Earlier this month Honor held a launch event for the Honor 90 series for the Middle East and Africa region, which you can see the highlights of in the video below.

In the coming weeks the new smartphone is expected to launch in South Africa too, but with more Chinese phone brands operating locally than ever before, Honor’s latest SA relaunch needs to be successful.

To unpack how this relaunch, which is the third by our count, will be different, we spoke with Honor’s regional director for MEA Daniel Wang at the aforementioned launch event.

Long-term thinking

Back in 2021 Honor announced that it would be moving away from Huawei as a sub-brand and venturing out on its own, starting with the Honor 50. That phone launched locally to little revelry, but in the following months Honor has been slowly releasing more and more options into the South African makret, with the latest we encountered being the solid x9a.

With the impending launch of the Honor 90, it appears as if the brand is preparing to ratchet efforts up a couple more notches, and next year there is the prospect of foldables landing on our shores too.

But is it enough to bring products into the country? Xiaomi for example also has a presence, and has held launch events too, but its stake in SA does not compare to the likes of OPPO, which has thrown more weight behind its efforts.

The same may be needed for Honor too, especially if it wants its latest SA relaunch to succeed.

Past attempts have failed for a number of reasons. The first we can remember was when Honor was an ecommerce-only brand, but that launch happened at a time when SA consumers still preferred in-person experiences. The second launch followed shortly thereafter, but at the time, Honor was always lost behind Huawei’s massive shadow.

Now that it is free from those “limitations”, will things be any different this time around?

According to Wang it will be, and to showcase its sincerity, the regional director notes that in the coming months and years, local job creation will be a key focus for the company.

“On this occasion I want to highlight how Honor is different to other Chinese brands. Compared to other brands, Honor South Africa has set up offices in the country, and that means that Honor is looking to do long-term business in South Africa. This is different to other Chinese brands, which use distributors,” explained Wang.

“Honor has a plan to recruit local employees with a real focus on supporting the society. In the long-term we will consider investing some of our business in South Africa to help the employment and youth. So we have a long-term business plan for South Africa,” he outlined.

Eyeing third spot

While Wang provided a view of the company’s aspirations for the long-term in SA, the company also has more immediate goals, many of which are quite attainable if you ask Honor South Africa’s Fred Zhou, who too was present at the MEA launch of the Honor 90.

Here he highlighted that the brand is not too far off the pace when it comes to its local market share, citing a recent GFK report, and noting that the third spot behind Samsung and Apple is not that far off.

As such, while Honor once fell under the umbrella of Huawei, the company is now looking to overtake its former brethren in SA.

“If we look at the GFK report, for post-paid, and South Africa is a post-paid market, on this side we are already number four. So just slightly lower than OPPO, but we will see the change very fast,” he enthused.

The other element that the company is looking at falls outside of just mobile, as Honor wants to launch more different types of devices in the country, building out its lineup of locally available products in the coming year.

“Our next strategy for the next half year is to bring our whole ecosystem to South African consumers – handsets, tablets, wearables, and also audio. So right now in South Africa we already have audio and handsets, but in Q3 and Q4 you will see more Honor IoT products. Wearables we will launch in Q3 and Q4 there will be tablets, and maybe laptops at the same time.”

As such, there is a lot that Honor is planning for South African between now and the end of the year, and if the Honor 90 MEA launch has taught us anything, it’s that job creation and an IoT ecosystem are top of mind for the company.

We will therefore have to wait to see if this SA relaunch will indeed be different to past attempts.