China Calling: Huawei’s Media Tour, Kirin 950 and Why We Went
by Ian Cutress on December 4, 2015 8:00 AM ESTMoving The Smartphone Target Market
It may seem obvious but part of point of trips is to generate dialogue. Huawei is interested in what we have to say about the perception users outside China have of them, as well as our opinion on their latest product trends, and we’re interested in Huawei both internally for how they work, generating ideas/products, but also externally and how they approach different markets, especially moving into North Americas and expanding in Europe.
While Huawei has been on the periphery of most tech media since the launch of the P1 and the P2, and more prominently so with the Mate 7 and the P8, they are still a brand with little recognition outside of technology enthusiasts in the West. Huawei is well known in China, and product launches are well attended with lots of interest, as well as deep discussions with the media, but it is only recently that they have begun to extend invitations to similar outlets in the west. Part of it is to explain their story, their philosophy, and the other part is to explain to journalists such that they can run their own interpretation, providing Huawei smartphone reviews with at least an element of analysis about the company in general at the same time.
A cynic might argue that in order to get a foothold into the US or expand in EMEA, there needs to be a combination of a large targeted marketing campaign as well as a definitive product individualization, such as an Apple device, or a Samsung, though to LG’s Flex or HTC’s characteristic look. But even then, HTC’s current situation is in a state of flux despite heavy marketing for a number of reasons, meaning that a big push has both potential risk and reward. As part of this trip, we discussed with Huawei on how exactly we perceive the smartphone market, what are the interesting elements of it and how Huawei can open up to us with both information, structure, and sampling.
It was quite telling that during a roundtable discussion, the journalists around the room were asked what sort of products they were interested in. It was almost a unanimous chorus pointing towards the flagship models for two main reasons – firstly, most other companies provide flagship devices, so there is a rolling comparison and knowledge of an adapting market, but the second point was that the flagship devices typically bring in more variance, engineering prowess and showcase the best of the company talent. Both points are certainly true, and I (Ian) personally can’t disagree with their responses.
The Huawei Mate S - the company's current flagship device
My argument was slightly different, especially if we compare to the industries I regularly write about; from my perspective, I’d prefer to test the popular devices. With a $600 smartphone, everyone has an opinion on the design, the hardware, the benchmark results, or simply fanboyism, but not everyone has $600 to spend. While a lot of users might discuss the virtues online, or debate over small details, the reality is that a good portion will opt for something around the $250-$300 range for their main device or family devices, depending on contract, region, availability and other features. This is similar to when we get $2000 laptops, or $500 motherboards – lots of discussion, but in reality fewer people will buy them and go for the $800 2-in-1s or sub-$160 motherboards.
Andrei brought up a good point regarding this, which relates back to the first point about mainly reviewing flagships – if you test in the $250 range for smartphones, then there are 80 or so devices to choose from and the review either has to be in a vacuum comparing to almost nothing or based on the limited knowledge of what exactly is in the market, as it's impossible to review every alternative that exists out there. It provides an interesting dilemma for companies like Huawei and their competitors, because depending on what the media wants to look at will dictate what products the manufacturers will sample for review and/or how many are distributed. Thankfully Huawei are open on this and are willing to entertain our future device requests.
This becomes all important for entry into their non-standard regions, if they feel that there needs to be more presence that just a flagship model. Huawei over the years has slowly reduced their smartphone lineup from around 80 new models a year to fewer than 25, even though most of us only ever discussed three or four of those in 2014/2015 (P8/P8 Lite, Mate 7 and Honor 6). Chances are that the metric of devices moving into the west should increase over time, in both flagship and mid-range markets especially.
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londedoganet - Friday, December 4, 2015 - link
Since you so nicely asked (that was sarcasm), here's comments for the first three pages. I got too irritated by that point to continue:-Page 1-
> I could certainly imagine members of my family seeing the name ‘Huawei’ and not having an idea to pronounce it.
"having an idea OF HOW to pronounce it"
> then from the outside HiSilicon's Kirin lineup seems to eying the former development.
"seems to eying"? "seems to BE eyeing", perhaps.
> the devices we have tested so far do not necessarily produce anything new into the ecosystem.
"produce anything new"? Was the author trying to say "introduce anything new"?
> an overview of the Huawei media tour combined a look into corporate strategy,
"combined WITH a look"
-Page 2-
> with a back-thought to large towns of 10,000+ people devoted to one factory
"with a back-thought"? I don't know what that means.
