Honor released its Magic V2 foldable on July 12, 2023, starting with the China market.
Honor
Chinese consumer electronics firm Honor launched its flagship foldable smartphone overseas — venturing into a high-end market dominated by Samsung and Apple.
The Honor Magic V2 will go on sale in markets in Europe and elsewhere — but not in the United States — no later than the first quarter of 2024, the company said.
Honor has been looking to chart its own path since the spinoff, making a play especially for the premium segment of the smartphone arena and expanding overseas.
The Magic V2 is the company’s second foldable smartphone. The entire phone can be folded and unfolded.
Honor launched the handset in China in July, with the device starting at 8,999 yuan ($1,235), and it appears to have got off to a strong start. The Shenzhen-headquartered firm will be hoping for similar success abroad. Pricing has not yet been announced for the phone in international markets.
‘Fewer resources than Huawei had’
Honor commanded a 5.2% market share in the second quarter of this year, slightly higher than the 4.9% in the same period last year, and it remains a small player in the market, according to IDC. China accounts for nearly 78% of Honor’s total smartphone shipments, highlighting its reliance on its domestic market.
Part of Honor’s strategy in improving its global standing is launching high-spec phones at competitive prices, particularly in mature European markets like the U.K. The Magic V2 is part of that.
“Honor appears to be following Huawei’s playbook in its successful big push in the global smartphone market before U.S. actions set it in reverse, and is aiming for a largely upmarket portfolio with an emphasis on top notch technology and specs,” Simon Baker, director of IDC’s mobile phone research in Europe, told CNBC via email.
“However the now independent Honor is doing so with fewer resources than Huawei had.”
However, Honor faces a number of challenges in trying to compete in the high end with giants Apple and Samsung, particularly in trying to raise its brand profile.
“Apple and Samsung both have huge advantages in scale and R&D (research and development) resources and marketing clout. Honor’s new phones are generally being very well received as products, but it takes years to become a well known and respected name in the phone business,” Baker added.
Honor Magic V2 details
The Magic V2 comes with all the latest features expected of a premium phone.
It has a triple lens camera, sports Qualcomm’s latest mobile chipset and has storage options that go up to 1 terabyte.
When the phone is unfolded, users can enjoy a 7.92-inch screen.
The device is also 9.9 millimeters when folded, smaller than the 13.4 millimeters of its closest rival — the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5. Honor’s product is also lighter than Samsung’s.
CNBC looked at the battery in the device which is extremely thin at just 2.72 mm.
While the specs are innovative, Honor could still have a hard time convincing people to buy its device.
“When Honor was a subsidiary brand of Huawei it was not present or well known in many countries. That is an advantage now as it is not readily associated with Huawei for many consumers, but at the same time Honor has to establish itself as being seen as a trusted and premium brand,” Baker said.
Samsung and Apple accounted for nearly 70% of the smartphone market in Western Europe in the first quarter, according to Counterpoint Research, while Chinese brand Xiaomi was a distant third with 15% market share. That highlights Honor’s challenge in some of the markets it is aiming to get a foothold in.
“The experience of the Chinese phone makers which followed Huawei into Europe in the last few years has been that this is a challenge, particularly in persuading consumers to buy their more expensive models,” Baker said.
Paxton sued Google in 2022 for allegedly unlawfully tracking and collecting the private data of users.
The attorney general said the settlement, which covers allegations in two separate lawsuits against the search engine and app giant, dwarfed all past settlements by other states with Google for similar data privacy violations.
Google’s settlement comes nearly 10 months after Paxton obtained a $1.4 billion settlement for Texas from Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to resolve claims of unauthorized use of biometric data by users of those popular social media platforms.
“In Texas, Big Tech is not above the law,” Paxton said in a statement on Friday.
“For years, Google secretly tracked people’s movements, private searches, and even their voiceprints and facial geometry through their products and services. I fought back and won,” said Paxton.
“This $1.375 billion settlement is a major win for Texans’ privacy and tells companies that they will pay for abusing our trust.”
Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said the company did not admit any wrongdoing or liability in the settlement, which involves allegations related to the Chrome browser’s incognito setting, disclosures related to location history on the Google Maps app, and biometric claims related to Google Photo.
