Wondering why newer Honor smartphones aren’t popping up?

If you’ve been wondering why the Honor 5X popped up in the PH as the GR5, we may have an answer for you. A senior exec told us yesterday that they’ve adopted a new strategy for the sub-brand in certain countries that’s wholly dependent on its online performance. For countries like the PH where online sales haven’t really taken off, only certain Honor devices will be sold, though all of them will be sold with Huawei branding.

The strategy makes sense – the Honor smartphone lineup was created by the brand to combat the efforts of their online-only domestic rivals, namely Xiaomi, Meizu and Lenovo. That online-first strategy doesn’t always work in all countries, and rumor has it that the Honor brand was starting to cannibalize the sales of regular Huawei devices because of their aggressive pricing, since Honor smartphones were also previously sold in offline channels as well as online.