Honor CEO Zhao Ming: We will not develop our own SoC in the short term and aim to change Apple's monopoly in the high-end market

Following its debut at MWC Barcelona in February this year, Honor held a domestic press conference today and officially launched the Magic 4 series in the Chinese market, with a starting price of 3,999 yuan. Honor CEO Zhao Ming accepted an interview with the media after the press conference.

At the press conference, Honor announced the Magic dual flagship strategy, which consists of the Magic V series and the Magic digital series. The Magic digital series focuses on straight-screen flagships, while the Magic V focuses on folding flagships.

The Honor Magic4 series released this time includes three products: Honor Magic4, Honor Magic4 Pro and Honor Magic4 Ultimate Edition, with prices starting from 3,999 yuan, 5,499 yuan and 7,999 yuan respectively.

Zhao Ming said in an interview that in the high-end market, Huawei and Apple used to be the two poles in the country. After Huawei's mobile phone business was restricted, Apple became the only dominant player, and Honor wants to change the situation where Apple is the only dominant player.

In his opinion, in recent years, the mobile phone industry, especially in high-end flagship phones, has seen intensified competition in hardware "internal competition". In terms of performance and imaging, the increasing hardware stacking has not brought about corresponding improvements in experience, and Apple's monopoly has naturally become more and more intense.

At the press conference, Zhao Ming also compared the new product with the iPhone. He said that Honor Magic 4 Pro is better than iPhone 13 Pro in both gaming and mixed scenarios.

It is worth noting that the Magic 4 series also has a Ultimate Edition in the domestic market, which takes imaging a step further. According to data released by Honor, the Honor Magic 4 Ultimate Edition ranks first in DXOMARK's imaging score with 146 points.

At the press conference, Honor also announced that it had reached a strategic cooperation with Midea, Microsoft and Ideal Auto for full-scenario interconnection. Among them, the cooperation with Ideal Auto attracted attention. Zhao Ming said that Honor will not build cars and will not enter the automotive field for a long time. The smartphone industry and the full-scenario industry can still make a lot of innovations and breakthroughs in many aspects. He also said that Honor will cooperate with automakers to build more full-scenario experiences.

In addition, the Magic4 series Ultimate Edition is also equipped with an independent ISP chip.

Zhao Ming said that developing a chip is not particularly difficult. Honor has also developed an ISP chip this time, but it has not been promoted. He believes that the real difficulty is the SoC chip, because it contains CPU, GPU, Modem, etc., and requires underlying communication algorithms and capabilities. Even Apple's Modem is not satisfactory.

"Honor has these capabilities, but it does not mean that it has to develop its own SoC." Zhao Ming said that Honor will cooperate with SoC suppliers such as Qualcomm and MediaTek for a long time to combine Honor's capabilities with those of chip manufacturers to jointly define chips.