At the international level, you would presume that the immediate competitor for Apple’s iPhone would be Samsung’s flagships. However, Huawei has openly announced that the company will launch its own smartphone around the same time as Apple’s iPhone 8 launch this year.
The smartphone, the Huawei Mate 10, will sport a few features to match the upcoming iPhone.
Among the features highlighted, are a bezel-free full screen display; longer battery life and also improved photography tools. The processor is likely to be Huawei’s in-house Kirin 970 chipset built on 10nm architecture.
The official communication has not disclosed any clocking speed or the precise processing power; it is therefore not feasible to assess its capability compared to smartphones like LG 6 or Samsung S8.
There is also expectation that the new chipset will support AI functionality, which is important if the Huawei Mate 10 has to compete with the iPhone 8.
On the battery front, the only information let out is that it will have a longer life and also that the quick charging facility will be provided. Analysts therefore expect that there would be USB Type-C connectivity to facilitate this.
Similarly, on the photography and imaging front, it is already public knowledge that Huawei has entered into an agreement with Leica, a German firm and is trying to sharpen its capabilities in offering better sensors and other image editing related technologies to their smartphone customers.
There are other factors related to this development of Huawei planning to launch a high-end smartphone at this juncture.
The first issue dogging the firm is that it has clocked in a poorer performance, both in terms of number of units sold and revenue generated in the first half of 2017 and it needs to do something extraordinary to win back the momentum going into the second half.
The company has also admitted that they have realized that their low-end mobiles have failed to yield the company adequate profits and many such low-end phones are even being withdrawn.
Lastly, the predecessors to this phone, the Huawei Mate 8 and 9 were actually launched in the month of November in the respective years.
The company feels it therefore missed the opportunity and this year, they would like to time the release of the Huawei Mate 10 to match the iPhone 8 launch. But the rest of the details such as pricing are yet to come out.