Category: Huawei

Late yesterday, Google and Huawei both announced an agreement where by the Chinese manufacture will start integrating the RCS-powered Android Messages app into their upcoming devices.  The move means that Huawei will abandon their current messaging app in favor of Google’s for a richer user experience.

With Android Messages and RCS messaging, HUAWEI devices will offer a rich native messaging and communications experience. Features such as texting over WiFi, rich media sharing, group chats, and typing indicators will now be a default part of the device. Messages from businesses will also be upgraded on HUAWEI’s devices through RCS business messaging from Google.

Huawei also announced that they will be integrating with Google Duo for video calls directly from Messages via carrier’s ViLTE services.

At CES 2018, Huawei has announced that the Honor View 10 will be making its way to the United States in 2018.  The View 10 is currently Honor’s flagship device and will available in Europe and Asia starting today.  While a timeline wasn’t given on when the phone will hit the US, it appears to be in reasonably short order based on rumors.

For those that may not know the specs of the Honor View 10, they are pretty impressive.  The phone sports a 5.99″ IPS FHD display with a 18:9 ratio.  It is powered by Huawei’s Kirin 970 SoC, has up to 6GB of RAM and up to 128GB of storage.  It has dual rear cameras of 16MP and 20MP while the selfie camera is a 13MP shooter.  All of this is powered by a 3750mAh battery.

2017 is quickly shaping up to be the year of Huawei.  The Chinese company has reported that in the first three quarters of this year, they have shipped over 100 million phones.  That is a 19% year-on-year increase which by any measure is impressive.

That growth has also raised the company’s revenue by some 30% through September 2017.

Huawei has cemented their claim to the number two phone brand in the world with these figures.  Back in the summer, the company passed Apple to take the #2 position behind Samsung and they are closing the gap to the top spot – but it is a big gap.

They company has a wide portfolio of devices in the market, be it their recently announced flagship Mate 10 device or their more entry and mid-market devices under the Honor brand.  The company is pushing in all of the right areas with their software development too with Artificial Intelligence deeply embedded in the company’s Android build, EMUI 8.0.

In the ever increasingly crowded world of 2-in-1 Windows 10 PCs, there seems to be a large gap between the have’s and the have not’s.  The have’s are the Microsoft Surface Pro devices of the world with top-end specs but equally, have an impressive price tags.

The have not’s are the $200-300 devices with subpar displays that are usually around 10″, powered by Atom processor and have 64GB or maybe 128GB if you are lucky.

The problem is the gap between $300 and $1200+ dollars.  There are not a lot of choices and the choices that are there generally are lacking in some area.  Huawei, for their part, is trying to fill the gap.

The Huawei Matebook was released last year and it remains one of the best 2-in-1 Windows 10 hybrid devices on the market.  Powered by the Intel m series processors with ample RAM and storage, the Matebook has a lot going for it and is one to consider, as I did, when you are looking for one of these style of devices.  The Matebook isn’t perfect as I’ll cover in this review but it is certainly the solid foundation that Huawei needs in order to penetrate the Windows 10 PC market here in the US and globally.

Huawei continues to make huge strides in the smartphone market and their surge over the course of 2017 continues.  Counterpoint, a global technology research firm, has just released their latest Market Pulse for July 2017.  In that report, the Chinese manufacture has jumped over Apple to take the number two position in global smartphone sales percentage.  Perhaps even more impressive in this is the fact that they made this jump without a “hero” device like Apple’s iPhone 7 or Samsung’s Galaxy S8.

Samsung is by far the leader in smartphone sales percentage globally with just over 20%.

The July report from Counterpoint is the fifth consecutive month of gains in market share by Huawei and they have distanced themselves from others in the highly competitive Chinese manufacturing market.  Still, as the report points out, the risk to Huawei is their over dependence of their home market and expansion into Europe and North America will need to happen for them to hold on to that 2nd place solidly.

With shipments of 21 million phones in the first quarter of 2017, Huawei has claimed the top sales position in China according to a report from Canalys.  The sales and positive response to the new P10, P10 Plus and Mate 9 from the company bolstered them and allowed them to get to the top.  It wasn’t, however, a big margin of victory if you will.  Oppo, who was number one, dropped to second with 20 million units sold while third place went to Vivo.  They shipped 17 million units in the quarter.  The top three therefore shipped 57 million of the 114 million smartphones that were shipped in the quarter, claiming 50% of the market between them.

That 114 million units shipped in Q1 is an increase of 9% over the same period last year.