Honor launches new smartphone ahead of 11/11 shopping festival

Zhao Ming, president of Honor, unveils the new handset Honor 6X in Xi'an, Shaanxi, on Tuesday. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Honor, an internet smartphone brand created by Huawei Technologies Co Ltd to compete with Xiaomi Corp, has unveiled a new handset to boost sales in the run-up to China's largest online shopping festival.

Honor 6X, starting from 999 yuan ($148), is equipped with dual cameras on the rear, a feature commonly seen in middle-to-high end handsets. It is Honor' latest effort to cement its presence in the 1,000 yuan smartphone segment, which usually contributes to a large proportion of shipments for vendors.

Zhao Ming, president of Honor, said as of October, the firm has sold over 10 million units of Honor 5X which was unveiled a year ago.

"I am confident Honor 6X will deliver at least equally sound sales performance," Zhao said.

The firm has partnered with Tencent Video, the video streaming website of Tencent Holdings Ltd, to lure young consumers who love live-streaming. Each Honor 6X will be pre-installed with Tencent Video's app.

The new handset, unveiled on Tuesday and equipped with a 4,000 mAh battery, comes ahead of November 11, the largest online-shopping discount festival in China when smartphone vendors scramble to roll out promotion activities.

Honor 6X is designed to take on Redmi Pro, an affordable smartphone launched by Xiaomi in July.

On the same day when the former was launched, Xiaomi lowered the starting price of Redmi Pro from 1,499 yuan to 1,099 yuan.

Honor 6X will be available in China on October 25.

In August, Honor entered the US market with Honor 8, its flagship smartphone of this year.

"It usually takes two to three generations of products to build a presence in a market. That is the same case in the US," Zhao said. "I hope Honor can replicate its current success in Europe in the US market over the next two years."