CEO of Chinese smartphone brand Honor resigns due to personal reasons

Published

11 months ago

January 17, 2025

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George Zhao, Chief Executive Officer of Chinese consumer electronics brand Honor, smiles as he shows the new Honor Magic 6 Pro smartphones during a presentation on the eve of the Mobile World Congress (MWC), the telecom industry’s biggest annual gathering, in Barcelona on February 25, 2024.

Pau Barrena | Afp | Getty Images

George Zhao, the chief executive of Chinese smartphone firm Honor, has resigned from his position due to personal reasons, the company said on Friday.

“The company and the Board of Directors sincerely appreciate Mr Zhao’s outstanding contributions to the company during his tenure,” Honor said in a statement.

Jian Li, who’s been at Honor for four years in various senior management positions, will succeed Zhao as CEO.

In an internal memo posted by Chinese media and confirmed as accurate by an Honor spokesperson, Zhao said he was stepping down due to health reasons and planned to rest, recover and spend more time with his family.

Zhao called the decision to leave Honor “the most difficult decision” he has ever made.

Honor was spun off from Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei in 2020 in a bid to avoid U.S. sanctions that were crippling Huawei’s smartphone business.

Under Zhao’s leadership, Honor has aggressively launched smartphones with a focus on international markets. Zhao focused on high-end devices, including foldable smartphones, as he looked for Honor to look beyond China and challenge the likes of Samsung and Apple.

Honor’s market share in China has risen from 9.8% in 2020 to over 15% in 2024, according to Counterpoint Research. Outside of China, Honor’s market share hit 2.3% in 2024, compared to under 1% in 2020.

The company has looked to keep pace with rivals by launching artificial intelligence features on its device.

Neil Shah, partner at Counterpoint Research, said the company’s focus on high-end devices and technology is likely to continue under the new leadership.

“Honor’s focus on premiumization should continue if the brand wants to continue building its brand equity and differentiation point vs existing competitors, especially in premium markets such as Europe,” Shah told CNBC.

“The focus on innovative foldable designs and advanced AI features and close partnerships with leading component suppliers would be key.”

Zhao’s successor Li will be tasked with trying to expand Honor’s presence overseas amid fierce competition, with a focus on making the brand more recognizable.

“Many don’t know Honor” outside of China, Counterpoint’s Shah said. “Building brand equity is tough and the company needs more time, money and differentiation points.”

Technology

Intel stock holds 10% rise after analyst predicts major Apple deal

Published

3 hours ago

December 1, 2025

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Intel stock holds 10% rise after analyst predicts major Apple deal

Intel stock held a sharp hike in pretrading on Monday, after the stock surged on Friday when an analyst predicted the chip giant was nearing a deal to supply Apple in 2027.

Shares in Intel rose 10% on Friday after TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo posted on X that he expected Intel to begin shipping its lowest-end M processor to Apple as early as second or third quarter 2027.

He said that his latest industry surveys indicate that “visibility on Intel becoming an advanced-node supplier to Apple has recently improved significantly.”

Intel stock fell 0.59% as of 6.26am ET on Monday in early pretrading.

Kuo added that the timeline of the partnership is contingent on the development process after Intel releases its process design kit — the blueprint from which Apple’s engineers can build the chips — which is expected early 2026.

Former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger on Google AI chips: Competition is good for all

Apple’s silicon chips for its iPhone, iPad and Mac products are currently supplied by TSMC.

In his post, Kuo played down the potential Intel-Apple partnership’s impact on the Taiwanese chip maker, saying that Apple is expected to remain “highly dependent” on the company’s advanced nodes for the “foreseeable future.”

“In absolute terms, order volumes for the lowest-end M processor are relatively small and virtually no material impact on TSMC’s fundamentals or its technology leadership over the next several years.”

Kuo added a deal with Intel would signal strong support from Apple for the Trump administration’s push for its homegrown companies to manufacture in the U.S.

Neither Intel nor Apple immediately responded to a request for comment from CNBC.

‘If Intel pulls it off, there is potential to win higher volume and value business from Apple’

Intel’s stock has seen a resurgence over the past 12 months after years of decline. Share price fell as low as $17.66 in April, before recovering over the past few months.

“Apple is a potential major reference customer whose presence validates Intel’s high-performance foundry offering,” Paul Markham, investment director at GAM Global Equities, told CNBC.

“If Intel pulls it off, there is potential to win higher volume and value business from Apple, for example CPU production for the iPhone, and win business from other large chip designers.”

Intel has had an up and down relationship with Apple since it first announced the chip giant’s processors would power some products in 2005. The iPhone maker transitioned away from the company’s processors at the start of the 2020s.

Last week Intel was on the subject of a lawsuit filed by TSMC, in which it alleged one of its former senior vice president had leaked “confidential information” to the company. Intel did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment at the time.

Technology

How black boxes became key to solving airplane crashes

Published

1 day ago

November 30, 2025

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How black boxes became key to solving airplane crashes

After the search for survivors and recovery of victims in tragic aviation accidents — like that of a UPS cargo plane shortly after takeoff from Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport in Kentucky last month — comes the search for flight data and a cockpit voice recorder often called the “black box.”

Every commercial plane has them. Aerospace giants GE Aerospace and Honeywell are among a few companies that design them to be nearly indestructible so they can help investigators understand the cause of a crash.

“They’re very crucial because it’s one of the few sources of information that tells us what happened leading up to the accident,” said Chris Babcock, branch chief of the vehicle recorder division at the National Transportation Safety Board. “We can get a lot of information from parts and from the airplane.”

Commercial aircraft have become very complex. A Boeing 787 Dreamliner records thousands of different pieces of information. In the case of the Air India crash in June, data revealed both engine fuel switches were put into a cutoff position within one second of each other. A voice recording from inside the cockpit captured the pilots discussing the cutoffs.

“All of those parameters today can have a very huge impact on the investigation,” said former NTSB member John Goglia. “It’s our goal to to provide information back to our investigators who are on scene as quick as we can to help move the investigation forward.”

This crucial data can also help prevent future accidents. A crash can cost airlines or plane manufacturers hundreds of millions of dollars and leave victims’ families with a lifetime of grief.

But in some circumstances black boxes were destroyed or never found. Experts say further developments such as cockpit video recorders and real-time data streaming are needed.

“The technology is there. Crash worthy cockpit video recorders are already being installed in a lot of helicopters and other types of airplanes, but they’re not required,” said Jeff Guzzetti, aviation analyst and former accident investigator for the Federal Aviation Administration and NTSB. “There’s privacy and cost issues involving cockpit video recorders but the NTSB has been recommending that the FAA require them for years now.”

Watch the video to learn more.

— CNBC’s Leslie Josephs contributed to this report.