Huawei’s Honor has made some impressive growth in the past few quarters. As against figuring in Top 15 among Smartphone brands in 2017, in the first 6 months of 2018, it has earned its place in top 10 Smartphone brands in India as per CMR’s India Monthly Mobile Handset Report.
Honor, as a result is becoming a strong contender of a challenger brand in India. Its online selling strategy has worked and is giving it a positive trade-off between volumes it sells and the cost of sales.
The brand has also started building installed base in the country and in some states it has started pecking in Top 10 brands. For instance, as per CMR’s Mobilytiks, by end of March 2018, Honor was ranking 4th in Kerala and 10th in Tamil Nadu by installed base.
Looking at its product portfolio, there is not any trend setting example, first of its kind in the industry feature that Honor brings to potential customers. But, as a challenger brand, it always aggressively prices the products. As it did with the recently launched Honor 9N, which goes for sale from July 31st, 2018 exclusively on Flipkart.
But, the brand is constantly improving the models through software updates and enhancements, which are done by its R&D team based out of its facility in Bangalore. What is impressive to learn is its effective and purposeful use of Social Media and other digital platforms. It does not just be on Social Media to show its presence. Rather, it seriously acts upon the feedback and suggestions it receives from the users. As a result, it has sent over 20 updates to devices based on the feedback received just over Social Media. This is indeed thinking beyond typical RoI measures and integrating the Social Media into very effective feedback mechanism, where not just bots revert with kind of simply auto reverts, but all is fed into enhancing the product experience. Of course, this has resulted in making customer delighted and helping their retention as well as upgrade within the Honor products.
Perhaps, a cue for other established as well as aspiring brands to use Social Media effectively and listen to what customers have to say and not just rely on what you feel is the best. This is what would be honouring the customer!
