Honor brand completes divorce from Huawei, wins Microsoft license

With the US government out for their blood, previously rising star Hauwei has had to divest itself of its smartphone and PC brand Honor to allow them to conduct business with US suppliers.

Today ChinaDaily reports that Honor has been able to secure licenses for Windows 10 from Microsoft, allowing them to ship laptops globally with the OS.

Previously due to US sanctions, Huawei was considering shipping laptops running the Android-based Harmony OS which would have been less than ideal, and which would have closed off the global market to its products.

In November Huawei sold their Honor brand to a Chinese consortium of over 30 agents and dealers, which has allowed the new company sign a global cooperation agreement with Microsoft Corp, under which it will use Microsoft Windows 10 as the official operating system in its laptops. Honor hopes the deal will pave the way for a relationship with other US suppliers such as Qualcomm. Discussions have reportedly already started.

Zhao Ming, CEO of Honor, said: “Honor is pleased to reach a global cooperation agreement with Microsoft. Through mainstream operating systems and technologies, we will bring consumers PC products with outstanding design, powerful performance and first-class experience. Honor insists on taking consumers as the core and maintaining a fully open attitude and will work together with global industrial chain partners.”  Honor is expecting to ship its MagicBook Pro notebook running Windows 10 and powered by the Intel Core i5 processors to global markers in January 2021, Honor said in a statement.

Xiang Ligang, director-general of the Information Consumption Alliance, a telecom industry association, said: “With one US company partnering with Honor, more US companies are likely to be on board in the near future, which can better solve Honor’s supply chain issues.”

Honor used to ship around 70 million handsets per year and hopes to resume its position in the smartphone world now it was completely independent of Huawei.