Huawei – Nowhere to run pt. XIV.

P40: Another triumph that won’t sell.  

• Huawei has launched its latest flagship, the P40 which has all the bells and whistles but without Google Mobile Services, no-one outside of China is going to buy it.
• The P40, P40 Pro, P40 Pro+ have some very cool features including:
  • First, quad curve display: This is effectively a display with no bezels whatsoever.
  • The OLED panel is curved over the edge of the device on all four sides with the exception of the corners.
  • This is because the metal unibody has larger corners in order to provide the tensile strength needed to handle the abuse that most devices receive.
  • It is very pleasing to look at and a good idea to have reduced the curve so that physical volume buttons can return to the device.
  • Second, cameras: The device range has anything from 3 to five cameras with the top of the range sporting a similar specification as the Galaxy s20 ultra.
  • However, Huawei’s marketing claims much sharper 100x optical zoom results as well as much better low light photography.
  • 3^rd party tests will verify whether its claims hold water, but it is clear that camera performance is going to be the major competitive factor once again in 2020.
  • Third, HMS: or Huawei Mobile Services including the Huawei digital assistant, Celia which is so similar to Siri that invoking Celia wakes up Siri on iPhones.
  • Huawei has made a lot of fuss about its replacement for Google Mobile Services (GMS) but a key snag remains that some work from developers is needed to port their apps over from Google Play.
  • Furthermore, there will be no Google services on any of these devices with Google Maps running in the browser (awful) being the closest that one can get.
  • Fourth, Other devices: Huawei also launched a series of nice-looking smartwatches, a Home Pod look-alike where Huawei claims both better quality sound as well as greater volume as well as connected sunglasses.
  • These devices bring together Huawei’s 1+8+N strategy which describes the hardware ecosystem where the 1 is the smartphone, the 8 are other devices that Huawei makes and the N is everything made by 3^rd
  • Fifth, 5G: All of the P40 range is 5G enabled using the Kirin 990 processor but digging through the details it is clearly not cutting edge.
  • For example, it does not support millimetre wave spectra, has lower sub 6Ghz speeds than competing chips and it is not deeply integrated into the radio front-end.
  • This is where Qualcomm’s advantage lies (once again) as it is ahead in millimetre wave and has better radio performance at sub-6Ghz.
• The P40 and variants are great looking devices but the world outside of China remains hooked on Google to the point that a large number of iPhone users would consider leaving the ecosystem if Google services were no longer available.
• Hence, the P40 is a great device but will do little outside of China other than provide a stylish benchmark with some cool features for others to copy.
• Huawei is going to feel stress from the current decline in the global economy but at the moment China is faring better than most, as much of its workforce is back at the coal face.
• Hence, while Huawei will take a hit from the current situation, it may be able to outperform many of its peers in 2020.