Dubai: Huawei has launched a limited edition Porsche Design Mate 9 smartphone aimed at helping the company narrow the regional lead held by Samsung and Apple.
David Wang, UAE manager at the Huawei Consumer Business Group, told Gulf News after the launch on late on Tuesday that only 10,000 units are available globally and the device is available only in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
He said that Huawei has already sold 300 units and the next shipment of 150 units is expected to be available soon.
The third-largest smartphone manufacturer has already launched its Mate 9 phone last year and the expensive edition of Porsche device is targeted at high-net-worth individuals.
Wang said the smartphone combines the collaboration between Porsche Design’s signature brand aesthetic and Huawei’s mobile engineering expertise.
The last time Porsche had teamed up for a smartphone was with BlackBerry for the P9981, P9982 and P9983 models.
Even though the normal Mate 9 had a 5.9-inch screen, the Porsche design has a 5.5 inch curved AMOLED 2K (2,560 x 1,440-pixel) display and is powered by 2.4GHz octa-core home-grown processor and coupled with 6GB of RAM and 256GB of storage capacity.
It houses Leica’s second-generation dual-lens technology with 12MP colour and 20MP monochrome cameras in the rear and an 8MP camera in the front.
Wang said the 4000mAh battery is sufficient for two days of use and can give 58 per cent of charge in 30 minutes through super charging technology. It is priced at Dh5,250.
Huawei has named etisalat as the main distributor for the device and the telecom operator is offering subscribers the device for as low as Dh229 with flexible smart pay plans for two years.
Wang said with the Porsche collaboration, the company wants to put the fast element of the Porsche car inside the phone.
Huawei, which has a market share of more than 9 per cent, wants to surpass Apple and become the second largest brand within a year or two, Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei’s consumer business group, said at Las Vegas CES 2017 show.
Huawei sold 139 million units globally in 2016 compared to 108 million in 2015.
An industry expert said that with the battery issues on Apple and Samsung devices, the likely beneficiary is Huawei.
Daniel Gleeson, senior analyst for consumer technology at Ovum, said that Huawei will get closer to second-ranked Apple, but that is mainly due to Apple not growing its iPhone sales.
Apple and Huawei fundamentally compete in different price brackets, so, he said the growth of one should not have a direct impact on the other.
“While Huawei has invested a lot in its brand over the last few years, the very high end of the market is almost exclusively dominated by Apple and Samsung. That will take a long time for Huawei to crack into,” he said.
