Honor swamped with orders for 8X mid-range smartphone

Huawei’s sub-brand aims to become No 3 vendor in UAE by next year

Honor has already booked more than 3,500 preorders for its mid-range smartphone launch — 8X — at Gitex, a company official said.

Chris Sunbaigong, president of Honor Middle East and Africa, told Gulf News that the pre-booking started from September 25 and the UAE got more than 10,000 units for the launch as the emirate became the second country to launch the device after China.

Shifting stocks from China does not happen within days as the device is expected to be sold soon, he said. The 6.5-inch full-view display screen device is powered by octa-core Huawei Kirin 710 chipset with Artificial Intelligence capabilities, and sporting 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage capacity.

The dual cameras on the rear (16MP and 2MP) and 16MP selfie on the front also support AI capabilities. It is priced at Dh999.

Sunbaigong said that the device supports three card slots — two SIM cards and a microSD card with a storage capacity of up to 400GB.

“Our aim is to become the third largest vendor in the region by 2020. Only three big players will occupy more than 70 per cent of the market at that time. In the UAE, we can become the third-largest by next year from the current fourth position,” he said.

Huawei’s sub-brand is aiming to achieve a threefold increase in smartphone sales in the Middle East to around three million units compared to one million last year.