Honor to focus on more budget phones for India

By Aparajita Gupta

London, Dec 6 (IANS) Riding high on the Honor 7X launch in India, the company is also planning to bring in more sub-Rs 10,000 phones next year, George Zhao, Global President, Honor, said here on Wednesday.

"In three years, we want to be number one in India. We will launch more budget phones or sub-Rs 10,000 phones in India next year," Zhao told reporters in an interaction here.

By sub-Rs 10,000, the company referred to its phones like "Honor Bee" that were earlier launched in India.

The company, that has already launched seven-eight phones in India in 2017, would like to launch a similar number of devices in 2018 as well.

"We want to launch competitive and unbeatable product in India," Zhao added.

Zhao said Honor should be the "killer or king in the sector."

Talking about Honor 7X that was launched on Tuesday and Honor View 10 that will be launched in January 8, Zhao said both will be manufactured in India.

Regarding View 10, other officials from the company said it will be priced "attractively for the Indian market".

"India is our special market. Online market in India is a very very important churner," they added.

The company officials said with the average age of the consumers in India below 30 years, it thought of bringing Honor handsets instead of Huawei.

Indian has more than 40 per cent online penetration, the officials said, adding that "we are focused more on the consumers and not only on channels."

Asked about the confusion between V-series and View series, the officials clarified that the handsets which were called V-series earlier will be upgraded to 'View' in the future, subsequent to the launch of View 10.

(Aparajita Gupta is in London at Honor's invitation. She can be contacted at aparajita.g@ians.in)