Honor Plans Foray Into India PC Market In 2020

Chinese handset maker Honor on Tuesday said it will foray into India PC market, with two laptops built on Windows platform, in the first quarter of 2020. Honor Magic book laptop have chipset of US companies -- Intel and AMD. "We will launch two laptops in India in 2020. We have restarted working with Microsoft. They have licensed our products," Honor President for Overseas marketing and Sales, James Zou told reporters here.

While he did not disclose exact dates for the launch, a company note said that the laptops with AMD processor will be launched globally, including in India, in the first quarter of 2020. Zou said that the company plans to expand product portfolio in India in 2020 which besides personal computers will include launch of a new television on its own operating system Harmony OS, smartwatch and new smartphones starting with Honor 9X that will support storage capacity of 512 gigabyte.

The company is using hardware and software of US companies that have been given exemption to supply their products to Huawei, the parent company of Honor. Honor has not been able to use Google Mobile Services (GMS) suite for its new smartphones due to restrictions imposed on it by the US government and has therefore developed its own suite and also operating system to mitigate impact of the ban. Honor 9X, however, will come with GMS.

Zou said that situation is difficult for the company but it has also opened up opportunity for the company. "In 2020, we will focus on building new partnerships in India. By end of this year, we will launch 24 kits (software tools for app development) that will help developers migrate their app from GMS to HMS. By integrating app on HMS, Indian app developers can have access to one world's biggest market China," Zou said.

The company is also in talks with Nokia and TomTom to bring their map application on HMS. "China lacks Google ecosystem. Many apps are available without GMS code. Building HMS will take time but not impossible. People at the most need 300 app for daily use. We need to focus on daily use apps. It is not difficult," Zou said.

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Huawei, including Honor, was the second largest global smartphone brand in terms of shipment with over 18 per cent market share. However, it is estimated to have around 3 per cent share in India.

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