Huawei Mate 8 Beats Expectations, Sells a Million Units in Less Than a Month

Huawei launched its latest and greatest flagship phablet, the Huawei Mate 8, less than a month ago and it has already sold over a million units. If that didn’t catch your attention, then get this; the phone is only available in China at the moment. Plus the handset has had scratchy availability even in China as most retailers went ‘out of stock’ on the launch day. This gives us a pretty good picture of how well the phone has been performing in its home country.

The numbers were revealed by the company’s CEO Yu Chengdong himself so it can’t get more official than that. The phone has been selling like hotcakes despite being a massive 6-incher, which is considered to be a niche market in terms of the size of the phone. The phone doesn’t come cheap and costs an extravagant amount. It seems Huawei has managed to convince the people that size and price don’t matter when the phone is this good.

Huawei Mate 8 comes with a 1080p screen in a nearly bezel-less display and an unbelievable screen-to-body ratio of 78% to keep the phone’s size as small as possible. It comes with the custom built next-gen Kirin 950 processor and 3 GB or 4 GB of RAM and upto 64 GB of internal storage. There’s a 16 MP rear and 8 MP front camera setup. The 7.9mm metal body also includes a massive 4000mAh battery and one of the fastest fingerprint readers.

The complete feature coverage for Huawei Mate 8 is available here.

Exceeds Expectations

Even Huawei themselves seem to have underestimated the phone’s demand. At the phone’s release, Huawei’s Head of Smartphone Division, He Gang, said that they plan to manufacture a million Mate 8 units each month. While at the time he seemed optimistic, the phone has managed to outpace expectations. Huawei and the retailers are having a hard time fulfilling user demand and that’s before the handset has gone global which will surely mean even greater demand.

The company has already announced its first wave of international markets for the Mate 8. The phone will be available across Europe, Middle East, South-East Asia and some other countries within the next few weeks. Pakistan and the US will get the phone at a later date. It remains to be seen if the company will be able to ramp up production to meet local and international demand.

Huawei’s Recent Global Growth

Huawei was nowhere a few years ago in smartphone industry and was only known inside China for their good quality but cheap lookalike smartphones. Their communication devices, however, have been globally utilised by mobile operators except USA and Australia where Huawei exit the market due to political reasons.

Nearly three years ago, the company was still nowhere on the global arena. Since that time Huawei has managed to create a brand identity for itself and has gone from cheap lookalikes to expensive unique and premium gadgets. Huawei expanded to Europe and other Asian countries which has proven fruitful throughout 2015 with major sales contributions.

While the company suffered a loss from its home country competitor, Xiaomi, in 2014, it eventually regained the third spot in global smartphone shipments and maintained it throughout the rest of the year. 2014’s less adequate performance made the company realize that it needed further expansion due to the saturating Chinese market. Huawei targeted 100 million smartphone shipments in 2015 and it beat that goal by reaching 108 million units with a 44 percent increase in smartphone sales and $20 billion worth of revenue. The Chinese giant managed to progress when other heavyweights like Samsung and Apple struggled with sluggish market performance which is astounding.