Huawei's Honor smartphone sales are boosted by the O2O business model. (Photo : Reuters)
With the development of the new online-to-offline (O2O) commerce, domestic smartphone brands which were previously sold exclusively online have now shifted to physical sales channels, according to a report by Tencent's tech news website.
Huawei's Honor mobile phones have been sold at 200 Suning outlets as of July, after the firm started selling the handset through offline sales platforms in 2014, the report said, citing Honor's data.
Huawei released its Honor sub-brand in 2014, with the goal of offering unlocked devices through an online-exclusive business model to cut overhead expenses.
Honor lately signed a mutual partnership agreement with Suning in order to speed up the expansion of its product sales channels from online-only to include physical stores under the O2O model.
With this deal, the two firms will be working hand-in-hand in making Honor smartphones available at 1,000 Suning outlets in the country and in another 100 jointly opened Honor stores.
Suning, one of China's largest home appliance suppliers, will also augment Honor's offline channels to expand to third- and fourth-tier cities. The company will also allow Huawei's smartphones to be available at 1,500 Suning service centers in the years to come.
Huawei has been enjoying positive outcomes since the partnership with Suning had begun. Honor's sales have grown 30-fold in just one year thanks to its availability offline. For the first half of 2015, Honor mobile phone sales have increased more than twice of last year's numbers.
During the first half of the year, the Honor brand had seen 20 million shipments, resulting in net revenues of $2.6 billion. The Honor 6 Plus and Honor 4X were recognized as the main sales drivers, with the former recording 3 million sales around the globe since its launch last year.
The smartphone supplier has said that it will continue to tap the European market. The Honor 7 is scheduled to be launched in Europe later this month. Honor now targets 40 million shipments by the end of the year.
