Huawei has faced its fair share of challenges in the Indian smartphone market. It was reported earlier this year that the company had a meager 1.4% volume market share at the end of Q1 2017, which some analysts attribute to its strategy of targeting high-end buyers in a country where the most popular devices are relatively inexpensive. To help turn things around, Huawei brought its affordable Honor 6X to India and partnered with electronics manufacturer Flex Telecom to produce phones at a plant in Chennai. Now, in an interview with IANS, Honor Global President George Zhao confirmed that the next Honor device, the Honor 7X will launch in India in December.
The Honor 7X has a 5.93-inch Full HD+ display with an 18:9 aspect ratio, dual cameras, a 3,340mAh battery, and Huawei’s octa-core Kirin 659 system-on-chip paired with 4GB of RAM. It comes in 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB storage configurations, the cheapest of which starts at CNY 1,299 (roughly $195.79).
“We will launch Honor 7X in December at such a price that it will have no competitor in [the mid-range] segment,” Mr. Zhao told a group of journalists in Chendgu, China, adding that “cutting edge technology” and “unbeatable prices” will help the Honor 7X stand out in a crowded field. “We have the capability to out-compete other dominating players in the Indian smartphone market in terms of quality, but our marketing efforts need to improve.”
To that end, Honor will mark the Honor 7X’s debut with exclusive demo shops and online advertisements. Currently, Honor has a presence in 73 countries, but spends only 3 percent of its revenue on promotion.
Honor has plenty of incentive to invest in the Indian subcontinent. According to an October 2017 Canalys report, India recently overtook the US to become the second-largest smartphone market in the world. Samsung leads the way in terms of sales, but Chinese smartphone makers including Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, and Lenovo have spearheaded the effort to knock it off its perch.
“Honor shipped 98.8 percent more devices in 2017 than in 2016. But in India, we need strengthen offline channels,” Zhao said.
Via: India Times
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