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.
But the first full trading week of the month saw stocks caught in November rains.
The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average each lost more than 1%, while the Nasdaq Composite shed around 3% — that’s its largest weekly loss since the tech-heavy index slumped 10% in the week ended April 4.
A few months ago, tariffs were the shadows that stalked stocks. Now, it’s fears that artificial intelligence-related stocks are trading at prices disconnected from what the firms are actually worth.
“You’ve got trillions of dollars tied up in seven stocks, for example. So, it’s inevitable, with that kind of concentration, that there will be a worry about, ‘You know, when will this bubble burst?‘” CEO of DBS, Southeast Asia’s largest bank,Tan Su Shan told CNBC.
“It’s likely there’ll be a 10 to 20% drawdown in equity markets sometime in the next 12 to 24 months,” Solomon said Tuesday at the Global Financial Leaders’ Investment Summit in Hong Kong.
That said, a pullback isn’t necessarily bad for stocks. It could even present “buying opportunities” for investors, according to Glen Smith, chief investment officer at GDS Wealth Management.
After all, earnings have been “reassuring” despite worries about tech stocks’ high valuations, Kiran Ganesh, multi-asset strategist at UBS, told CNBC. That means the rain might not last and the rally could find a way to run a little longer.
— CNBC’s Lee Ying Shan, Hugh Leask and Lim Hui Jie contributed to this report.
China rolls back curbs on rare earths. Beijing said Friday that it would suspend some restrictions on exports of rare earth elements. The move follows talks between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Oct. 30.
Nexperia impasse shows signs of easing. The Chinese Commerce Ministry said in a statement Sunday that it had taken steps to allow exports of certain chips from Nexperia’s China facility. Shares of Nexperia parent Wingtech Technology climbed Monday.
U.S. government on track to end shutdown. The Senate on Sunday night stateside passed the first stage of a deal that would end the shutdown. The procedural measure allows other votes essential to the agreement to be held starting on Monday.
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Fundraisers and fraudsters are presenting themselves as family office representatives, seeking to dupe gullible investors — and then there are also imposters who are in it just for an “ego boost,” several industry veterans told CNBC.
An information vacuum seems to have encouraged imposters. In many markets, genuine single family offices, or SFOs, are exempt from registering so long as they manage only family money. That privacy norm often makes verification hard, said industry experts.
China has rolled back a number of restrictions on its export of critical minerals and rare earth materials to the United States, in a sign that a trade truce between the world’s two largest economies is holding.
China’s Ministry of Commerce said Friday that it would suspend some export controls on critical minerals used in military hardware, semiconductors and other high-tech industries for a year.
The suspended restrictions, first imposed on Oct. 9, include limits on the export of certain rare earth elements, lithium battery materials, and processing technologies.
The export relaxations follow talks between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Busan, South Korea, on Oct. 30.
Beijing also reversed retaliatory curbs on exports of gallium, germanium, antimony and other so-called super-hard materials such as synthetic diamonds and boron nitrides. Those measures, introduced in December 2024, were widely seen as retaliation for Washington’s expanded semiconductor export restrictions on China.
China classifies such materials as “dual-use items,” meaning they can be used for both civilian and military purposes.
Beyond military applications, these critical minerals are used across the semiconductor industry and other high-tech sectors — sectors at the heart of U.S.-China trade tensions.
Beijing has also suspended the stricter end-user and end-use verification checks for exports of dual-use graphite to the U.S., which were imposed in December 2024 alongside the broader export ban.
China dominates global production of most critical minerals and rare earth elements and has increasingly used its export policies as leverage in trade disputes.
As part of the latest China-U.S. trade deal, the U.S. has agreed to several concessions, including lowering tariffs on Chinese imports by 10 percentage points, and suspending Trump’s heightened “reciprocal tariffs” on Chinese imports until Nov. 10, 2026.
The U.S. will also postpone a rule announced Sept. 29 that would have blacklisted majority-owned subsidiaries of Chinese companies on its entity list.
But the first full trading week of the month saw stocks caught in November rains.
The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average each lost more than 1%, while the Nasdaq Composite shed around 3% — that’s its largest weekly loss since the tech-heavy index slumped 10% in the week ended April 4.
A few months ago, tariffs were the shadows that stalked stocks. Now, it’s fears that artificial intelligence-related stocks are trading at prices disconnected from what the firms are actually worth.
“You’ve got trillions of dollars tied up in seven stocks, for example. So, it’s inevitable, with that kind of concentration, that there will be a worry about, ‘You know, when will this bubble burst?‘” CEO of DBS, Southeast Asia’s largest bank,Tan Su Shan told CNBC.
“It’s likely there’ll be a 10 to 20% drawdown in equity markets sometime in the next 12 to 24 months,” Solomon said Tuesday at the Global Financial Leaders’ Investment Summit in Hong Kong.
That said, a pullback isn’t necessarily bad for stocks. It could even present “buying opportunities” for investors, according to Glen Smith, chief investment officer at GDS Wealth Management.
After all, earnings have been “reassuring” despite worries about tech stocks’ high valuations, Kiran Ganesh, multi-asset strategist at UBS, told CNBC. That means the rain might not last and the rally could find a way to run a little longer.
— CNBC’s Lee Ying Shan, Hugh Leask and Lim Hui Jie contributed to this report.
China consumer prices pick up in October. The consumer price index, released Sunday, showed a 0.2% growth year on year. It beats analysts’ expectations of zero growth and is the first month since June that prices rose.
U.S. government on track to end shutdown. Enough Democratic senators had agreed to vote for a deal that would fund the U.S. government through the end of January, a person familiar with the deal told CNBC.
Another missed jobs report. The ongoing U.S. government shutdown — which is now the longest ever — means the Bureau of Labor Statistics couldn’t release its monthly employment data. Here’s what economists would have expected the report to show.
[PRO] Stocks that could bounce after sell-off. Using CNBC Pro’s stock screener tool, we found several names that are oversold, according to their 14-day relative strength index. This implies they could be due for a recovery in prices.
Fundraisers and fraudsters are presenting themselves as family office representatives, seeking to dupe gullible investors — and then there are also imposters who are in it just for an “ego boost,” several industry veterans told CNBC.
An information vacuum seems to have encouraged imposters. In many markets, genuine single family offices, or SFOs, are exempt from registering so long as they manage only family money. That privacy norm often makes verification hard, said industry experts.
