and play games on their mobile phones," Li said.

The new devices, dubbed the Honor 8X and 8X Max, are modestly priced, starting from 1,399 yuan ($204). They feature a large display, of which the screen-to-body ratio is 90 percent, and efficient data-processing capabilities. All of the models' features are "perfect" for playing resource-heavy games, according to the company.

Honor, created in 2013 to complement the Huawei brand, focuses primarily on its target audience of millennials and people pursuing young fashionable lifestyles. It sold over 26 million smartphones in the first half of the year, with revenue hitting 37.8 billion yuan.

As the domestic smartphone market becomes increasingly saturated, the Chinese brand is also stepping up its presence in overseas markets, gaining momentum abroad in the past few months.

In India, Honor has become the fastest-growing smartphone vendor, with growth soaring 300 percent year-on-year in sales volume and revenue during the first half of this year.

"Honor's smartphone sales in the overseas market are expected to grow by 150 percent this year," Zhao said, adding he is confident the brand will maintain sound and stable growth for the whole of 2018.

He said the Chinese brand is also expanding into emerging markets such as Egypt, the Philippines and Latin America for more growth drivers.