Following the commercialization of 5G network in China, many Chinese OEMs are now getting set to unveil their 5G smartphones. The likes of vivo, Lenovo Oppo have already expressed their desire to release a 5G smartphone this year. Now, Zhao Ming, president of the Honor business unit, also announced that Honor’s first 5G smartphone will be launched in the fourth quarter of this year.
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Zhao Ming stated that Honor will not release a 5G smartphone because it is the current trend. He said that the company will consider exactly what users want/expect from 5G as well as the long-term usability for the users. Actually, Honor cannot be said to be behind schedule because 5G applicability is still at its infancy in countries like South Korea and the UK. For China, it is still a “fetus” despite the fact that 5G licenses have been issued.
In addition, Mr. Zhao said that Honor’s first 5G smartphone will not be a cheap smartphone and he has a good reason for saying this. He noted that if the smartphone is cheap (positioned at 1000 yuan ($145) or less), the device will not have the right hardware (CPU/GPU) which will hamper its overall performance. Thus, there is no need to have a phone with a fast network whose hardware cannot handle the network speed.
At present, due to the high-speed and low-latency characteristics of 5G, the three major operators in China have not yet officially issued 5G tariff standards. However, Zhao Ming believes that the price per GB of traffic will definitely decrease in the future. The price of 50GB traffic in the 5G era will definitely be cheaper than the 50GB traffic in the 4G era. In addition, he also predicted that the sales of 5G mobile phones may reach 100 million units in the next year, and the Chinese market may be the first to break through 100 million units.
