• Huawei has a number of smart devices in its product lineup, which includes TVs in selected regions.
• While the company is contemplating bringing them to South Africa, it does not plan to do so this year.
• We spoke to Huawei’s Akhram Mohamed about why this is the case.

Last week Huawei hosted its local first consumer-focused event, with the new Mate 50 Pro launched in the country. The company also unveiled a new residential backup power system in the form of Power-M. As such, the amount of smart devices made by the company runs a fairly wide gamut, but not all of them are made available outside of its native China, which brings us to smart TVs.

During the first few months of its US sanctions, which are still ongoing, Huawei debuted some smart TVs under its Honor sub-brand. At the time there were murmurings that those Honor TVs would find their way to our shores, but nothing tangible materialised.

With Huawei looking to position itself as a smart devices provider, as more notebooks, tablets, gaming PC displays, and office printers launch locally, the prospect of smart TVs has come up once again.

To gain a bit more clarity on whether such offerings could indeed land in SA, we spoke with Huawei’s Akhram Mohamed, VP of Operations for South Africa, at the Mate 50 Pro launch.

Unfortunately, those keen on picking up a Huawei smart TV probably won’t be able to do so in 2023, Mohamed confirmed.

“It is not due to a lack of willingness to bring them to South Africa, but purely the price points we can offer them on, which is impacted by high import costs in the form of duties on these types of products” the VP explained,” the VP explained.

For the company, it looks like the affordability for its customers will play a critical role when it comes to bringing any new devices into the country, not just smart TVs.

“Like we did for the PC segment, we had to be able to understand the channel, the market, and who the competitors were. From there we were able to offer a compelling product, that is able to stand up against the others in the market, as a result I PC’s have proven to be very successful locally,” noted Mohamed.

“We believe our hardware, smart screens, and TVs can do that [be competitive] as a product, but we have to factor in the costs and bring in great products at a price that is fair to our consumers,” he continued.

Mohamed was not able to confirm precisely when Huawei smart TVs can be made available locally, but for now, cost is simply a factor the company cannot ignore in the interim.

[Image – Photo by Ajeet Mestry on Unsplash]