Castaneda said Google does not have to make any changes to products in connection with the settlement and that all of the policy changes that the company made in connection with the allegations were previously announced or implemented.
“This settles a raft of old claims, many of which have already been resolved elsewhere, concerning product policies we have long since changed,” Castaneda said.
“We are pleased to put them behind us, and we will continue to build robust privacy controls into our services.”
Virtual care company Omada Health filed for an IPO on Friday, the latest digital health company that’s signaled its intent to hit the public markets despite a turbulent economy.
Founded in 2012, Omada offers virtual care programs to support patients with chronic conditions like prediabetes, diabetes and hypertension. The company describes its approach as a “between-visit care model” that is complementary to the broader health-care ecosystem, according to its prospectus.
Revenue increased 57% in the first quarter to $55 million, up from $35.1 million during the same period last year, the filing said. The San Francisco-based company generated $169.8 million in revenue during 2024, up 38% from $122.8 million the previous year.
Omada’s net loss narrowed to $9.4 million during its first quarter from $19 million during the same period last year. It reported a net loss of $47.1 million in 2024, compared to a $67.5 million net loss during 2023.
The IPO market has been largely dormant across the tech sector for the past three years, and within digital health, it’s been almost completely dead. After President Donald Trump announced a sweeping tariff policy that plunged U.S. markets into turmoil last month, taking a company public is an even riskier endeavor. Online lender Klarna delayed its long-anticipated IPO, as did ticket marketplace StubHub.
But Omada Health isn’t the first digital health company to file for its public market debut this year. Virtual physical therapy startup Hinge Health filed its prospectus in March, and provided an update with its first-quarter earnings on Monday, a signal to investors that it’s looking to forge ahead.
Omada contracts with employers, and the company said it works with more than 2,000 customers and supports 679,000 members as of March 31. More than 156 million Americans suffer from at least one chronic condition, so there is a significant market opportunity, according to the company’s filing.
In 2022, Omada announced a $192 million funding round that pushed its valuation above $1 billion. U.S. Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Fidelity’s FMR LLC are the largest outside shareholders in the company, each owning between 9% and 10% of the stock.
“To our prospective shareholders, thank you for learning more about Omada. I invite you join our journey,” Omada co-founder and CEO Sean Duffy said in the filing. “In front of us is a unique chance to build a promising and successful business while truly changing lives.”
Liz Reid, vice president, search, Google speaks during an event in New Delhi on December 19, 2022.
Sajjad Hussain | AFP | Getty Images
Testimony in Google‘s antitrust search remedies trial that wrapped hearings Friday shows how the company is calculating possible changes proposed by the Department of Justice.
Google head of search Liz Reid testified in court Tuesday that the company would need to divert between 1,000 and 2,000 employees, roughly 20% of Google’s search organization, to carry out some of the proposed remedies, a source with knowledge of the proceedings confirmed.
The testimony comes during the final days of the remedies trial, which will determine what penalties should be taken against Google after a judge last year ruled the company has held an illegal monopoly in its core market of internet search.
The DOJ, which filed the original antitrust suit and proposed remedies, asked the judge to force Google to share its data used for generating search results, such as click data. It also asked for the company to remove the use of “compelled syndication,” which refers to the practice of making certain deals with companies to ensure its search engine remains the default choice in browsers and smartphones.
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The DOJ also proposed the company divest its Chrome browser but that was not included in Reid’s initial calculation, the source confirmed.
Reid on Tuesday said Google’s proprietary “Knowledge Graph” database, which it uses to surface search results, contains more than 500 billion facts, according to the source, and that Google has invested more than $20 billion in engineering costs and content acquisition over more than a decade.
“People ask Google questions they wouldn’t ask anyone else,” she said, according to the source.
Reid echoed Google’s argument that sharing its data would create privacy risks, the source confirmed.
Closing arguments for the search remedies trial will take place May 29th and 30th, followed by the judge’s decision expected in August.
The company faces a separate remedies trial for its advertising tech business, which is scheduled to begin Sept. 22.