Huawei plots China smartphone revival with cell operating program up grade

Huawei on Friday announced the newest model of its cellular functioning method HarmonyOS 4 and an improved A.I assistant, as the embattled big ramps up efforts to re-set up toughness for its smartphone company.

The Shenzhen-dependent telecoms company is striving to recovery from U.S. sanctions courting again to 2019, which slice it off from key systems this kind of as semiconductors, like 5G chips and application. The transfer crippled its smartphone enterprise globally, demoting it from once being the range one particular player.

American limitations minimize Huawei off from Google’s Android cell functioning technique, which wrecked Huawei’s smartphone company exterior of China.

In 2019, Huawei released its have working program called HarmonyOS, in a bid to change Android. The organization has been producing new variations of the program at any time given that, with an eye to get back some marketplace share in smartphones.

The Friday launch of HarmonyOS 4 highlights the company’s ambition to get back toughness for its smartphone business enterprise.

“Huawei’s flagship smartphones are generating a comeback,” said Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei’s shopper enterprise and intelligent automotive option business enterprise groups, for the duration of the Huawei Developer Conference 2023 on Friday.

Considering that 2019, Huawei has concentrated on making an attempt to get back market share in China, finding some results. Huawei’s market share jumped to 13% in China in the 2nd quarter of the yr, up from 7.3% through the exact time period of 2022. The company’s smartphone shipments grew by 76% 12 months-on-calendar year.

Huawei’s technique has become extra refined, as it appears to be like to contend in the top quality segment of the smartphone current market, fairly than throughout all sectors.

“Huawei’s smartphones took the second spot in the significant-close section. So we are producing a comeback with vengeance,” reported Yu.

In the section of telephones priced more than $600 in China, Huawei’s share jumped to 18.4% in the 2nd quarter compared to 6.7% in the exact time period in 2022, according to IDC.

Huawei’s higher-finish aim would make perception, as Chinese customers are on normal keen to spend additional for smartphones. The organization unveiled its Mate X3 foldable this calendar year, and that system, alongside with the flagship P60, served the business enhance its high quality segment share.

Inspite of being slash off from critical foreign chips, Huawei programs to re-enter the 5G smartphone market by the stop of this calendar year, according to Reuters. The information company claimed that Huawei should really be in a position to procure 5G chips domestically.

5G refers to upcoming-era cellular internet technology. Most significant-end telephones are in a position to link to 5G networks, which guarantee tremendous-rapidly web speeds. Huawei’s flagship units have been lacking this element mainly because of U.S. sanctions.

“It totally makes sense for Huawei to focus on the high quality segment. It is really not only that the superior-end segment was much more resilient in the gloomy Chinese current market, but Huawei could also leverage its top quality model title in China, which other Chinese sellers were being nevertheless striving for,” Will Wong, research analyst at IDC, explained to CNBC.

“In addition, premium items could perhaps generate far more favorable profits and profitability.”

Part of Huawei’s substantial-conclusion approach revolves all-around HarmonyOS, an running technique it states is developed for smartphones and other gadgets like wearables and TVs. The enterprise aims to develop unified software package throughout various buyer electronics types, much like Apple.

The Chinese tech big mentioned that it will convey “a HarmonyOS with even extra intelligent and personalized working experience.” HarmonyOS currently runs on more than 700 million gadgets, such as smartphones, watches and tablets, the enterprise stated.

Huawei reported that the new model of Huawei’s AI voice assistant Celia, which presents assistant features on intelligent devices, has been trained with Huawei’s Pangu AI model to boost efficiency in life and at perform. In July, Huawei launched Pangu 3., as it seeks to capitalize on the AI boom and ChatGPT frenzy.

At the very least 200 million mobile telephone end users interact with Celia each month, explained Huawei.

“You can interact with Celia by not just voice but also texts, photos, files and so on. You can also sort to interact with Celia if it’s not the appropriate time to chat. Dialogues among buyers and Celia can be much more organic and intuitive,” stated Jia Yongli, director of customer business enterprise at Huawei.

Celia can also perform a assortment of tasks, this sort of as creating summaries, translation, composing email messages and formal files, stated Jia.

Huawei also stated that a new set of attributes will be obtainable to invited people in late August.

Nonetheless, Huawei’s smartphone rejuvenation is possible to be confined to China, which accounted for 89% of its handset shipments in the 2nd quarter, according to IDC.

Which is mainly because Huawei’s phones continue to absence 5G and HarmonyOS would not have the important applications, this kind of as Google, persons outside of China are employed to using.

“It really is not an straightforward process to get back floor overseas,” Wong explained, suggesting lots of consumers have switched to other cellular phone models owing to Huawei’s deficiency of vital characteristics.

“It would take time for Huawei to get the people switched again even if it could handle the critical suffering details of its products in the overseas market place now.”