Huawei Honor 9i at Rs 17,999: Company sees Diwali season as crucial for sales

P. Sanjeev, vice president, sales, Huawei Business Group (Left) told the indianexpress.com that the company has not set sales targets for Honor 9i as of now, but plans to put across one lakh phones in the market initially.

Diwali is around the corner and with hopes of cashing in on the festive season, Huawei’s sub-brand Honor has launched its Honor 9i smartphone with four cameras in India. Priced at Rs 17,999, the mid-budget device gets two cameras on the front and two on the back. P Sanjeev, vice president, sales, Huawei Business Group told the indianexpress.com the company has not set sales targets for Honor 9i as of now, but plans to put across one lakh phones in the market initially.

“We already have a huge team. We have about 30,000 odd shops across India, and over 400 distributors so the presence is there. Now we need to catch up with Diwali and this is a critical opportunity for us. The whole thought process behind launching Honor 9i around this time is to encash the festival time and the partnership with Flipkart will definitely help us,” he said.

“We’ll maybe bring in a lakh phones initially and put it across in the market,” he added.

Honor is not new to the dual camera category. In fact, Huawei was among one of the first smartphone makers to bring Leica-branded dual rear cameras in its last year’s flagship P9. As for Honor 8 Pro, Sanjeev didn’t disclose the sales numbers, though he insists the Honor is in second position in India for the Rs 25,000 to Rs 30,000 segment.

Honor made its debut in India in 2013, which is around the same time as Xiaomi entered in the country. When asked where Honor stands in terms of market share in India, he pointed out the company is not competing for market share right now. “For quick market share you need to crash the price as people understand only specifications on paper, which are merely marketing gimmicks. For a company like us, that’s actually globally number two and has so much R&D capabilities, we aren’t really in a hurry to build that low value segment, where we’re not actually enriching or upgrading our devices,” explained Sanjeev.

Admitting that Honor doesn’t have a lot of products in the sub-Rs 10,000 price segment in India, he said the company is currently focusing on the Rs 10,000 – Rs 15,000 category.

Priced at Rs 17,999, Honor 9i gets two cameras on the front and two on the back.

“In India, price-segment below Rs 10,000 is almost 70 per cent of the market, and this is not somewhere we have too many products. It is because you can’t demonstrate innovation, you can’t do trendsetting, and can’t give best features in that price segment. Therefore, we are concentrating on the most valued segments, which includes that from Rs 10,000-Rs 15,000 and also flagship segment,” the vice president of Huawei’s Business Group explained.

Sanjeev insists with every product, the company is targeting a price segment and trying to lead it. Honor is present in 74 countries as of now, while Huawei has presence is more than 170 countries across the world. The go-ahead strategy for Honor is to connect with the youth in India by giving them features like a premium design, good cameras etc in a smartphone at an affordable price.

“We’re building the portfolio on Honor series in India and the brand has already connected to Indian consumers pretty well, especially youth, as an e-brand. Huawei, on the other hand, is all about high-technology, and premium. You think about cost design, Leica, etc and that’s when Huawei comes to mind. With Honor, the motto is technology, but affordable,” he said.

“We’re attacking segment by segment. Globally, we have 13 per cent market share in all smartphones across all categories and we’d like to see that in India as well,” he pointed out.

Disclaimer: The author was in Goa for the Honor 9i launch at invite of Huawei India.