Honor GCC’s country manager shares company’s business strategy for 2023

In terms of quality, service, technology and innovation, what is Honor’s focus this year?
Quality: Honor has always been a brand that has emphasised ensuring that the quality of its products speaks for itself. With a continuous eye on innovation, each of our products are made with different needs in mind, but all with the same care and attention to quality to ensure years of use and durability. To ensure product quality consistency, we invest resources in key customised components, models, and manufacturing factories and independently develops and uses automated equipment and procedures. This enables us to achieve “smart manufacturing” and high quality and consistency across its entire product line.

Service: We are establishing a retail+ service experience centre this year to serve our consumers better. Honor will continue to push the boundaries of customer service, delivering a human-centric experience that surpasses customer expectations and empowers users to elevate their lives through technology.

Technology and innovation: With product innovation as our core value, we continue to invest heavily in R&D capabilities to support its entire portfolio of smartphones and other smart devices, aspiring to achieve the perfect balance between cutting-edge technology and superb user experiences.

Tell us more about the features of Honor X9a.
Making our technological innovations more accessible, the Honor X9a delivers significant breakthroughs in the display, design, battery, camera, and overall user experience.

Packed with a 6.67-inch AMOLED curved display, the smartphone brings users a large screen with a screen-to-body ratio of 93 per cent, guaranteeing an immersive viewing experience for all content types. Furthermore, it supports a resolution of 2400×1080 pixels, a colour depth of 1.07 billion colours and a display brightness of up to 800 nits.

Slim and lightweight, the Honor X9a measures 7.9mm thin and 175g in weight while packing a raft of premium design features, including a symmetrical circular camera layout.

The Honor X9a comes with a 64MP ultra-clear primary camera, a 5MP wide-angle camera and a 2MP macro camera. In addition, the front camera has been upgraded to 16MP.

Read: Honor X9a launches in the UAE; here’s what’s on offer

Meanwhile, on a single full charge, the smartphone supports up to two days of daily use for uninterrupted work, play and entertainment.

What do you find most exciting about this new line-up? What is your sales forecast for the series?
As the latest member of our X series line-up, the Honor X9a offers a compelling choice for consumers looking for an affordable smartphone with an innovative display. Thanks to its features and competitive price point, we are confident in the X series’ performance in markets. With the Honor X9a, we aim to become the Top 2 in the price range of Dhs1000 to Dhs1300.

How are your addressing durability concerns with HonorX9a? Why should consumers choose this smartphone?
Undergoing two tempering processes, the Honor X9a’s display glass, which is equipped with an industry-leading thickness of 0.65mm, has been designed to withstand accidental drops on marble from heights of up to 1m.

The smartphone has gone through a series of rigorous tests across various scenarios, ranging from environmental tests, mechanical stress tests, durability tests, performance tests, software tests, and the list can go on. However, the one set of tests that caught our attention was the series of drop tests that were performed on Honor X9a.

To check the physical endurance of the smartphone, we dropped the device on the marble floor front, a height of 1m, on marble and concrete floors without being cracked. Based on our testing, the Honor X9a can withstand drops from users’ pockets onto hard surfaces from a height of 1m without breaking.

Share with us your business strategy for the year ahead.
With a strategic focus on innovation, quality and service, we are dedicated to developing forward-looking technology that empowers people worldwide to go beyond.

Talking about the IoT ecosystem, our IoT strategy focuses on smartphones as the core of the platform and developing a suite of other connected products such as laptops, smart screens, tablets, wearables, TWS Stereo headphones, and routers that seamlessly connect to create a more intelligent world for everyone. Our IoT products, like PC, wearables and audio products, are already available in our markets.

Meanwhile, we are thrilled to introduce our next-generation foldable flagship, the Honor Magic Vs, which packs revolutionary innovations and exceptional user experience into an elegant and stylish design. The Honor Magic Vs will be our first foldable flagship to debut in overseas markets. We are confident that it will deliver huge advancements, transforming how people worldwide use their smartphones.

The high-end premium product line, Honor N-Series, will set new industry standards with its aesthetic design and superior user experience. This year, we are planning to position the N-Series as the top line-up among its competitors with its iconic design, powerful performance, and superior camera capabilities.

Mafeijian (Mr. House) is the GCC country manager at Honor