> the crucial part of accepting these trip offers is to talk and understand the people that matter most
"talk TO and understand the people"
> and as a journalist you either keep pumping out more of the same, rather than trying to be the best you can be and generate the sort of traffic that makes who you write for unique.
The "either" is missing an "or" clause, and is therefore redundant.
> so we were under no disillusion of the circumstances
"under no ILLUSION"
> VP of the Handset Product Line and the announcement of the Kirin 950.
I don't think you can be "VP of... the announcement of the Kirin 950", so the phrasing is awkward.
-Page 3-
> This dichotomy between ‘on-show corporate’ and ‘the general workforce’ is mirrored in companies around the world, to the extent that we also had lunch in a special canteen for guests with a background band as you entered.
While it can be taken from context (and the accompanying photo) that the "special canteen for guests" was at Huawei, some words to make the link explicit would have been better. For example, "This dichotomy between ‘on-show corporate’ and ‘the general workforce’ is mirrored in companies around the world, AND HUAWEI WAS NO EXCEPTION, to the extent that we also had lunch in a special canteen for guests with a background band as you entered."
> we were not allowed to take images inside of the facilities.
Images are usually "captured", while photos are usually "taken". This sentence mixes verbs in a non-standard manner.
> they all need to perform similar tests dictated international and industry standards.
"dictated BY international and industry standards"
cruzinforit - Friday, December 4, 2015 - link
It's also interesting to note that I think a few of these can be explained by the difference in how people from the UK talk compared to Americans. Since you know, Ian is from the UK it makes sense his manner of talking/typing might include british-english idiosyncrasies that we don't have in American english.phoenix_rizzen - Friday, December 4, 2015 - link
Nice theory, but that wouldn't explain why Canadian readers find it annoying since we align more with the Brits than the Yanks.Ian Cutress - Friday, December 4, 2015 - link
Actually, it was looked over by five different sets of eyes, minimum. It seems I missed out a number of prepositions and conjunctions, and everyone's brain filled them in. Naturally when several thousands of readers look over, a couple of errors becomes a debate about a series of style choices or idiosyncrasies. But nevertheless, we're taking points on board always, especially with a mix of styles from our editors.I've taken the steps and adjusted most of what you've listed here - a couple were a bad mix of two half-sentences or missing punctuation mixed with non-standard rules (serial comma, for example). Some I disagree with, because they are how I would say them in company (and colloquially correct here at least). But with most, I totally agree with you.
Thanks for the input, it is much appreciated. If any of our readers ever feel I've screwed up something linguistically, I'm happy to take an email as well (ian@anandtech.com). A few of our readers do already every now and again :)
-Ian
SunnyNW - Saturday, December 5, 2015 - link
I am a Big fan of Anandtech but to be honest I have noticed quite a few mistakes in recent articles. Some seem so obvious that I am very surprised that they are looked over. I hate to be That guy pointing out grammar mistakes and the like in comments so I don't. Just to add, these are definitely errors and not just author specific style choices or idiosyncrasies. Common examples seem to be duplicate words in a sentence, simple misspellings, and/or missing words. I love the content of this site therefore please just take this as Constructive criticism, the site produces Top Quality material so I would hate for editing to become an issue. I have been reading the site for years and at least to my awareness the errors seem to have become more prominent recently, such as in the past month or two.SunnyNW - Saturday, December 5, 2015 - link
My original comment had a few extra sentences but for some reason was being flagged as "Spam" and the site would not allow me to post. I started to randomly delete some sentences and it let me post but my post original comment was not harsh or "spam" in any way. It was very similar to what I posted above just with a few extra sentences none of which contained anything negative. I'm curious to know why my comment was being flagged as "spam" and what usually leads to this type of response, I've never encountered this before.s.yu - Saturday, December 5, 2015 - link
Indeed, a draft with lack of basic spelling check.phoenix_rizzen - Friday, December 4, 2015 - link
Oh, good, I'm not the only one that's irritated by this.londedoganet - Friday, December 4, 2015 - link
"hugh-er-way"? That soundsA) Nothing like how it would be pronounced in Mandarin (i.e. "hwa-way"), and additionally
B) More like the brand name for a laundry bleach ("Hue-Away, now with extra whitening power!")
Communism - Saturday, December 5, 2015 - link
The 2nd suggestion by Ian describes how the name would be pronounced in Beijing Dialect.