A Chinese group is set to launch Honor, the former Huawei branded smartphone in Australia, having already opened an office above Chatswood railway station in Sydney close to the Huawei offices.
Honor was started by banned Company Huawei who when retailers around the world were stripping Huawei branded and other Huawei linked smartphones from their shjelves, sold the brand to a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) controlled state-owned enterprise controlled by the municipal government of Shenzhen.
ChannelNews has been told, that the brand has already been pitched to retailers and carriers in Australia.
One distributor who was approached to take the brand having been successful in the past in the mobile market claimed that basically Honor was simply offering a bunch of smartphones for a cheap price. “The distributor had to take the risk on everything including funding marketing and sales and taking the risk on warranty and returns. All you got was all the risk and a questionable Chinese brand that has little chance of success in Australia”.
Chinese smartphone brand Realme and Vivo which are owned by BBK Electronics the owners of Oppo failed to get off the ground in Australia, the distributor was OMC Electronics who are wallowing in debt despite one of the directors paying $20.5M for a house in Sydney recently.
During a Q&A panel last week, President of Honor EU Tony Ran teased that the Honor 90 Pro’s international release could be part of the company’s “next generation” of devices.
Australia the UE and the UK are believed to be among the Countries being scheduled.
Currently, the Honor 90 Pro is only available in China, which wouldn’t have seemed out of place in previous years but with Honor looking to make more of an inroad on the international scene has seen Australia emerge as a key market for the brand to target.
The decision to withhold the higher-end handset could be down to concerns around market saturation and retailers being reluctant to take on the brand.
The Chinese business has already released the Honor Magic 5 Pro and Magic 5 Lite earlier this year into foreign markets.
At one stage US Republican senators led by Marco Rubio called on the Biden administration to blacklist Honor, describing the firm as a threat to national security.
Rubio described Honor as essentially an “arm” of the Chinese government.
The Australian Federal Government has not said whether they will ban the brand in Australia.
When Huawei sold the brand in 20220, to the Chinese State Government, several insiders claimed that Huawei was still the real owner and that they were still receiving revenue from sales.
This split allowed Honor to enter partnerships with MediaTek, Qualcomm, and many others, something it could not do when the business was 100% owned by banned Company Huawei.
Honor’s CEO George Zhao Ming claims that the company is no longer constrained by the sanctions that have roadblocked Huawei in markets such as Australia where Huawei was banned from building a 5G network. Huawei smartphones were also pulled from shelves.
This is despite Telstra still cuddling up to another banned Company ZTE who has major contracts for the supply of Telstra branded smartphones that are 100% made by ZTE who the US Government has banned because of security risks.
