Honor Aims $2.3 Billion Revenue From Wearables Next Year, Bullish on India

Chinese smartphone maker Honor, which considers India a big market for its products, is aiming to make $2.3 billion (roughly Rs. 16,500 crores) globally by selling wearables next year, a top company executive has said. The company will initially be focussing on releasing wearables devices, not smart TV models.

"India is a huge market for Honor. In terms of launching smart devices, right now the company is focused on wearables because the import duty on them is less while on AI screens or smart TVs the duties are extremely high," Daniel Tan, Vice President of Honor Smart Life, told IANS here.

"To overcome this challenge, we would work on establishing our own manufacturing unit or assembling unit for AI devices in India," he added.

Several smartphone manufacturers have already started selling their smart TVs in India including Xiaomi and OnePlus, while Nokia is planning to launch its smart TVs in India in partnership with Flipkart on December 5.

"We are less concentrating on introducing AI screens right now in India but we will definitely launch our other products specially recently launched laptops in our domestic market," Tan noted.

"For smart TVs it will take some time as we need to work with local content providers for our TVs," the executive added.

The focus now is on enabling millennials across the world to lead their life with smart as well as secure IoT (Internet of Things) devices, where the users data are completely secure, so that users would accept their products with open arms, said Honor, which is a sub-brand of tech giant Huawei.

As the concern related to personal data has increased over a period of time, it is the task of the companies to make sure that the data of users are safe and we are completely focused on the very same, Tan said.

"Data is something which is very sensitive and there are international regulations related to user data and no brand is allowed or rather should assess their user data. We as a tech giant are more focused on making our end customer rely on us when it comes to their personal data.

"We are committed not to share anything related to data to anyone, including government, until and unless it is related to international criminal," Tan said.

With Internet-connected devices, the firm is focused on wearable devices specially smartwatch more because of its demand.

"In terms of Internet connected devices the wearable market is growing a very fast rate and soon the traditional watches will be outdated. The company is looking forward to take on watch makers like Rolex because with these watches the customers buy luxury, but with smartwatches they buy usage," he added.

Honor, which is aiming to dominate the wearable segment of the smart devices, said it is also targeting $5.5 billion by 2022 globally from this segment.