Latin America is getting a little love from smartphone manufacturer Honor in 2018. The manufacturer announced it will begin selling its Honor View 10 and Honor 7X smartphones throughout Latin America starting next year.
The Honor View 10, already available as the Honor V10 in China, will come to the U.S. in January before it lands in Latin America. The phone is similar to the Huawei Mate 10 Pro, and features a 6-inch display with a resolution of 2160 x 1080, as well as a Kirin 970 chip. While Honor has yet to announce pricing for Latin American consumers, we expect it to be around the same price as in the U.S. — $590.
Pricing for the Honor 7X will be around $200. It features 32GB of storage and 3GB of RAM. Its high-resolution screen and attractive aluminum unibody makes it one of the most attractive budget smartphones we saw this year.
Honor, a subsidiary of Huawei, offers budget phone for users across the world. The company targets its product toward “digital natives” and, until recently, sold its devices primarily online. Honor’s brand focuses on internet-optimized smartphones. While the brand is gaining traction in the U.S., it’s already a popular option in most of the world.
Honor’s expansion to Latin America is an obvious strategy. Over the last several years, numerous device makers have started to sell phones in the region. Latin America is a huge growth market for Huawei and other smartphone manufacturers. A report published by Knowledge@Wharton estimates that mobile will comprise 68 percent of all connections in the region by 2020. By the same time, nearly 105 million people in the region, close to 50 percent of the population, will use their mobile phones to access the internet.
Exact release dates for the Honor View 10 and Honor 7X in Latin America have yet to be announced. The smartphone manufacturer will partner with retailers to provide the phones in-store. While Honor is launching its Latin American expansion with just two phones, there will likely be more to come. Latin America is expected to be a very competitive market for Honor, as it battles other established manufacturers in the region. Samsung currently accounts for nearly half of all smartphone purchases in Latin America.